Every day, millions of dollars are silently extracted from DeFi traders. Not through hacks or exploits, but through something far more insidious: the public mempool. MEV bots, front-runners, and sandwich attacks have turned transparency into a tax on every trade. But what if there was a way to trade in silence?

The Horizen x Thrive Builder Funding Program is now in full swing. With 16 approved projects in the pipeline and more under evaluation, we're launching a Project Showcase to give the community a closer look at what's being built on Horizen's privacy-first infrastructure.

For our first showcase, we're featuring one of the most anticipated projects: ZENDEX, a privacy-preserving decentralized exchange that's turning heads with its ambitious mission to become the "Private Liquidity Hub" for the entire Ethereum ecosystem.

To better understand their vision and what they are building, we sat down with the ZENDEX team.

1) In simple terms, what is ZENDEX, why does it exist, and what specific problems in decentralized trading are you trying to solve?

ZENDEX is a high performance trade execution layer built on a Horizen Chain. ZENDEX exists to remove the "Transparency Tax" that extracts millions of dollars from traders everyday in order to benefit MEV bots, front-running schema, and increases slippage costs. ZENDEX ensures that Horizen enabled shielded execution environments disarms public predators from benefiting from intent leakages while delivering measurable value added trading enhancements through privacy technologies.

2) ZENDEX positions itself as a privacy-first decentralized exchange. For a user making their first trade today, what is the most noticeable difference compared to trading on a typical public DEX?

The most noticeable difference is the "Silence." On a typical DEX, you confirm a trade and watch it sit in a public mempool where bots can attack it; on ZENDEX, your order is matched privately on the Horizen Blockchain. With ZENDEX, you get CEX-like execution speed and "Invisible" limit orders, meaning the market doesn't move against you the moment you place a large trade.

3) What message would you like to share directly with the Horizen community, including builders, validators, and supporters, about ZENDEX's mission and progress so far?

Our mission is to turn Horizen into the "Private Liquidity Hub" for the entire Ethereum ecosystem. We've successfully moved from a hackathon concept to an execution powerhouse by turning every trade into a ZEN enhancing event. We are proving that Horizen's zero-knowledge tech isn't just for "hiding" data, it is primed for building the most efficient and fair financial markets in the world.

4) Many exchanges are fully public and transparent by default. How is ZENDEX able to implement hidden order books and shielded trades from a technical standpoint, and what impact do these features have on user experience and market integrity?

Technically, we utilize Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKP) and Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) on Horizen Chain. This allows the exchange to "verify" that a match is valid without "revealing" the details of the orders to the public blockchain until after settlement. This creates a "Dark Pool" effect that protects market integrity by preventing predatory front-running and allowing institutional-sized trades to execute without causing massive price volatility.

This is a critical distinction. Traditional DeFi's radical transparency was initially seen as a feature, but it's increasingly clear that full visibility creates attack vectors that sophisticated actors exploit at retail's expense.

5) Comparing ZENDEX to other decentralized exchanges, both the typical AMM platforms and the newer privacy focused exchanges, where does ZENDEX stand out in terms of performance, privacy, and real world usability?

ZENDEX stands out because it doesn't force a trade-off. Typical AMMs are usable but public; most "privacy DEXs" are private but slow or suffer from low liquidity. ZENDEX uses a Hybrid HCLOB/AMM engine that offers the performance of a CEX, the privacy of a ZK-chain, and the ability to route to external liquidity (like Aerodrome) to ensure you always get the best price.

6) What has been the most significant technical or conceptual challenge you've faced so far while building ZENDEX, and how did you and your team overcome it?

The biggest challenge was the "ZEN Converter", mechanically converting multi-asset fees into a single deflationary sink for ZEN without causing high slippage. We overcame this by building a specialized ZEN engine that strategically converts protocol fees, ensuring that our tokenomics constantly strengthens ZEN.

Worth noting: this design creates direct alignment between ZENDEX usage and ZEN value accrual. Every trade contributes to deflationary pressure on the token.

7) Who are the people behind ZENDEX, and what are your team members' backgrounds? How did you all come together to build a privacy centric exchange on Horizen?

ZENDEX was born by a hackathon tested builders guild of ZK enthusiasts and programmers. We were able to solidify a number of our ideas thanks to the Horizen x Thrive program, evolving our current vision for a full-scale institutional grade execution layer driven by the belief that the "Mempool is a bug, not a feature."

8) In traditional finance and centralized exchanges (CEXs), order books and even private or hidden trades are common. What insights or surprises have you discovered about bringing similar privacy features into a decentralized exchange while building ZENDEX?

The biggest surprise was realizing that "Privacy" actually makes the market more efficient. In TradFi, dark pools are seen as exclusive; in DeFi, we believe that when we hide retail trades, we will attract more liquidity because so many interested parties prefer quoting tighter spreads knowing that they will not be picked off by arbitrage bots.

