Bitcoin is Booming - What is your favorite cryptocurrency? Horizen (Sidechain Platform, Unbounded by Design)

Introduction

Horizen formally known as ZenCash was founded in the year 2017 by Rob Viglione and Rolf Versluis was designed to aid privacy of data with the introduction of end to end (peer-to-peer) encryption platform where money, media, and messages could be stored and sent securely and privately. It tis ranked 81 on coinmarketcap with a market cap of $154,873,354, a circulating supply of 10,472,738 ZEN and a maximum supply of 21,000,000 ZEN. The goal of Horizen is to build an ecosystem where everyone is empowered and rewarded according to their contribution.

Horizon was known as ZenCash until July 2018 when the name was changed and the project was rebranded. Horizen allows for individual, businesses and developers to create their private and public blockchain on the Horizen blockchain network easily and affordably with the help of the Horizen sidechain SDK.

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Horizen Objective

Horizen seeks to change the world of governing as well as it wants to empower people through technology and economic incentives thereby creating a sustainable ecosystem.

Horizen Sidechain

One major goal of Horizen is to allow people build their own blockchain and while this is a very impressive idea, these blockchains are regarded as bespoke blockchains. This blockchains stand as sidechains and communicate with the Horizen mainchain. The sidechains can be created with any programming language and consensus mechanism. The sidechains are no different from a regular blockchain as they have network layer, wallet, tokens, history and many other things that can be associated with a blockchain but still interacts with the Horizen mainchain. With Horizen Sidehain SDK, everything required to build a blockchain in a single toolbox. Horizen uses Zendoo as its sidechain protocol which allows businesses and developers to create their own sidechains.

Running Nodes

As a decentralized blockchain network, Horizen requires nodes to verify transactions, for scalability, eliability, security and speed of the network. The nodes serves for both the mainchain and sidechains, and there are three ways to run nodes on Horizen (ZEN); the Regular Full Node, Secure Nodes and Super Nodes.

Regular Full Node

All fully up to date wallet on the Horizen blockchain can serve as a regular node for the Horizen mainchain network

Secure Nodes

There are about 35973 secure node on the blockchain network, secure nodes requires TLS encryption and communicate with other nodes without interference from human. Secure nodes operators receive equal share of 10% allocated to block miners.

Super Nodes

There are 3987 super nodes verifying blocks on the Horizen blockchain. These nodes are more secure compared to any other node on the blockchain and are used to verify transactions on Horizen sidechains as well. The nodes are used to support dApps that provide real-life services on the Horizen Blockchain.

About Token

There are no pre-mined Zen coins as well as there was no ICO for the project, the coins generated are mined and the rewards are shared as;

60% for miners
20% for Horizen treasury to fund project development (such as community development, marketing, maintenance, etc.)
10% to supernode operators
10% to secure node operators

There are several ways to get Zen coin thereby incentivizing its users. Horizen users can get the Zen coin which are earn ZEN, Mining, Run Zen Nodes, Bounties, and Buy ZEN. Zen can be stored in Zen Wallets, it can be used to shop, and for other life cases.

Conclusion

I have been holding Zen since the January 2020 and I bought and got some for free from getzen.cash, Horizen official faucet. The fact that the project has real life use cases makes it promising, also developers and business can use it while investing into the platform. In the last 24 hours, Zen has seen a 29% increase in price keeping it at $14.68, this might be as a result of its halving taking place in 4 days time.