Horizen 2023 Annual Review
2023 was an incredible year of growth for the Horizen ecosystem! Lots of milestones were reached including:
- The mainnet launch of Horizen’s first EVM-compatible sidechain, EON
- The launch of the Horizen DAO and pivot from Zen Blockchain Foundation (ZBF)
- Passing two major ZenIPs (42204 & 42206)
- Onboarding new partners and projects into the Horizen ecosystem
It’s an exciting time for the Horizen ecosystem and the team has hit the ground running in 2024! We will be sharing details on our 2024 proposed roadmap but before we get there, let’s dive into what happened in 2023!
2023 Highlights
Community Growth
Discord
In 2023, we reached over 20,000 members of our Horizen Discord, a growth of over 5,000 users throughout the year. With the launch of Horizen EON and various growth campaigns on platforms like Galxe and Layer3, we have had new community members learning about the Horizen ecosystem and exploring the new integrations. We look forward to seeing more of this growth in 2024.
Discourse
In 2023 we established the Horizen DAO Discourse forum, to facilitate active community discussions around the Horizen Ecosystem. In 2023, activity on this platform increased as the broader community discussed ZenIPs, shared tutorials, explored content created by the Horizen Ambassadors, and more!
We encourage the Horizen community to join Discourse and engage with the rest of the community on the platform!
2023 Highlights – Our Technology
In October of 2023, Horizen EON, our EVM-compatible sidechain went live on mainnet, marking a new milestone in the Horizen multi-chain ecosystem!
Since then, the Horizen EON ecosystem has continued to grow, with additional partnerships, integrations, and tools launching on the platform. There has also been a significant influx of TVL and developer activity on Horizen EON.
The full range of dapps and partner integrations can be found on the EON Ecosystem page – let’s dive into a few of the major announcements.
At the beginning of December 2023, we announced an integration with Interport Finance, which brought cross-chain trading capabilities to Horizen EON! This integration not only boosts the efficiency and security of cross-chain transactions but also signifies a step towards a broader vision of a cohesive digital finance ecosystem, where decentralized applications (dApps) can operate fluidly across diverse blockchains.
Archon Bridge launched on Horizen EON in Q4 of 2023, bringing a new bridging protocol to the ecosystem. This protocol facilitates the transfer of various cryptocurrencies including ETH, WBTC, WZEN, USDT, USDC, DAI, and LINK, between the Horizen EON network and the Ethereum and Avalanche networks.
Another innovation to enhance cross-chain communications on Horizen EON saw an integration with LayerZero go live, ensuring seamless and direct communication between various blockchains via arbitrary message bridging. This integration offers enhanced interoperability, allowing data, assets, and information to be transferred across blockchains without compromising on efficiency or security. Beyond just messaging, this integration signifies a broader vision of creating a unified digital asset ecosystem, where decentralized applications (dApps) can operate seamlessly across multiple blockchains.
Another exciting announcement for Horizen EON came in November 2023, when we announced an integration with SpookySwap! This helped bolster DeFi innovation, bringing a DEX multichain integration and yield farming to EON. USDC is tradable against ZEN and wZEN, with additional pairs being enabled once sufficient liquidity develops.
The DeFi ecosystem on Horizen EON was boosted with the integration of Ascent Exchange, supported by the automated liquidity management protocol, ICHI Vault, enabling simple yield opportunities for EON users. This integration allows for more seamless and secure trading experiences, facilitating asset and information transfer across the blockchain network. Ascent Exchange is the first decentralized exchange with ve(3,3) tokenomics on Horizen EON, marking a major milestone!
2023 marked the 1st native stablecoin to be launched on Horizen EON, ZUSD, which was made possible by our partnership with Stably! The collateral for ZUSD is held in liquid USD-denominated assets by a designated trustee for the benefit of verified ZUSD token holders. This ensures that each ZUSD token can be minted or redeemed at a 1-to-1 rate with USD or USDC by users who passed Stably’s KYC verification process.
Our last major partnership announcement of 2023 welcomed Yuzu Finance onto Horizen EON! This integration unlocked yield opportunities for the Horizen Ecosystem, including borrowing, lending, and yield farming (soon)! Yuzu is a non-custodial decentralized liquidity market protocol that enables users to deposit or borrow crypto assets securely. Depositors provide liquidity on Yuzu, while borrowers can take out overcollateralized or undercollateralized loans.
Horizen EON TVL & Metrics
As of December 31st, 2023, Horizen EON had $3.08M in TVL (as tracked by DefiLlama), highlighting impressive ecosystem growth within the first few months of mainnet launch.
Since the mainnet launch of Horizen EON in October 2023, there have been over 900,000 total transactions across over 18,000 wallet addresses. There have also been 950+ contracts in total since Horizen EON went live on mainnet.
Launch of the Horizen DAO
In 2023 the Horizen ecosystem reached a key milestone in decentralized governance by launching the Horizen DAO! The launch of the Horizen DAO makes it easier for Horizen community members to get involved in governance and make their voices heard in the direction of the project.
The Horizen DAO further decentralizes decision-making for technical, non-technical, and other substantive improvements to the system. $ZEN holders are the ultimate decision-makers for the future of Horizen and exercise governance over the network’s evolution through participating in the Horizen DAO. All $ZEN holders can vote on improvement proposals, and those who hold (or who have been delegated) the requisite amount of $ZEN may put forth proposals to the community. To facilitate effective community governance, users will also be able to delegate voting power to individuals they view as effective stewards of the Horizen ecosystem guiding values.
