Thanks a lot for actively participating in the Horizen AMA held on 13th December 2019 at the Game of Bitcoins Channel. We really appreciate all your support. This post is a recap of the entire session held with Horizen
We have with us
Rowan Stone (Business Development Director)
My name is Rowan Stone and I handle BD and Ops for Horizen as well as being the VP of Business Development for a commercial offshoot called Horizen Labs which is working to commercialise Horizen's tech stack.
I've been in this space since 2014 and have seen a lot of things change over the past ~6 years, it's been great to see organisations slowly mature while solving real world problems with the tech that we're all excited about. The future is bright!
Q1. What is Horizen's innovative anti 51% attack method? Which of the blockchains implemented your solution already?
We recognised that the original consensus mechanism designed by Satoshi Nakamoto was no longer effective in preventing double spend attacks now that we're in an environment where huge volumes of hashpower can be rented for minimal costs so we implemented a block delay penalty.
The original consensus meant that whoever had the longest chain was automatically deemed to be the chain of truth as soon as they added 1 more block to their version than the rest of the network, in our system; you are penalised for reporting blocks late which makes it much more expensive to inject fraudulent blocks into the network by gaining the longest chain.
Q2. Why should i choose Horizen over its competitors
We've been lucky to find ourselves in a position where we've been able to learn from our peers. We recognise that mass adoption will require a variety of specific traits including scalability and flexibility.
Our sidechain architecture is fully decentralised and completely generalisable which means that people can effectively launch any blockchain as a sidechain of Horizen. The reference sidechain we're currently working on uses a modified version of Cardano's consensus as an example.
We currently have the largest node network in the industry which already gives us a lot of room to scale however the economics of the system are such that as more people join, the benefits to node operators increase (additional payments directly from sidechains) and therefore our network will expand and contract with demand.
Short answer, super scalable, super flexible, much cheaper than the competition + zero knowledge cryptography built in for sensitive data protection (critical for business users).
Q3. How many people in your team currently working? What is the great news will we see in this year?
Approximately 40. Great news coming up is the launch of our sidechain beta which we expect in March 2020. There's already a little taster if what's to come out in the wild which is our alpha product.
Q4. Do you have any plans to have a fiat ramp in Horizen ecosystem in order for agents to do transactions in Fiat rather than Horizen's Coins?
We have a variety of fiat on ramps however we're always looking to expand upon these.
Sidechains enable tokenisation among many other things so we intend to create a suite of stable coins which will be interoperable across the entire ecosystem.
zUSD, zPeso, zEUR etc
Q5. Why should be buy and hold Horizen tokens for long term ? What are the benefits for the retail users ?
The network incentivises ZEN holders if they're willing to setup and run secure or super nodes on behalf. Returns are great and if done correctly can basically act as a kind of compounding interest.
But the only real reason to hold ZEN is if you believe in what the organisation is trying to achieve and that is simple, we want to enable and massively scale a P2P ecosystem where users (be them retail or business) are empowered to own their own data.
Q6. Where is the most active forum for Horizen ?
Discord: https://discord.gg/FrgfhK
Q7. What are your main goals in next year? What makes Horizen different from other blockchain projects? Does Horizen have any advantages to compete with previous strong development and community projects?
Launch of our sidechain architecture is the primary goal as it is Horizen's key differentiator.
A good way of gauging fundamentals is to review independent scores like the ones created by Flipside Crypto.
https://flipsidecrypto.com/fcas-25/
Horizen is currently ranked #10 in the entire industry for Developer Activity, User Activity and Market Maturity. If you look at Developer Activity alone we're currently ranked #5 thanks to our ridiculously talented R&D hub in Milan, Italy, that houses both our R&D and primary engineering teams that have been built up slowly with the best of the best over the past 2.5 years.
Q8. What future developments would you expect would in year 2020 I think liquidation more important so what kind of work on liquidity?
Liquidity is indeed important which is why we put a lot of effort into integrations with exchanges, OTC desks and any other organisations that help improve the ability for people to both enter into and exit from positions in ZEN as a currency.
Q9. Do you have plan to be listed on Binance Exchange? What exchange are you listed?
We've been on Binance for a long time. As well as ~30 others: https://horizen.global/exchanges
Q10. What are the main role of HORIZEN tokens? Can you explain in Details about Project's Work and Mission with work of Token in Entire ecosystem?
ZEN is essentially the fuel for the entire ecosystem. It is required for the running of Horizen sidechains.
Q11. What challenges to catch marketcap that popular coins ?
Exposure is the main challenge. We know we've created a unique and extremely promising tech stack but the challenge is to get people to consider it over the giants in the industry (ETH, EOS etc).
