Hi Horizen community,
Since discovering ZenCash in 2018 and meeting the Rob and the team not long after, I’ve been a big fan of Horizen’s dedication to privacy technology. Over the years, I’ve closely followed ZEN’s evolution from ZenCash to Horizen and worked with the Horizen team as both an advisor and now as strategic partner via Singularity, an onchain darkpool that I co-founded.
I have been a Horizen Special Council Member since its inception and I hope to continue to contribute to the Special Council as Horizen embarks on a new journey on Base.
Background / experiences
I have been full time in crypto since early 2017, initially as a seed/angel investor (which I continue to this day) and since 2023 as the Co-founder of Singularity, an onchain institutional darkpool for trading with privacy.
Singularity is a close strategic partner of Horizen, being Horizen’s flagship onchain DeFi protocol. Singularity’s darkpool product, Darkswap, is the first application on Horizen’s L3 privacy stack. Behind the scenes, we have an exciting product roadmap with Horizen that truly demonstrates the power of Horizen’s privacy technology in various DeFi use cases. Singularity is backed by top tier VCs including Gumi Cryptos Capital and Nomura’s Laser Digital, bringing more institutional awareness and liquidity to Horizen L3.
For several years, I have also been an advisor to Horizen. Originally from Australia and having lived in Asia for many years, I leveraged my investor and business relationships to help Horizen grow, particularly in APAC.
Prior to entering this space, I worked in traditional finance in Australia, advising global companies on mergers and acquisitions and public offerings.
My vision for Horizen
As an OG privacy orientated protocol, I believe Horizen can become the home and infrastructure of choice for privacy DeFi applications and developers. Horizen has all the right ingredients: top notch engineering and cryptography team, strong product leadership and a well-regarded reputation in the space.
The new journey as a blockchain on Base puts Horizen in a unique position to attract privacy focused developers by marrying the vast liquidity on EVM with a strong privacy stack.
With these foundational blocks in place, Horizen ticks all the key boxes to be the premier privacy infrastructure for private DeFi whilst allowing for regulatory compliance.
Priorities
In order to make Horizen the home of privacy DeFi, I would like to prioritise the following:
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Attracting quality privacy DeFi founders – Work closely with the Horizen team and community to identify specific privacy DeFi use cases and founders who want to not only develop applications, but also grow them as fully operational businesses on Horizen.
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Build an institutional base for Horizen – Lack of onchain transaction privacy is a key hurdle hindering institutional onchain adoption and Horizen’s technology makes it a perfect solution to institutional users. This opportunity to build an institutional base will provide the foundations for Horizen to reach into the heart of global capital networks, opening the door for the vast tradfi market.
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Continuing the strategic partnership between Singularity and Horizen – There are a lot of exciting end-user facing privacy applications/protocols/products that we are planning to build on Horizen and I look forward to facilitating both teams to work closely together.
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Utility and value accrual for ZEN – As privacy applications go live and gain traction on Horizen L3, ZEN holders should ultimately benefit. Whilst it may early days, I am keen to continue brainstorming various future utilities and value accruals for ZEN.
I am very optimistic about Horizen’s potential – I thank you for your support and I firmly believe that together we will build a vibrant ecosystem supporting a suite of privacy products.