Here is everything you need to know: what passed, what the staking program actually is, and what happens from here.

ZenIP 42408 was put to the Horizen DAO, and the community delivered a clear mandate: a direct expression of confidence from ZEN holders that this is the right direction for the ecosystem at this moment.

This vote authorized:

• A Year 1 allocation of 50,000 $ZEN from the DAO ecosystem budget, time-bounded to 12 months.

• An indicative four-year staking vision (~215,000 $ZEN total), with each subsequent year subject to renewed DAO approval; the community stays in control.

• The foundational framework for direct $ZEN staking on the Horizen chain, grounded in the alignment-first principles outlined in the proposal.

It is worth being direct about what this vote also means structurally: every year of staking funding beyond Year 1 requires the DAO to explicitly re-authorize it. No autopilot. No open-ended token printing. The community evaluates, and the community decides.

The new Horizen staking program is an alignment-first mechanism designed to bootstrap a committed base of long-term $ZEN holders on the Horizen chain. Phase 1 is intentionally simple and values-driven:

• Direct $ZEN staking on the Horizen chain, with optional duration-weighted rewards. This means the longer you stake, the more weight your position carries.

• Modest base $ZEN rewards funded from the authorized DAO ecosystem budget, kept capped and time-bounded.

• Supplementary reward streams: up to 50% of net earnings from DAO-managed liquidity provisioning activities, and 50% of the Horizen Foundation's $VFY earnings from zkVerify validator operations, routed directly to stakers as additive rewards.

• No liquid staking tokens in Phase 1. No restaking. No cross-chain composability. Deliberate simplicity to reduce risk and complexity.

This is not a token distribution scheme. It is not a yield farm designed to attract capital that will exit the moment rewards dry up. We have all watched that movie play out across this industry: the inflated TVL numbers, the mercenary LPs, the post-program dump. That is not what we are building here.

The Horizen DAO has approved the program and the allocation; the specifics of implementation, including the technical provider for the staking infrastructure, will be handled through an approved vendor requirements process. This will be brought back to the community for transparency as it progresses.

Once the implementation framework is confirmed, Phase 1 staking will go live on the Horizen chain. $ZEN holders will be able to stake directly, with optional duration-based reward weighting. Ecosystem reward streams from DAO LP activity and zkVerify validator operations will be layered in as they come online.

$ZEN staking is designed to serve as the primary alignment rail for the most committed members of the Horizen ecosystem. As privacy dApps launch on Horizen through the Thrive grant program and beyond, staking will become a direct participation mechanism, giving builders a clear path to engage with and reward the community that supports them.

Phase 2 is already on the horizon. It will explore the linkage between staking and DAO governance participation, building on the alignment foundation that Phase 1 establishes to create a more credible governance model. That will be the subject of a future community proposal, in accordance with the annual DAO renewal framework.