New ZenIP Idea: New Horizen Token and Governance

Earlier this year, the Horizen community voted overwhelmingly in favor of embarking on the “New Horizen” initiative to modernize Horizen’s blockchain. This project will turn Horizen into a modular blockchain optimized for proof verification and settlement with the goal of collapsing the high costs faced by zero-knowledge rollups and proof-generating applications on monolithic blockchains today.

We believe that this major technological transition presents an equally significant opportunity to rethink the token and governance frameworks of the Horizen ecosystem. As the Horizen blockchain undergoes a shift in its primary function (from horizontal scaling to proof verification and settlement) and its consensus mechanism (from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake), we feel that a re-examination is warranted of the mechanics of the $Zen token and governance. For instance, Horizen will need a way to incentivize the new types of desired behavior by ecosystem participants, such as running validator nodes to secure the network or verifying proofs. And to stand out in the highly competitive web3 industry, it will need to be able to fund ecosystem growth and business development initiatives. With its current proof-of-work token, Horizen is currently at a significant disadvantage compared to many peers in this regard as any tokens it wishes to spend on these items today must be obtained via mining or open market purchases.

We stress that any proposed changes would be to benefit the Horizen ecosystem and community. Our goal is for Horizen to flourish and succeed as a top blockchain project, and as longtime $ZEN supporters we are motivated to do what is best for the Horizen community.

As a digital asset manager with extensive experience in tokenomics design and familiarity with the Horizen ecosystem, we believe that Outerlands Capital is uniquely suited to undertake this work. This Discourse idea seeks to gauge community sentiment on us pursuing a formal ZenIP to be engaged by the Horizen Foundation to develop a tokenomics and governance plan for New Horizen. We would work with the Horizen Foundation’s existing service providers and key stakeholders in the Horizen ecosystem to ensure that all relevant considerations are accounted for in the plan. Any of the proposed changes to the $ZEN tokenomics structure would be presented to the community in a future ZenIP for a vote.

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Makes sense to me. I’m supportive of a ZenIP to engage Outerlands Capital to look into this topic and come back with a comprehensive proposal.

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love this idea and agree with you that $ZEN tokenomics needs to be revisited for Horizen to remain competitive in today’s web3 landscape

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I definitely support looking at changing the tokenomics of Horizen to give the new Horizen Proof Verification system every opportunity to succeed.

There are technical challenges to a transition of the ZEN coin from one blockchain to another, especially with ZEN on both EON and the UTXO mainchain.

Tokenomics is complicated, because there needs to be a balance between incentivizing growth and success while at the same time maximizing the value to the project and the current ZEN holders

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Am in favor of this direction. Changing the tokenomics of an already established token could be very advantageous to the network as we continue to reach our goals for New Horizen. Horizen is evolving and so should its token.

Additionally because this token already has an associated price, garnering support and participation with users and developing partnerships will be much easier.

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Bryan, can you name some of the tokens you have had a hand in launching? Does your company have a website I can check out?

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I support an open discussion, considering all stakeholders in the ecosystem since there are many variables that need to be addressed. Gathering as much feedback as possible, in my view, is crucial to making any decision, especially on a sensitive topic like this one. And once Outerlands has completed any Tokenomics exploration, the community should be presented with more than one possible route.

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I am also supportive of an open discussion. More than only presenting different options; I think that it’s important that all stakeholders (especially HF, the community, the DAO, and HL) should be involved in the choice of the different routes proposed to the community, before the release of the proposal

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That’s a great suggestion. Horizen need a new fresh breakthrough that people will recognize.
Horizen needs to be more activated.
People should feel the need to buy Zen.

Who/what is Outerlands Capital (OC). Why did you split from Horizen Labs (HL). Why should we trust (OC). What makes (OC) “an innovative digital asset manager built on world-class experience in blockchain development and institutional finance.”

“As a digital asset manager with extensive experience in tokenomics design”

What equates “extensive” checking your credentials you have spent less than 2.5 years in a Web3 company.

I implore everyone to please do your due diligence and review the backgrounds of each member of OC here at Who We Are — Outerlands Capital. And ensure you are ready to risk your investment of Zen to OC.

“Any of the proposed changes to the $ZEN tokenomics structure would be presented to the community in a future ZenIP for a vote.” This probably should presented well before putting it to a vote changing the entire tokenomics is huge as all investors should be extremely cautious.

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I don’t agree with this. Make your own coin if you want different tokenomics

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Hope you don’t have in mind to change the 21M max supply and the halving every 4 years for $ZEN.

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Im for it, looking forward to see the technical details. Need big changes and a way to initiatives development and interest for zen. So this can be interesting

“If there are a lot of changes, it is easy to lose trust between Horizen and holders!!!”
Of course, if ZEN value can grow through tokenomics changes, I will support it.

Personally, I think it’s better to discuss these big changes during a bear market.
Currently, these discussions only make holders anxious.

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Changing the tokenomics structure? Why? I agree with the issuance of new tokens, such as the issuance of eon tokens, but why do you need to change the tokenomics of the already existing zen tokens? Are you trying to change the issuance structure of 21m? Changing zen tokenomics is changing identity. I am absolutely against it.

