Horizen Monthly Update – September 4th, 2019

At Horizen, we believe in transparency and value community involvement. Horizen broadcasts a monthly live stream on Youtube to keep the community update to date on project progression. As part of the live stream, the team also holds a short live Q&A session.

August Updates: 

August was a busy month for our project. We recently asked our community what type of content they would like to see more of, and a large percent of our community said they wanted to see more technical content. So, with Horizen Sidechains getting close to alpha, we are working hard to kick the hype into full gear on all fronts, while including more tech-focused news! This month we added new integrations, more tech-focused blogs, and video documentation of sidechain progress. Our community has seen a great amount of growth and activity in response! 

Core Development:

• Improved GitHub issues management workflow to increase efficiency and improve response time. 
• The team sent ZEN to the first Horizen Sidechain and tested the synchronization between the first two sidechain nodes. Which means we are getting close to the release of our Sidechains Alpha! 
• Completed extensive analysis of the denial of service issue in upstream Sapling and created a possible solution to this issue. More info will be available soon.  
• Released Sphere by Horizen 1.2.1b. The release included features like batch withdraw/split, private key balance sweeping, and view backup seed phrase in wallet settings. 
• Worked on the upcoming release of Sphere by Horizen mobile. 

Business Development: 

• ZEN is now supported on Accointing, a portfolio and tax management service
• Expanded support of Horizen on Magnum Wallet. Users will now be able to utilize full ledger integration. 
• ZEN integrated with Xpay.cash a Latin American POS system that allows merchants to easily accept ZEN and other cryptocurrencies. 

Marketing: 

• Horizen is now on Instagram! The new account is more personal and focused on our team and the community, and gives us a fun new way to share what is going on inside the team’s day to day lives while still communicating important information. 
• We are also on Medium too! The new format allows us to get more visibility on our posts and helps us spread the information available on the Horizen Academy. 
• The Horizen social media accounts have seen steady, consistent growth across the board with Twitter and LinkedIn have the largest increase. 

Regional Updates: 

China: 

• Guan Yin recently attended the Smart China Expo, where he educated people about Horizen and the importance of privacy!
• The Horizen China team is also working on the release of multiple Chinese Horizen websites including Horizen Academy, Horizen Wiki, and a Horizen node tracker. 

LatAm:

• Angie and the team co-hosted a Horizen meetup with Binance. It was a huge success with over 60 attendees from the local community. 
• Rob Viglione visited Monterrey, Mexico and gave a lecture at the local university Tec De Monterrey, which started a new partnership between Horizen and the university!

Eastern Europe:

• The Horizen Eastern Europe team attended the Startup Grind Connect International Launch Party! The event focused on startup companies and allowed attendees to meet and connect with other people who work in cryptocurrency, blockchain, and other startups. 
• The team did an interview with CryptoDealers on YouTube which will be released soon!

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