Horizen is building an ecosystem for private onchain finance: an EVM-native L3 on Base. The core of that ecosystem is a deliberately designed app cluster — a private DEX, a private cross-chain bridge, and private yield infrastructure — built to integrate tightly with one another and to source liquidity from Base while using Horizen as the privacy coordination and execution layer.

We want to add two more components to that cluster, and we are funding them directly at up to $150,000 per project.

The descriptions below are directional, they are not specifications. Privacy architecture and other specifics are yours to propose.

Horizen is seeking a private vault protocol where automated strategies — proprietary quantitative models, rules-based systems, or AI-driven agents — trade on behalf of depositors without exposing positions, holdings, or strategy logic onchain. Public vaults leak their edge: strategies are copied, entries are front-run, and large positions invite adversarial trading against them, which caps the sophistication of what anyone is willing to run onchain. A quant with a proprietary model has little reason to deploy it somewhere it can be reverse-engineered from its own trade history. Privacy inverts this. Confidential execution paired with verifiable performance attestation is what makes an open strategy venue viable in the first place — strategy builders can compete on results without surrendering their edge, and depositors can allocate on proven track record without seeing inside the position. We are interested in protocols that treat strategy supply as a first-class design problem: where strategies come from, how their performance is attested, how they are onboarded and ranked, and how the protocol accrues fees. We expect tight integration with private execution venues and liquidity in the Horizen app cluster and on Base, a fee structure that supports a sustainable protocol business, and we have a strong preference for protocols that integrate ZEN into their tokenomics.

Guidepost metrics for in-market performance: cumulative execution volume routed by vaults; number of active strategies with external depositors; unique depositors; total value deposited; protocol fee revenue.

Horizen is seeking a lending market where collateral positions, borrow sizes, and health factors are confidential rather than public. Transparent money markets expose borrowers in ways that actively harm them: large positions are liquidation-hunted, leverage is visible to competitors and counterparties, and any borrower with a reputation to manage — funds, treasuries, high-net-worth individuals — is effectively priced out of onchain credit. A private borrow-lend protocol on Horizen should keep individual positions confidential while preserving the guarantees the market depends on: provable protocol solvency, reliable interest-rate mechanics, and a liquidation process that functions correctly without exposing borrowers. We expect integration with Horizen app cluster liquidity and Base, support for the collateral types that matter to this user base, and a rigorous answer to the hardest question in private lending — how undercollateralized positions get liquidated without revealing who is undercollateralized. We also prefer protocols that integrate ZEN into their tokenomics.

Guidepost metrics for in-market performance: total collateral deposited; total outstanding borrows; utilization rate; unique borrowers; liquidations executed without privacy leakage; interest revenue to the protocol.

Both projects are funded through Season 2 of the Horizen builder ecosystem fund as Category 1 core apps, at up to $150,000 each. Strong in-house privacy engineering capability is a selection criterion. Funding is tranched against a technical milestone rooted in your core privacy capability, a completed security audit, and demonstrated mainnet usage.