Wrapping up 2023, Opinion on Horizen

[AstarZens]

hello. Horizen team.
2023 is just around the corner.
Was it the year you did your best work?
Here are my personal thoughts.

1. Remove Privacy from Horizen

A new direction for Horizen
This year, Horizen made a big change.
We removed privacy from the main chain.

Some might accuse us of losing our identity, but I think we went in the right direction.
But the direction was good, what about the after?
People still think of Horizen as a privacy coin.
Did you do anything to fix that?

It is also categorized as a privacy coin on the popular CoinMarketCap.
Doesn’t the team visit any of these big analytics sites?
I mentioned Coinmarketcap as an example, but there are many more.

Do you analyze these sites to follow market direction and trends?
And why didn’t you think to correct any misinformation during your analysis?
You should probably send a written request to the site so that they can correct the misinformation quickly.

2. The Ambassador Program

I have a question about this ambassador program that marketing has chosen.
What are the criteria for selecting the ambassadors?
What do they do?

Does your team have a system for evaluating your Ambassadors on a monthly basis?
Do your Ambassadors regularly contribute monthly articles?
Do your Ambassadors only see Horizen as their passion?
Ambassadors are involved in a variety of activities beyond Horizen.

If the ambassadors are working hard offline, I apologize for devaluing them.
But if they are only active online, well, I wonder if this has worked out so well as marketing.

Try to quantify your ambassadors’ activities.
What articles did Ambassador A contribute and in what ways did they contribute to Horizen.
I think we can find ways to improve the Ambassador program.

3. How to activate Horizen community

Is the Horizen community well organized?
As far as I know, the main ones are WeChat in China, KakaoTalk in Korea, and Discord.

Regardless of Horizen’s popularity, why isn’t the community active?
I think it’s a lack of upfront information.
Does the team think there’s information to be gained from the community?
From what I’ve seen so far, it’s accurate and good to just look at what’s happening on Twitter.
I don’t think there’s any good information to be gained from being active in the community.

- Are Communities Really Functional?
I received a personalized DM today.
Why is this a personal DM to me?
I think this is something to ask on Discord or via a ticket.

4. Horizen should be going for the blue ocean, not the red ocean.

Horizen is currently lagging behind in many areas, including

-Bitcoin Ordinals - BRC20
Development towards BRC20 with the Bitcoin Ordinals protocol
In my opinion, this is a blue ocean and it’s just getting started.

Animoca Brands subsidiary Darewise Entertainment to launch the first metaverse ecosystem token on Bitcoin; announces strategic engagement with Horizen Labs

Why can’t I think of a way to market this? Or is Horizen because development in this direction has been slow?

-RWA sector
There are only a few coins in the RWA market, called RWA coins, that really get it right. I hope to quickly gain influence in this area.

I’m sure your team has talked about both of these topics, and I’m sure you’re doing something about it. But if they are, I hope they’re doing some marketing to get word of mouth, to get Horizen in people’s minds.

5. How the average investor sees Horizen

Top reasons to invest in Horizen
Only DCG
I don’t think there is anything else that comes in at the beginning.

Upcoming Price Drivers

1. DCG’s Pumping
2. ETF Narrative
3. Listing on the Korean Exchange

All the team can do here is list on exchange 3.
That’s what people expect.

People don’t think anyone expects Horizen’s technology to drive the price up.
HL had a huge valuation increase in the industry because of its technology.

People do not sure about the technical value of Horizen. If you ask me why Horizen is better, I don’t have a good answer. I don’t have a good answer because it’s a feature that all other coins have and no one has explained to me that it’s a unique strength of Horizen.

Unless about Horizen tech some big upcoming deal that we don’t know about, it’s probably going to be a long time coming, right?

*I’m not a yes man. *
I’m just an investor and a hodler who wants Horizen to do well.

The current price of Zen is very cold.
I want to stay warm for Christmas.

I’m sorry for always making you listen to things that can be rude.
2023 was a challenging year. I hope 2024 will be even better.
To the Horizen team, Sincerely

[Jimmy]

@AstarZens

It is also categorized as a privacy coin on the popular CoinMarketCap.
Doesn’t the team visit any of these big analytics sites?
I mentioned Coinmarketcap as an example, but there are many more.

Do you analyze these sites to follow market direction and trends?
And why didn’t you think to correct any misinformation during your analysis?
You should probably send a written request to the site so that they can correct the misinformation quickly.

