In the second half of 2020, the encryption market ushered in a long bull. Since institutions headed by Grayscale have played a key role in promoting this round of market, the market also calls this round of bull market "Grayscale Bull" and "Institutional Bull". Many investors began to study the positions held by various institutions to spy on the wealth code.

After researching Grayscale’s holdings, Odaily found that Grayscale Fund currently holds 13 cryptocurrencies, involving privacy, distributed storage, oracles, NFT and other subdivided tracks, and the selected projects are all faucet. What is more special is that Grayscale chose a niche project that is not well-known to Chinese users in the privacy track: Horizen (ZEN).

"Horizen goes beyond the simple use cases of P2P cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Zcash, and unleashes the power of privacy technology in an interconnected distributed application network." In the research report, Grayscale officials said.

Judging from the data, Grayscale's vision is indeed unique. Over the past 12 months, Grayscale Horizen Trust has yielded 2,381%. Ranked first among 13 trusts, far surpassing the second-ranked Ethereum Trust (1519%). In the past three months, Grayscale has also continued to increase its position in Horizen (ZEN), with an increase of more than 30%.

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(1) Horizen (ZEN): "Son of Grayscale", "DCG Favorite"

Back in August 2018,When ZEN's market capitalization ranking in the cryptocurrency market was still outside the 150th place,Grayscale Fund released a research report on Horizen and launched Horizen (ZEN) trust.

"Horizen goes beyond the simple use case of P2P cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Zcash, unleashing the power of privacy technology in a network of interconnected distributed applications. Combining a unique technical architecture, innovative infrastructure, incentives and Bitcoin-like Monetary economics, Horizen can create real-world blockchain applications with optional privacy." Grayscale official said in the research report.

Judging from the data, Grayscale's vision is indeed unique.Over the past 12 months, Grayscale Horizen Trust has yielded 2,381%. Ranked first among 13 trusts, far surpassing the second-ranked Ethereum Trust (1519%).In the past three months, Grayscale has also continued to increase its position in Horizen (ZEN), with an increase of more than 30%.

The support of institutions has also made Horizen (ZEN) perform rapidly in the secondary market. According to Tokenview data, since April 1, the transaction volume of Horizen has soared from 3.44 million ZEN to a maximum of 44.87 million ZEN, an increase of 12 times, and the currency price has risen from US$50.7 to US$165, a maximum increase of 225%.

In the future, Horizen Trust is expected to become a compliant trust approved by the SEC like Bitcoin Trust and Ethereum Trust, providing investors with the opportunity to obtain risk exposure through traditional investment tools. At that time, it is bound to further increase the attention of investors, and more institutional investors will consider investing in Horizen Trust.

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In January of this year, Grayscale founder Barry Silbert issued a post saying that 2021 will be a year of privacy protection, decentralization and resistance to censorship, and the privacy track will usher in a big explosion.

In January of this year, Grayscale founder Barry Silbert issued a post saying that 2021 will be a year of privacy protection, decentralization and resistance to censorship, and the privacy track will usher in a big explosion.

Looking at the current market development, privacy solutions mainly include the following:One is zero-knowledge proof, the representative project is Horizen;The second is the fund pool mixing currency, representing the project Tornado.Cash; the third is the currency mixing machine, representing the project DASH; the fourth is the ring signature, representing the project XMR; the fifth is MimbleWimble, representing the projects Grin and Beam. Among the above five schemes, zero-knowledge proof is currently the most widely used in privacy projects and is widely accepted. The founder of Ethereum, V God, has also published many times expressing his optimism about the development of zero-knowledge proof.

However, there are many problems with current privacy solutions. Projects such as XMR and Grin are just "anonymous coins", which only stay at the stage of anonymizing transaction data (transfer amount, quantity), and cannot provide on-chain privacy protection solutions for complex application scenarios of traditional enterprises.

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(3) Horizen is committed to becoming a Web3.0 privacy platform

Horizen was born in May 2017 and was originally named "ZenCash". The core team put forward the slogan "Bringing privacy to life" (bringing privacy into life), focusing on solving the problem of Internet privacy data ownership. After only half a year of development, as of the beginning of 2018, the number of ZenCash network nodes exceeded the sum of Bitcoin + Ethereum. At that time, ZenCash's main privacy application projects were as follows:

• ZenChat: Covert and encrypted communication network. ZenChat allows secure and private messaging.

• ZenPub: Anonymous media publishing platform. ZenPub may allow individuals to freely publish data or information.

• ZenGrid: computing power rental, distributed data hosting and processing services.

• InstaZen: Zero Delay Payment Network.

• ZenHide: "Domain Fronting" that hides Internet connection endpoints and prevents middlemen from distinguishing what they deem acceptable from unacceptable web traffic.

• ZenXchange: ZenXchange removes the regulatory and counterparty risk that comes with centralized exchanges.

• ZenUSD: A fully collateralized USD-pegged digital asset. ZenUSD can provide a stable risk transfer mechanism for Horizen users who may not want to hold volatile ZEN.

In August 2018, ZenCash officially changed its name to Horizen, and at the same time fully upgraded to a Web3.0 privacy platform. On October 10, 2019, Horizen released an updated version of the white paper for the protocol, bringing privacy protection together with the underlying blockchain platform (decentralized application).

