The Horizen Q2 Review

In Q2, we focused on preparing Zendoo for our upcoming mainnet release and began growing our team in anticipation of the launch. We also celebrated our 4th anniversary as a project!

Highlights

This quarter the team maximized their efficiency and efforts to ensure a successful Zendoo mainnet launch.

Engineering

The Horizen Engineering team put some final touches on the Zendoo and Zendoo SDK code this quarter. The code is currently undergoing testing by two different code auditing teams to ensure our code is ready for launch. 

Some interesting numbers from the Horizen Github Organization:

• +1,060 files changed inside our repositories 
• +65,400 lines of code added
• +31,400 lines of code deleted

You can check out our roadmap for more deliverables planned this year.

During Q2, our team also wrote a new whitepaper about “The Latus Incentive Scheme for SNARK-Based Sidechains”. This paper details the reward scheme of the Latus-enabled sidechain first introduced in the Zendoo whitepaper – A zk-SNARK Verifiable Crosschain Transfer Protocol Enabling Decoupled and Decentralized Sidechain. This reward scheme is an essential element for a fully decentralized system and allows the creation of a balanced mechanism of reward distribution. 

Business Development

Our BD team announced several new partnerships in Q2 for both Horizen and stZEN! These partnerships include APIS nodes, LBank, Transak, and more for ZEN. stZEN also had partnerships with MetaMask, SushiSwap, Blockfolio Signal, Gitcoin.co, and more! These partnerships help increase the availability and usability of both ZEN and stZEN. Check out the achievements below to see a full list of integrations and listings. 

The team also worked on setting up some major Zendoo partnerships for Q3. So, be sure to keep an eye out for exciting new announcements.

Marketing and Community Growth

During Q2, our community grew exponentially with the excitement of our upcoming mainnet launch and interest in our new ambassador program. The biggest social media growth we saw this quarter was from our Twitter with a 21%+ follower increase. We are excited to welcome everyone to the community! 

The new Horizen Zenvangelist program is a “design your own ” style ambassador program where potential ambassadors, called Zenvangelists, can determine the best fit for them. The program is built to enable anybody to grow with our project and contribute to our ecosystem using their own special skills while earning incentives. Since the release of the program, we have welcomed 20 ambassadors and received 466 applications!

As part of the Horizen Zenvangelist program, we have added new ways to incentivize ambassadors and community members. Community members can take part in daily tasks, which offers opportunities for everyone in the community to complete a task each day to earn small amounts of ZEN. You can participate in these daily activities by joining our Discord channel. Our official Zenvangelists can also participate in special tasks on the HDE that are non-technical. These include translations, content creation, and more. So, be sure to check them out and apply for the ambassador program if you are interested in picking up one of these special tasks. 

Zennodes

In Q2 the Horizen node ecosystem grew by 6.05% for secure nodes and 2.48% for super nodes. 

Check out the full list of accomplishments below 

Q2 Accomplishments

• 5 new team members
• 9 events
• 17  integrations and exchange listings
• 25,286 wallet downloads

Technology

• Latus incentive scheme for SNARK-based sidechains whitepaper 
• Single address staking for secure nodes

New Team Members

• Zain Cheng – Products
• Manon Boudoux – Marketing 
• Marko Orčić – Marketing 
• John Camardo – Products
• Paolo Galli – Engineering

Exchange Listings and Integrations