September 2026: Running for Re-Election
Hi everyone,
One year ago, I announced my candidacy for the Horizen DAO Special Council: My 2025 Special Council candidacy
The community gave me its trust, and I was elected to the Special Council with 9.7k votes (29.12%) = the highest number of votes in the September 2025 election. See September 2025 Special Council election results
Thank you again to everyone who supported me.
My one-year term is now coming to an end, and I am running for re-election to the Horizen DAO Special Council.
Rather than repeat my background from last year’s post, I want to use this update to look back at what I have actually done during my first term, what I learned, and why I would like to continue for another year.
One Year on the Special Council
When I ran last year, I said my priorities would be to strengthen ZEN utility, raise the technical bar for ZenIPs, support builders, and maintain transparency and accountability between funding, milestones, and delivered outcomes.
I have tried to apply those principles throughout my term.
Governance and ZEN Utility
Throughout my term, I actively participated in discussions around key proposals affecting ZEN utility, staking, liquidity, and the use of DAO resources.
I supported bringing staking back to ZEN while pushing for sustainable incentives, clear objectives, and consideration of the trade-off between staking and ecosystem liquidity.
I also supported improving ZEN’s exchange accessibility while advocating for clear safeguards, measurable KPIs, transparency, and accountability when DAO resources are spent.
My approach has remained consistent: support initiatives that can strengthen ZEN, but question their assumptions, understand the risks, and make sure DAO resources are used responsibly.
Representing and Protecting the DAO
Not all Special Council work happens publicly on Discourse. Some of the most important decisions require reviewing information and documents that cannot simply be published publicly.
Most recently, I was involved in the Council’s review of a significant financial matter involving the Horizen Foundation. What I can say is that I took my responsibility to the DAO seriously. I pushed for additional information and scrutiny and worked to ensure that the DAO’s interests and assets were properly represented throughout the review.
This is one of the less visible aspects of serving on the Special Council, but in my view one of the most important ones. When significant DAO resources are involved, Council members need to be willing to ask difficult questions, understand the numbers and risks, and independently evaluate what is being proposed.
Building, Not Only Governing
I also believe that someone helping govern an ecosystem benefits from experiencing what it is actually like to build inside it. During my term, I created RevealMarket.xyz through the Thrive grants program. Beyond the product itself, going through the process gave me first-hand experience of Horizen’s builder and grant ecosystem - from proposing an idea and defining milestones to actually developing and delivering against them.
A Year Later: What Does Horizen Still Need?
In my original candidacy post last year, I wrote:
“The main struggle is the utilisation of the ZEN token.”
A year later, I still believe this is one of the most important questions facing Horizen.
But we have made progress.
Staking, liquidity, exchange accessibility, applications built on Horizen, and sustainable ecosystem economics are all parts of the same bigger question:
Why should someone own, use and hold ZEN?
For me, this should remain at the center of our decisions.
Technology, privacy, developers, and applications all matter. But ultimately, a healthy Horizen ecosystem also needs those things to translate into real utility and sustainable demand for ZEN.
That is why I have consistently focused on token utility and sustainability when reviewing staking, liquidity, ecosystem funding, and other proposals during my term.
Why I Am Running Again
I’ve been part of this ecosystem since 2017, before the ZEN chain even launched.
I mined ZEN. I wrote some of its earliest community software. I created Eleos and helped build Arizen, which eventually reached more than 100,000 downloads. I promoted Horizen at conferences, contributed code, built tools, and watched the project evolve from ZenCash into Horizen and through several generations of technology.
The longer version of that story is available in my original candidacy: My 2025 Special Council candidacy and background
Last year, the community gave me the opportunity to contribute in a new way - as an elected member of the Special Council.
During that year, I have tried to do what I promised:
Support good ideas.
Question their assumptions.
Protect DAO resources.
Push for greater ZEN utility.
And continue building myself.
There is still a lot to do.
I am therefore asking for your support for another term on the Horizen DAO Special Council.
Thank you to everyone who trusted me with their vote last year, and thank you to everyone who continues contributing to Horizen.
Nine years later, I’m still here - and I still want to build.
Lukas Bures, Ph.D.