
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 explicit design goal of $ZEN staking is to identify and reward the community members who are genuinely committed to Horizen's long-term vision: the leading privacy execution layer on Base, a home for compliant, confidential dApps that the world actually needs. Staking is how those people signal their alignment, and how the ecosystem rewards it.

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.
Subscribe to Horizen Blog and follow Horizen on X for future updates on $ZEN staking

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 explicit design goal of $ZEN staking is to identify and reward the community members who are genuinely committed to Horizen's long-term vision: the leading privacy execution layer on Base, a home for compliant, confidential dApps that the world actually needs. Staking is how those people signal their alignment, and how the ecosystem rewards it.

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.
Subscribe to Horizen Blog and follow Horizen on X for future updates on $ZEN staking

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Build Smarter dApps with Real-Time Data on Horizen

Welcome to Privacy on Base
A new chapter for onchain privacy begins today. Horizen has officially launched its mainnet on Base, bringing a practical and compliance-friendly path to private onchain activity - one that fits seamlessly into the Ethereum environment millions already use. This launch completes our transition from an isolated proof-of-work chain to a fully EVM-native chain that settles to Ethereum. For everyday users, this shift means faster transactions, lower fees, and access to tools and apps that feel fa...

ZenIP 42409: ZenIP 42407 Addendum, Horizen 2.0 Tokenomics Proposal
There is a new ZenIP Proposal that recently passed, ZenIP 42409, which is an Addendum to ZenIP 42407: Horizen Tokenomics Proposal. The timeline for the vote on ZenIP 42409 was that voting opened on Monday, April 21st, 2025, at 12pm EST, and closed on Thursday, April 24th, 2025, at 12pm EST. With a quorum of 142% and 99.39% (1.1M $ZEN) of the votes FOR, the proposal passed! The full results of the vote can be found on Snapshot here. Let’s review this ZenIP proposal below, and we’ll also remind...
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