Learn more about this in our blog post, as well as joining the Horizen DAO Discourse!
ZenIPs (42204 & 42206)
Building off of the launch of the Horizen DAO, 2023 saw two very important ZEN Improvement Proposals (ZenIPs) pass with overwhelming community support.
- ZenIP 42204 – Deprecation of Shielded Pools
- ZenIP 42206 – Redirect Horizen Secure Node Rewards into Horizen EON
Let’s take a closer look at both.
ZenIP 42204
This ZEN Improvement Proposal proposed the removal of shielded transactions with transparent inputs from the Horizen mainchain, preventing shielded transaction (t addresses to z addresses) support at the consensus level. The goal of ZenIP 42204 was to ensure Horizen does privacy technology the right and sustainable way to drive ecosystem growth and minimize risk. Regulatory threats are top of mind, they are not friendly towards privacy coins and that drove a lot of the ambition to propose ZenIP 42204, which passed with overwhelming community support. Additional information can be found here.
ZenIP 42206
In August of 2023, ZenIP 42206 was proposed, to redirect the portion of the Horizen mainchain block reward currently paid to Secure Nodes to an EON Forger Subsidy Fund. This will help drive the success of the Horizen EON network by increasing the security and decentralization of the network. There is a strong need for forger nodes in EON to help enhance the security of the network, and for decentralization, which the current secure node reward can be put to better use by redirecting. Learn more here.
Horizen Node Network
Horizen Ambassador Program
Throughout 2023, we were very proud to see all of the work accomplished by our amazing Horizen Ambassadors. Here are some highlights we wanted to showcase:
- 2 new languages added: Turkish and Hindi
- More than 30 articles translated into Turkish
- More than 30 articles written across the ambassadors
- 5 global events attended
- Successful HallowEON community-led party
- The launch of the $LOVE faucet on Horizen EON testnets and mainnet
- An immeasurable number of tweets, threads, hours spent helping the community, and shared love!
We are beyond excited to welcome new ambassadors in 2024 and see what they accomplish for the Horizen Ecosystem!
Events
Throughout 2023, the Horizen ecosystem and Horizen Labs team were able to attend lots of global events, educating folks about our ecosystem, forging new connections, and exploring innovations in the web3 space.
From ETHDenver to Consensus, Token2049 in Singapore to Future Blockchain Summit in Dubai, we were able to accomplish a lot with events in 2023 and looking forward to the same in 2024!
Let’s look back at some of these incredible events with some photo recaps.
Horizen Media Highlights
The Horizen Ecosystem was featured in a multitude of news articles and media coverage throughout 2023, we wanted to share a few highlights.
- Bitcoin.com: Sidechains Can Provide Scalability and Flexibility Needed for Real-World Applications’ – Horizen Labs CEO
- Crypto.News: Horizen Partners with Auros to Enhance Liquidity for EON
- Blockchain Reporter: Ankr Becomes a Pioneer RPC Provider for Horizen’s EON, an EVM-Compatible Smart Contracting Platform
- AP News: Horizen Launches Horizen EON Mainnet: Marks New Milestone in Horizen’s Next-gen Multi-chain Ecosystem
- Nasdaq: Horizen Labs and Stably Launching ZUSD Stablecoin on the Horizen EON Network
- Hackernoon: The DAO Effect: A Paradigm Shift in Blockchain Decision Making
- Benzinga: SpookySwap Goes Multichain with Horizen EON to Bolster DeFi Innovation
- CoinDesk: Horizen Scraps Privacy Coin Moniker Amid Regulatory Scrutiny
What to Look Forward to in 2024
We wanted to end this report with a message from Spencer Soloway, the VP of Ecosystem Growth and Marketing for Horizen Labs, looking back to 2023, while also looking forward to an exciting 2024!
“2023 was about building the underlying infrastructure and plans for the days and years. We launched EON, our EVM-compatible sidechain, which significantly helped Horizen’s journey into the contemporary Web3 world. That’s especially important because it allows Horizen Labs to leverage its relationships and bring more companies, developers, and brands directly into the Horizen ecosystem. We’ve been hard at work bringing best-in-class partners to EON, from oracles like Pyth and Band to DeFi protocols like Spooky, Yuzu, and Ascent to RPC providers such as Ankr and Tatum. We’ve built a strong relationship with LayerZero as well, which will lead to many exciting things happening within the ecosystem.
Meanwhile, the mainchain saw the introduction of forward and backward transfers, a technological feat that sometimes gets overlooked but is significant. How many UTXO-based tokens can be used on EVM chains? Beyond Bitcoin and ZEN, not many! We also saw the start of the deprecation of shielded pools and ZEN’s move away from being a privacy token.
Now, as we enter 2024 we’re gearing up for what should be the most exciting year in Horizen’s history. In the coming weeks and months, we’ll announce a slew of new partners, initiatives, and focus areas relating to the Horizen Ecosystem through a significant expansion and push on DeFi to RWA programs. We’re also working hard on expanding access to ZEN and directly to the EON ecosystem, along with making sure that EON can host a sustainable, consistently growing ecosystem as it moves forward.
And the vision of a New Horizen is on the docket too. I can’t wait to talk to you all about it and the modular future that Horizen and Horizen Labs will push forward together.”