I guarantee that if the tokenomics structure is changed, most holders, whether grayscale or general token holders, will sell out and the project will fail.

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I strongly agree with this!

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In my opinion, tokenomics is too broad a concept.

I don’t think it’s tokenomics that changes the total circulation of 21 million.

I think it’s a discussion about the incentive mechanisms within tokenomics.

We need to define this part.

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Just to be clear, it looks like the team is proposing studying the idea, and coming back at a later stage with a plan to be voted on by the community. I don’t see any downside to investigating given all the changes going on with Horizen.

I’m keeping an open mind. And would be interested to see any other proposals from other community members.

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I understand that. I would like to know what makes Outlanders Capital qualified to do this study. I have asked what tokens they have studied or launched in the past with no response from Bryan. This is a very simple ask.

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I believe that although many people have participated in public discussions, they have not actually realized the logic and necessity of Horizen changing the token mechanism.So, I think it’s necessary to start from my understanding and explain in detail why the current Horizen must change its token strategy.
1: For many people who only care about token prices, changing token strategies is definitely advantageous. Because in the Chinese community where I am located, no horizen miner will hold horizen for a long time (not a single one). When I communicate with every Chinese miner I know, the only answer I get is that they will immediately sell the mining proceeds and exchange them for BTC or other tokens. This is an important reason why the price of horizen cannot rise for a long time. We must admit that horizen is not a BTC. horizen miners sell tokens without thinking, and the continuous decline in token prices will affect the confidence of most people in horizen. Fewer and fewer people will buy horizen, leading to more and more miners selling without thinking, and then continuing to cause price drops, forming an unbreakable vicious cycle. This is a tragic fact, but for cryptocurrencies other than BTC, as long as the POW mechanism is adopted, the situation mentioned above is an inevitable result. On the contrary, if you adopt a POS mechanism, the situation will immediately become different. Because the profits obtained from POS rely on token locking, if you understand POS as mining, then before POS mining, you must spend money to purchase tokens and continue to lock in to obtain profits. Therefore, POS naturally means the inflow of money, not the outflow. Summary: POS=inflow of money, POW=outflow of money. So if you only care about price, then you must support Horizen’s transition from POW to POS.

2: In the second part, I would like to explain the inflation and risk issues that many people are concerned about. I have read many people’s comments and observed that most of the opposition is based on anxiety about inflation. These people believe that as long as the total circulation does not exceed 21m, the value of horizen will be guaranteed. In fact, this is a one-sided understanding. The success or failure of a project depends not only on limiting the total amount of tokens, but also on ensuring the team’s funding needs in fierce competition. Once modified to POS, the 60% token originally given to miners can be transferred to the incentive ecosystem.At present, the Zen team only allocates 20% of the mining revenue, and all aspects of development, marketing, promotion, and incentives rely entirely on this 20% funding. I think this is extremely unreasonable. Simply put, this amount of money is too small to keep up with the fierce competition in the market.It is ridiculous that on the one hand, the team’s funds are tight, while on the other hand, the miners are mercilessly selling horizen, lowering prices, making the team even more unable to join and make ends meet. Horizen’s miners are like vampires, sucking on incentive funds that should have belonged to the ecology.This situation cannot continue anymore!As for the risk issue, my suggestion is to directly refer to or even copy Ethereum’s token economics. This is mainly for security reasons. Ethereum’s POS mechanism runs smoothly and can be seen as a successful, mature, and secure transformation. So, Horizen does not need to create its own strategy that has not been tested over time, but instead directly replicates successful POS cases in the market, which is more secure. In addition, Ethereum’s POS mechanism is anti inflation, and It has a mature deflation mechanism, and I believe Horizen’s new token mechanism can be regarded as a key reference object. In this way, we can perfectly address everyone’s concerns about inflation and security. And in terms of confidence, adopting mature solutions in the market will reduce a significant amount of explanation costs, making it easier for the community and long-term holders to accept this transformation.

3: Horizen is currently in a critical and difficult period, and I fully understand some of Rob’s lofty moral standards and beautiful and great visions. However, these visions are facing a cruel reality, which is that the projects currently participating in fierce competition in the market have had a large amount of investment since their inception. These huge investments have given these projects a first mover advantage from the beginning. They can attract enough attention and raise the price of tokens by incentivizing and promoting at all costs, thus obtaining a continuous stream of funds from the market.In order to cope with increasingly fierce competition, I believe it is necessary to adopt more extreme token allocation strategies! For example, using all 60% of the profits originally owned by miners for development and ecology. That is to say, assuming the current circulation of Horizen tokens is 15m and the total amount is 21m, before transitioning to POS, directly transfer the remaining 6m tokens to the Horizen Foundation account in one go! Then transition to Ethereum’s POS mechanism. This can allow the team to have sufficient funds and obtain long-term sustainable funding in subsequent POS mining.Finally, I would like to emphasize that in such a fiercely competitive market. I think reducing the funding of the Horizen team is foolish and ridiculous. We are facing a moment of life and death. It is time to give up traditional thinking and unrealistic ideals, say goodbye to the Vampire Miner, and let’s concentrate our funds to create a greater cause.

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