Luckily both of the big giants have some serious inherent flaws that we've been able to learn from. ETH doesn't scale and EOS is centralised to a point where transactions can be censored which in my mind cancels out the 2 main benefits of blockchain technology.
Decentralising trust and creating digital immutability.
Can't knock either org' though. We have huge respect for what they've achieved!
Q12.
Tell me more about Horizen? What is the Purpose behind creation of Horizen?
What type of consensus do you used?
What are the core features and Value Proposition of Horizen?
Who your biggest competitor right now?
Horizen is a technology platform that can be used to launch bespoke blockchains, written in any programming language, with whatever type of consensus mechanism best suits the needs of the user.
The Horizen mainchain will act as a simple and secure chain of truth as well as a ledger for the currency, ZEN. The mainchain is PoW and utilizes the original Equihash algorithm.
Same emission curve as BTC and same max supply of 21M coins.
Q13.
What are the great achievements that Horizen has achieved so far and what is the development plan of Horizen in the next 2-3 years?
* 2020 is near What does Horizen roadmap for 2020 look like?
* Name some important milestones you are hoping to achieve?
* Is Horizen design final? Do we have any major changes in the near future?
Biggest achievements are modification of Nakamoto consensus to massively increase the cost of 51% attacks for any chain that implements it and development of a truly decentralised and completely generalisable sidechain architecture.
Q14. Horizen's sidechains development looks pretty solid. It should attract Dapps devs i guess. Which ones are you aiming for? Is there any interest from their side at this stage?
We launched a commercial venture called Horizen Labs to commercialise Horizen's technology.
As it stands, Horizen Labs has partnered with the largest digital invoicing company in Mexico to bring blockchain technologies to their enormous network, an American broker dealer that owns banks in LatAm and a variety of smaller companies from the gaming and finance industries.
One of these partners could see up to 200M TX's per month running on a Horizen sidechain so these are not to be taken lightly. They're huge real world partnerships that deliver massive value.
Q15. What are your sources of revenue generation?
-Please let us know as it is most important concern of a project in long run.
Horizen is funded by a diversion of block rewards, currently 20% which pays for Engineering, R&D, Marketing, BD etc etc.
Horizen Labs is a private company funded by a mixture of team investment and venture capital.
Q16. What next planning for your project to make this Horizen great than other project? and How about major partner?
I think I've answered that already.
You'll find our enterprise, engineering and academic partners on the front page of our website here: https://horizen.global
Q17. How do you come up to create ZEN?
Horizen was born from a desire to expand the utility of zero knowledge cryptography that was brought to market by ZCash. They used it solely for financial privacy. Horizen was launched to expand that into data privacy via creation of an application platform.
As time has gone on, the vision has stayed true however rather than creating an application platform it's pivoted into more of a technology platform.
Q18. Please tell me more about Horizen wallet, How do I use it, and do I need kyc to activate the Wallet ?
There are many Horizen wallets including Sphere by Horizen.
Check them out here, no KYC required: https://horizen.global/wallets
Q19. What price will predict in 2020?
I don't have a crystal ball but somewhere between $0 - $1,000.
Q20. Do you have staking program?
No, but users can earn rewards by running nodes on behalf of the network.
https://www.horizen.global/zennodes/
Q21. What makes you a better and Perfect Project?
We're not perfect but we're focused on what matters and that is creating products and services that provide real value.
Q22. Do you have plan to create your own platform?
The sidechain architecture pivots us into being a platform, so yes. Already on the case!
Q23. Where does Horizen profits come from? How does Horizen become a mutually beneficial solution for both investors and platforms? Trust is very important in business, what makes investors, customers and users feel safe when working with Horizen?
The organisation responsible for running the Horizen blockchain is a nonprofit business. Revenue is generated via a diversion of block rewards and is spent on the development and maintenance of the ecosystem.
Trust is extremely important. We pride ourselves on being extremely open and transparent. We pioneered biweekly executive community presentations to show exactly what everyone in the organisation was working on and where we were going. As time has progressed we've slowed these down as they became very time consuming but we now invite community members to join one of our weekly internal meetings to hear exactly what's happening from each of the divisions (engineering, marketing BD, legal, HX, helpdesk etc)
Join us next Thursday on Discord to hear for yourself and if you don't have time, we record them and issue as a weekly podcast. Check iTunes for details.
Q24. Which region you are focus for marketplace?
Our initial focus is Europe and the Americas, simply because that's where the majority of our team resides however we have a global reach thanks to a very decentralised team!
Okay everyone, it's been a pleasure.
You'll find Horizen on twitter as @horizenglobal and you'll find our Telegram groups here: t.me/horizencommunity OR t.me/zencash
Lastly you'll find me on Twitter as @RowanRK6
Thanks for having me!