This inverts the common narrative. Privacy isn't a concession, it's a liquidity magnet.

9) What are the biggest misconceptions about privacy in DeFi, and how does ZENDEX address them, especially for traders who might be hesitant about trading privately?

The biggest misconception is that privacy is for "bad actors." In reality, privacy is for confidentiality. Professional traders need it to protect their strategies, and retail needs it to avoid being taxed by bots.

10) Where does ZENDEX stand today in terms of product readiness and public availability, and what is the next major milestone or launch phase you're targeting?

We are currently in the Milestone One (Fortress) phase, with our internal shielded HCLOB (Hidden Central Limit Order Book) and AMM live on the Horizen L3. Our next major milestone is Milestone Two (The Orchestrator), which will introduce the External Router. This will allow ZENDEX to pull liquidity from across the Base then EVM ecosystem while still keeping the user's identity and intent shielded.

11) Looking 12 months ahead, what specific indicators would tell you that ZENDEX is on the right track, in terms of users, liquidity, ecosystem integrations, or actual trading behavior?

Our key indicator is the ZEN Burn Rate. If we see a consistent increase in the amount of ZEN being burned by the protocol, it means we are successfully capturing "Flow." Additionally, we look at "Execution Delta", the percentage of trades filled better on ZENDEX than they would have been on a public AMM.

12) Why did you choose to build ZENDEX within the Horizen ecosystem, was the support of the Horizen x Thrive program a factor in that decision, and how have Horizen's privacy features and appchain technology enabled or accelerated your development?

We chose Horizen because it's the only ecosystem that treats privacy as a first-class citizen. The Horizen x Thrive program was the catalyst that allowed us to scale, but the real "secret sauce" is Horizen architecture. It allowed us to build privately and settle efficiently on BASE.

13) If privacy-preserving trading becomes mainstream and ZENDEX plays a meaningful role in that shift, how do you think trader behavior and market dynamics will change compared to today?

Trading will shift from "Bot-Avoiding" to "Strategy-First." Today, traders spend half their energy worrying about how their order will be exploited. In a ZENDEX led future, traders will focus entirely on their price targets. Market volatility will decrease because large orders will no longer trigger "Cascade Liquidation" bots that react to public mempool signals.

Follow ZENDEX

🌐: https://www.zendex.fi/

𝕏: @zendexfi

Stay tuned for the next Project Showcase as we continue to highlight the teams building on Horizen through the Thrive Builder Funding Program.

Every day, millions of dollars are silently extracted from DeFi traders. Not through hacks or exploits, but through something far more insidious: the public mempool. MEV bots, front-runners, and sandwich attacks have turned transparency into a tax on every trade. But what if there was a way to trade in silence?

The Horizen x Thrive Builder Funding Program is now in full swing. With 16 approved projects in the pipeline and more under evaluation, we're launching a Project Showcase to give the community a closer look at what's being built on Horizen's privacy-first infrastructure.

For our first showcase, we're featuring one of the most anticipated projects: ZENDEX, a privacy-preserving decentralized exchange that's turning heads with its ambitious mission to become the "Private Liquidity Hub" for the entire Ethereum ecosystem.

To better understand their vision and what they are building, we sat down with the ZENDEX team.

1) In simple terms, what is ZENDEX, why does it exist, and what specific problems in decentralized trading are you trying to solve?

ZENDEX is a high performance trade execution layer built on a Horizen Chain. ZENDEX exists to remove the "Transparency Tax" that extracts millions of dollars from traders everyday in order to benefit MEV bots, front-running schema, and increases slippage costs. ZENDEX ensures that Horizen enabled shielded execution environments disarms public predators from benefiting from intent leakages while delivering measurable value added trading enhancements through privacy technologies.

2) ZENDEX positions itself as a privacy-first decentralized exchange. For a user making their first trade today, what is the most noticeable difference compared to trading on a typical public DEX?

The most noticeable difference is the "Silence." On a typical DEX, you confirm a trade and watch it sit in a public mempool where bots can attack it; on ZENDEX, your order is matched privately on the Horizen Blockchain. With ZENDEX, you get CEX-like execution speed and "Invisible" limit orders, meaning the market doesn't move against you the moment you place a large trade.

3) What message would you like to share directly with the Horizen community, including builders, validators, and supporters, about ZENDEX's mission and progress so far?

Our mission is to turn Horizen into the "Private Liquidity Hub" for the entire Ethereum ecosystem. We've successfully moved from a hackathon concept to an execution powerhouse by turning every trade into a ZEN enhancing event. We are proving that Horizen's zero-knowledge tech isn't just for "hiding" data, it is primed for building the most efficient and fair financial markets in the world.

4) Many exchanges are fully public and transparent by default. How is ZENDEX able to implement hidden order books and shielded trades from a technical standpoint, and what impact do these features have on user experience and market integrity?