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(4) Technical analysis: the division of labor between the main chain and the side chain is different

To put it simply, the Horizen main chain is a chain composed of POW + Zk-snark (zero-knowledge proof) + anti-51% attack + smart contract (for side chain access) + DAO + 42,000 node networks.

The purpose of the main chain is to provide a simple but secure P2P value transmission and storage layer; use the native token ZEN on the chain to serve the Horizen ecosystem, and also provide the necessary infrastructure to support side chain operations. All other functions and network infrastructure are left to the development of sidechains to optimize their performance, enhance their security and scalability for specific use cases.

In view of the fact that many readers know little about the Horizen mainnet token ZEN, here is a brief introduction.

The total amount of ZEN tokens is the same as Bitcoin, which is 21 million, which is halved every 4 years. On December 2 last year, ZEN ushered in the first halving. After the halving, the block reward changed from 12.5 to 6.25 Horizen (ZEN). In terms of token distribution, Horizen does not carry out private placement, public offering and pre-mining. All tokens come from block rewards.The specific allocation plan is as follows:

• 60% of the block rewards are given to miners: miners are used to maintain the main chain ledger, package transactions, and protect the security of the main network;

• 10% block rewards are given to security nodes: 38,000+ security nodes with zk-snark attributes are used to enhance the security of the main network, transaction privacy, and make the entire network more decentralized;

• 10% block rewards to super nodes: 3600+ super nodes, used to carry side chains and create enterprise-level applications;

• 20% of the block rewards are given to the reserve fund: used for technology research and development + incubation projects + marketing + business expansion + daily administrative expenses.

At present, ZEN has been launched on more than 60 global exchanges including Binance and OKEx, and more than 10 wallets; the number of currency-holding addresses exceeds 650,000, and the number of daily active addresses exceeds 10,000.

The Horizen main chain and side chain are completely independent, but the main chain and side chain can use the original cross-chain transfer protocol (CCTP) to carry out cross-chain transfer of ZEN coins to solve scalability.

Horizen sidechain, also known as Zendoo, has infinite scalability and can be designed infinitely.

The side chain is completely decentralized, with independent consensus mechanism, independent encryption algorithm, independent logic and data rules. Developers can also use the ZEN Sidechain Software Development Kit (SDK), a set of open standards and common components, so that developers can focus less on the complexity of the blockchain itself, so that they do not have to build blocks from scratch Chain, which can focus more on the logic and data of the application and the construction of the application.

And the sidechain Zendoo comes with a set of zero-knowledge encryption tools. This means developers can natively preserve data privacy for their applications, which is especially important for businesses in the healthcare and consumer data industries, where regulated data privacy is a must.

At present, Horizen's car on-chain project is developed based on the side chain Zendoo to realize Lambo car on-chain.In the Lambo Registry DApp, users can store vehicle identification information such as VIN, make, model, year of manufacture, color, etc. Users can prove vehicle ownership without revealing their identity and can buy and sell vehicles using ZEN. The specific usage process is as follows:

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(5) Detailed Explanation of Horizen Ecology

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(Part of Horizen’s ecosystem members)

In contrast to Horizen, thousands of merchants in more than 60 countries and regions around the world now accept ZEN as a payment method. For specific merchants, you can enter the official website to check:https://www.horizen.io/merchants/, and Horizen is also actively opening up online payment channels in various countries.

Note: Horizenlabs, an ecological member of Horizen, can develop 100+ specific and practical blockchain enterprise-level applications based on Horizen. According to the design of the white paper, developers and traditional enterprises can use side chains to create realistic use cases in the following areas: blockchain games, DeFi, on-chain voting, DID (decentralized identity), NFT, on-chain lottery, product anti-counterfeiting traceability, supply Chain finance SupplyChain, garbage recycling, Internet of Things, energy emission reduction, luxury goods + artwork deposit certificate, government bills, real estate on-chain, car on-chain, etc.

And the ZEN sidechain is a permissionless system, which is open to any development team and project party in the world. The development team and project party do not need to spend a lot of money to bid for slots (slots), and can create blocks on the Horizen sidechain at zero cost. chain application.

In addition, Horizen is introducing a number of policies to help developers: use 20% of the block reward as a reserve fund to incubate the ZEN sidechain ecology, and developers or entrepreneurs can submit proposals to the DAO system to obtain funding;Developer Bounty Platform, rewards can be obtained by doing tasks.

Horizen cooperates with the largest college student developer alliance (MLH) in the United States to train new blockchain developers to enter and develop; organize online + offline hackathon activities to promote the growth of ecological applications.

More importantly, the powerful capital behind Horizen will recommend their traditional companies to enter the ZEN sidechain.

And DCG and Grayscale, the gold masters of ZEN, have also introduced a large number of traditional enterprise cooperation for Horizen. With the improvement of the underlying blockchain technology, Horizen sidechain technology will be the first choice for these powerful traditional enterprises. Huge funds and users will continuously enter the Horizen ecosystem.

"Horizen itself attaches great importance to technology research and development, and focuses on cultivating new developers. As the underlying technology platform, we are open to everyone. But we hope that all ecological projects based on Horizen will benefit the real society and bring benefits to society. Projects that come to welfare.” Horizen official said.