2. The Ambassador Program

I have a question about this ambassador program that marketing has chosen.
What are the criteria for selecting the ambassadors?
What do they do?

Does your team have a system for evaluating your Ambassadors on a monthly basis?
Do your Ambassadors regularly contribute monthly articles?
Do your Ambassadors only see Horizen as their passion?
Ambassadors are involved in a variety of activities beyond Horizen.

If the ambassadors are working hard offline, I apologize for devaluing them.
But if they are only active online, well, I wonder if this has worked out so well as marketing.

Try to quantify your ambassadors’ activities.
What articles did Ambassador A contribute and in what ways did they contribute to Horizen.
I think we can find ways to improve the Ambassador program.

3. How to activate Horizen community

Is the Horizen community well organized?
As far as I know, the main ones are WeChat in China, KakaoTalk in Korea, and Discord.

Regardless of Horizen’s popularity, why isn’t the community active?
I think it’s a lack of upfront information.
Does the team think there’s information to be gained from the community?
From what I’ve seen so far, it’s accurate and good to just look at what’s happening on Twitter.
I don’t think there’s any good information to be gained from being active in the community.

Hi, Nice threads, Astar!

[rebirthq]

That’s a good evaluation. Many people need to know ZEN and if there is a leading technology, they need to publish it. If privacy is removed from the main chain, can’t it be posted on the exchange news tab? I think it will have a greater effect than posting it on ‘X’. There is a limited manpower, time, and a lot of work in the public relations team, but I hope it will be more active to expand the base.

[finpunk]

Horizen Labs is wrapping up prototyping a major tech upgrade we’re going to propose for Horizen that will carve out for the project a unique and important space in Web3. Personally I think we’re finally getting ahead of the game with this upgrade and it’ll be an important driver for Horizen being a top project.

I’m getting anxious to share this with everyone, so I’ll see what I can do to drop the ZenIP sooner rather than later. I’d like the ZenIP to be published by NLT mid-Jan, maybe sooner.

[Blockchainzilla]

Hi @AstarZens!

First off, thanks for the feedback; it’s always much appreciated. For those who don’t know me, I’m VP Ecosystem Growth at Horizen Labs.

Obviously, I can’t speak for the Foundation, but I can give you some updates here on things we’re thinking through regarding your comments. I will also note a lot of this on Discord within the next few days.

First, in terms of direction, the past year has been a big one, but mostly, it’s been a year of laying the infrastructure to guide Horizen (and Horizen Labs) into the contemporary Web3 world. I understand those haven’t always been headline-worthy initiatives but we have been setting the stage for what’s to come.

2024 will be full of the fruits of those efforts, and I agree with Rob’s comments and am super excited for us to share tech upgrades, etc… as they rapidly approach.

On my side, in relationship to Horizen Labs’ work w/ Horizen, we’re focused on:

• The evolution of EON as it moves past its initial release and into the second phase of its existence. Including stronger community involvement.

• Building strong connections between Horizen and the rest of Web3. The future of the space is collaborative, and we’re working hard to bring in mutually beneficial partnerships.

• Messaging towards new technology and modernization initiatives

This past year saw the introduction of the new Horizen DAO and the initial launch of EON while also seeing a restructuring of Horizen Labs to better align with core missions.

I think it’s essential to note that these aren’t finish lines but the signal of the start of a journey. EON will become much more exciting as we layer on several new projects and initiatives (and begin to get the community more closely involved in pushing it forward).

On the community side, we will be doing a lot to upgrade the engagement from our side in the coming year. We’re hiring a new Social Media/Community lead to spearhead those efforts. We’re aiming to ensure we are doing a lot to help develop the Horizen community in the upcoming year and also build connections between communities, including ApeCoin, the various protocols coming on to EON, and more.

In terms of the two areas you mentioned, I’m happy to say that we’re going to have some big announcements on the RWA side soon in relation to EON. Keep an eye out for those.

On the Ordinals side, yes, we’ve been working closely w/ Darewise on LifeBeyond. I think there are ways that experience can benefit Horizen, and I’d be interested in seeing and discussing a ZENIP, for example, around Ordinals within this ecosystem if there’s enough community demand for one. Let’s keep that conversation going.

To some of your other points, there are initiatives ongoing to clean up ZEN listings across sites and databases, some of those sites are more responsive than others but I know the team is constantly and consistently pushing on it.