Technically, we utilize Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKP) and Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) on Horizen Chain. This allows the exchange to "verify" that a match is valid without "revealing" the details of the orders to the public blockchain until after settlement. This creates a "Dark Pool" effect that protects market integrity by preventing predatory front-running and allowing institutional-sized trades to execute without causing massive price volatility.

This is a critical distinction. Traditional DeFi's radical transparency was initially seen as a feature, but it's increasingly clear that full visibility creates attack vectors that sophisticated actors exploit at retail's expense.

5) Comparing ZENDEX to other decentralized exchanges, both the typical AMM platforms and the newer privacy focused exchanges, where does ZENDEX stand out in terms of performance, privacy, and real world usability?

ZENDEX stands out because it doesn't force a trade-off. Typical AMMs are usable but public; most "privacy DEXs" are private but slow or suffer from low liquidity. ZENDEX uses a Hybrid HCLOB/AMM engine that offers the performance of a CEX, the privacy of a ZK-chain, and the ability to route to external liquidity (like Aerodrome) to ensure you always get the best price.

6) What has been the most significant technical or conceptual challenge you've faced so far while building ZENDEX, and how did you and your team overcome it?

The biggest challenge was the "ZEN Converter", mechanically converting multi-asset fees into a single deflationary sink for ZEN without causing high slippage. We overcame this by building a specialized ZEN engine that strategically converts protocol fees, ensuring that our tokenomics constantly strengthens ZEN.

Worth noting: this design creates direct alignment between ZENDEX usage and ZEN value accrual. Every trade contributes to deflationary pressure on the token.

7) Who are the people behind ZENDEX, and what are your team members' backgrounds? How did you all come together to build a privacy centric exchange on Horizen?

ZENDEX was born by a hackathon tested builders guild of ZK enthusiasts and programmers. We were able to solidify a number of our ideas thanks to the Horizen x Thrive program, evolving our current vision for a full-scale institutional grade execution layer driven by the belief that the "Mempool is a bug, not a feature."

8) In traditional finance and centralized exchanges (CEXs), order books and even private or hidden trades are common. What insights or surprises have you discovered about bringing similar privacy features into a decentralized exchange while building ZENDEX?

The biggest surprise was realizing that "Privacy" actually makes the market more efficient. In TradFi, dark pools are seen as exclusive; in DeFi, we believe that when we hide retail trades, we will attract more liquidity because so many interested parties prefer quoting tighter spreads knowing that they will not be picked off by arbitrage bots.

This inverts the common narrative. Privacy isn't a concession, it's a liquidity magnet.

9) What are the biggest misconceptions about privacy in DeFi, and how does ZENDEX address them, especially for traders who might be hesitant about trading privately?

The biggest misconception is that privacy is for "bad actors." In reality, privacy is for confidentiality. Professional traders need it to protect their strategies, and retail needs it to avoid being taxed by bots.

10) Where does ZENDEX stand today in terms of product readiness and public availability, and what is the next major milestone or launch phase you're targeting?

We are currently in the Milestone One (Fortress) phase, with our internal shielded HCLOB (Hidden Central Limit Order Book) and AMM live on the Horizen L3. Our next major milestone is Milestone Two (The Orchestrator), which will introduce the External Router. This will allow ZENDEX to pull liquidity from across the Base then EVM ecosystem while still keeping the user's identity and intent shielded.

11) Looking 12 months ahead, what specific indicators would tell you that ZENDEX is on the right track, in terms of users, liquidity, ecosystem integrations, or actual trading behavior?

Our key indicator is the ZEN Burn Rate. If we see a consistent increase in the amount of ZEN being burned by the protocol, it means we are successfully capturing "Flow." Additionally, we look at "Execution Delta", the percentage of trades filled better on ZENDEX than they would have been on a public AMM.

12) Why did you choose to build ZENDEX within the Horizen ecosystem, was the support of the Horizen x Thrive program a factor in that decision, and how have Horizen's privacy features and appchain technology enabled or accelerated your development?

We chose Horizen because it's the only ecosystem that treats privacy as a first-class citizen. The Horizen x Thrive program was the catalyst that allowed us to scale, but the real "secret sauce" is Horizen architecture. It allowed us to build privately and settle efficiently on BASE.

13) If privacy-preserving trading becomes mainstream and ZENDEX plays a meaningful role in that shift, how do you think trader behavior and market dynamics will change compared to today?

Trading will shift from "Bot-Avoiding" to "Strategy-First." Today, traders spend half their energy worrying about how their order will be exploited. In a ZENDEX led future, traders will focus entirely on their price targets. Market volatility will decrease because large orders will no longer trigger "Cascade Liquidation" bots that react to public mempool signals.

Follow ZENDEX

🌐: https://www.zendex.fi/

𝕏: @zendexfi

Stay tuned for the next Project Showcase as we continue to highlight the teams building on Horizen through the Thrive Builder Funding Program.