Introduction

The GetZen.Cash Faucet, was a $ZEN Faucet which used to be one of my favourite and most reliable faucets for years and together with Global Hive (powered by GameStation) and Pipeflare.io, it was completing a rather successful trifecta of faucets that I have been using faucet donations in $ZEN, $ZCash and $Polygon. Unfortunately all these three faucets are now discontinued and back in 2023 I wrote an article tribute to GetZen.Cash Faucet with title "A Farewell to GetZen.Cash Faucet".

In the GetZen.Cash Faucet, the user was given the possibility to claim free Zen every 20 hours after solving a quick captcha and the funds were being collected in the recommended native MyZenWallet.io or in a desktop wallet called SPHERE BY HORIZEN. Special instructions for the verification of the Zen wallet address were given on the site and afterwards the user was able to withdraw the faucet earnings there and earn an extra 50% (1.5x) bonus in every faucet claim. It should be well highlighted that only the recommended native Zen wallet could have been used for the withdrawal of the funds from the GetZen.Cash faucet as no other Zen address could be verified, either any non-custodial wallet such as Metamask or Trust wallet or a wallet from a crypto-exchange platform. The GetZen.Cash faucet included various multipliers that increased the amount of $ZEN earned from the faucet such as the Social Media connect program, the use of Brave browser (20% multiplier), the Hodl Zen program, a Referral Program and a Daily Bonus program for everyday claims.

The Horizen Global Venture

The GetZen.Cash faucet was powered by Horizen Global an internet platform that developed the HORIZEN ($ZEN) Layer 0 protocol and public blockchain. Launched in 2017, Horizen Global is being advertised as the most secure interoperable blockchain ecosystem supported by the largest and most decentralized node infrastructure in the industry. In fact, Horizen Global's sidechain platform focuses on scalable data privacy and enables businesses and developers to custom build their own public or private blockchains using its unique sidechain technology, Zendoo.

Specifically, and according to Horizen's white paper, the current landscape of every fully public chain, is that every balance, position, and trade is broadcast to anyone who cares to look and examine through a blockchain explorer. And among any just curious individual, these may be competitors, copy-traders, front-runners, or extractors. Yet, in a corporate level no serious market should operates on that open way, and onchain finance shouldn’t either.

Yet, this is where Horizen comes to restore the balance onchain between being private and being onchain at the same time. For Horizen, onchain privacy is essential for every stakeholder.  For example:

• Traders can execute trades and strategies without being front-run, copy-traded, or reverse-engineered.
• Individuals may hold and move meaningful wealth onchain without their balances, positions, and history being mapped back to them.
• Funds may operate with the confidentiality their investors i.e. entering and exiting positions without being exposed to the market.
• Application builders may incorporate privacy as a core feature of their applications and reach a community of users or customers who will value the corresponding privacy.

The Token That Powers Horizen

$ZEN is the governance and utility token of the Horizen ecosystem through DeFi, staking, governance, and dApp utility, empowers holders, developers and financial partners to shape and share the future of private onchain finance. The main characteristics of the $ZEN token are: 

• No ICO or pre-mined supply.           
• Fixed maximum supply just like Bitcoin: 21 million.       
• ERC-20 token on Base and Horizen L3.             
• ZEN staking for ecosystem rewards.
• Application access and utility.

Originally a fork of another privacy-oriented token Zcash (ZEC) back in 2017, ZEN has been migrated to Base Ethereum Layer 2 protocol on July 23rd, 2025, a migration that passed well under my online attention...

My BIG Horizen Deadlock

Unfortunately, even after GetZen.Cash Faucet was discontinued, I decided to keep my ZEN earnings safe on the native MyZenWallet.io without thinking withdrawing my funds on a major CEX or to my non-custodial wallets. I was certain that my funds there were safe. And this is where things started wrong.

Recently, after listening a lecture online about Blockchain Wallets, I started wondering what happened to my MyZenWallet.io funds that were kept forgotten there since I created my wallet back on November 29th, 2020 almost 6 years ago, with thoughts of moving them out and placing them for staking in a CEX platform.

And surprisingly, when I tried to complete my private key which I kept in a confidential vault for years, I received an error from the MyZenWallet.io wallet that my 15-word private key is invalid

The only file or information I received when I created my MyZenWallet.io back on November 2020 was a txt file with just a private key information in that without mentioning any specific wallet address and several $ZEN transactions defined as "Wallet dump", and now the same information appeared to be invalid from the MyZenWallet.io wallet !

What I noticed as strange is that the MyZenWallet private key input accepts only 10 and a half words of my 15-word private key leaving truncated the rest outside the input. 

Using the "trial and error" method, when I tried to input my 15-word private key into the secret phrase section, I received another error information as follows:

Additionally, the remaining option of unlocking the funds by using a .dat file is also unavailable because there is no such .dat file in my files. 

I also made an effort locating the desktop wallet called SPHERE BY HORIZEN which I don't remember if I ever used it. The only thing that I have found online was the github repository of the software mentioning that the repository has been archived and no longer maintained as deprecated by October 15th, 2025.

Yet there was an available a latest version v1.22.0 which my Windows Defender didn't allow me to run on my machine, so i have decided NOT to take any further action about the software.

Searching for more information about the MyZenWallet, I visited the Horizen website and it was obvious that the whole venture passed through a rebranding changing even the brand colors from light blue to mustard yellow. And I was surprised to notice a Horizen (ZEN) Migration Hub section about migrating legacy $ZEN funds in the EON sidechain from a non-custodial wallet such as Metamask, Rainbow or Trust Wallet to the Base Network which passed completely under my radar. In fact there is also a step-by-step tutorial how to migrate these old funds introduced back in 2023 according to PVM's article "Introducing Horizen DAO And Sending $ZEN to Horizen EON" from non-custodial wallets to the Base Network. Yet, there is no specific guide about migrating legacy funds from either the MyZenWallet or the SPHERE BY HORIZEN!

Final Thoughts

It is of a great irony that after checking the comments in the article tribute about the GetZen.Cash Faucet that I wrote back in 2023 with title "A Farewell to GetZen.Cash Faucet", I feel very confident that my funds are safe either in the MyZenWallet.io wallet or the Sphere by Horizen wallet.

Furthermore, I have no idea whether Horizen ever made any relevant announcement about the MyZenWallet or the SPHERE BY HORIZEN and the funds kept there.

Again the amount lost of 0.32893945 $ZEN worth around $1.99 USD is again pointless but again I feel disappointed about my lost efforts and time of collecting the faucet daily back in the period 2020 - 2023 because they were left in a legacy wallet (where they were supposed to be safe) of a private crypto venture that took suddenly a decision to pivot its business strategy. And as a result the situation led us for one more time to the famous crypto quote:

Not your keys, Not your tokens !

Disclaimer: All information found on this article is for informational purposes only. I do not provide any personal investment advice so please make your own research before proceeding to any investment/trading actions

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