Listing on Korean exchanges is great, obviously for accessibility to ZEN, but there are also a ton of additional efforts being put into both user and institutional access. We recognize that it’s hyper-important as we head into 2024 to have Horizen (both Mainchain and EON) continuously be more accessible.

I hope I was able to give you some clarity on a few fronts and assure you that there’s a lot of work going on “behind the scenes” and that 2024 should be an exciting year for us all. Please don’t hesitate to reach out (and that goes for everyone!) I am always happy to chat about what we’re doing on the Ecosystem Growth side at Horizen Labs.

[AstarZens]

Hi @Blockchainzilla .
Thank you for your patience with my lackluster post, and for your detailed answers to my questions.
Your words have softened the mood of the Korean community a lot.
As you said, I hope to see more announcements on discord in the near future.

[Manon]

Hello and thank you for the feedback.

1. Discussions are of course on-going. I can’t share any details here, but yes, these websites are being updated;

2. I see you active on Discord and Twitter, so you should get notifications about articles/tutorials, sometimes videos/moderation made by our ambassadors. We are indeed selective. And not everything happens online.
   We have private meetings and follow-ups.
   The program evolved and is still evolving.
   Some introduced themselves here, you also have some recaps of the work done by the ambassadors written by PVM in his last article.

We are working on translation processes, on meetup processes. And it does take time. But yes, I can assure you that work is being done.

3. The community is getting more active.
   You can participate in daily tasks and quizzes to earn ZEN in exchange of your contributions and learning about Horizen. We don’t want to just give rewards for a post shared or clicking one button.

More incentives are coming

4. HL side, already answered

5. I am not an expert on this, can’t answer.

And to answer your last point, you do remind us every day that we have some work to do, indeed When it drives good discussion with the community, it’s constructive.

I feel that you tend to forget our previous answers, but it’s good to have posted it here so we can centralize our answers under this post.

A New Horizen proposal is coming by HL, and many things are around. DAO is ready to be evolved, more ZenIPs and different proposals are coming on snapshot and Discourse.

Horizen is a huge and complex ecosystem, we also have the goal of making it easier to understand. When we are insiders we tend to forget to make things simple.

That’s one of the biggest pain points IMO. Zendoo is highly complex, the POW mainchain with non-POS nodes is hard to understand. People still don’t know what is a sidechain, and what is a UTXO model, they even don’t know what is a Nakamoto consensus.

There is work to educate the community, so things will move soon on the academy side.
There is work to do to attract new developers, that we do with EON, the new partnerships, and the integration of tools.

Horizen unique strength is to be here since 2017 and still evolving today, building during bear markets, to have Rob and Rolf committed to the community. We built the DAO as promised, and this will evolve as well.

Hope that answers

[AstarZens]

Thanks for the feedback on my article.

Let me share my thoughts on feedback.

@Manon

Discussions are of course on-going. I can’t share any details here, but yes, these websites are being updated;

Members of the public can also submit corrections, but company-level corrections are different from those of the public.

@Manon

I see you active on Discord and Twitter, so you should get notifications about articles/tutorials, sometimes videos/moderation made by our ambassadors. We are indeed selective. And not everything happens online.
We have private meetings and follow-ups.
The program evolved and is still evolving.
Some introduced themselves here, you also have some recaps of the work done by the ambassadors written by PVM in his last article.

Regarding the ambassador program, no program is perfect. I hope you find something to improve on in the areas I mentioned.

@Manon

The community is getting more active.
You can participate in daily tasks and quizzes to earn ZEN in exchange of your contributions and learning about Horizen. We don’t want to just give rewards for a post shared or clicking one button.

That’s a great idea. I’m glad you’re thinking about ways to improve.
I’d recommend that the team take some time to reflect on Horizen Academy’s accomplishments this year
If you search #Horizen Academy on Twitter, the posts average about 100 impressions. I don’t think there were many new people joining.

Personally.
I don’t understand why teams pay to train. Usually people pay to be trained.
Learning is most effective when it’s necessary.
However, the purpose of the team is so good that I understand a little incentive.

@Manon

I feel that you tend to forget our previous answers, but it’s good to have posted it here so we can centralize our answers under this post

I keep asking the same question because I want to know what’s improved.
I don’t want team members to think I’m boring when it comes to recurring questions, and I want team to know that people are interested in the ongoing questions.

[rocket]

I’m so impatient for the ZenIP that I’m ready to hijack a DeLorean and blast into the future. Who’s with me?

[finpunk]

LOL I have a source that says we might see the ZenIP today