ZenIP Proposal - Horizen Developer Grants Program Proposal from Thrive

General
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ZenIP Proposal - Horizen Developer Grants Program Proposal from Thrive

One of the big questions we’ve had so far about this migration is how will people earn more ZEN with their existing ZEN now that we have no more staking?

I have an answer for you - by deploying applications onto the Horizen L3 Appchain!

We need many applications running on the Horizen Appchain EVM, created by talented developers, that use the enhanced technical capabilities of our new blockchains. These applications should enhance and encompass the guidelines and goals of Horizen.

We have a very good proposal from Thrive to manage the community grants program for Horizen. Our team has spent months negotiating a favorable agreement with the leading Grants Program in the crypto space.

What I like about Thrive is:
1. Demonstrated success managing Grant Programs for Polygon, Arbitrum, ApeCoin, and others, see: https://www.thriveprotocol.com/contributors
2. Create a dedicated team to work with Horizen
3. Over 60 experienced developer teams they have already worked with that are ready to work with Horizen
4. Strong process, developed over years of operation, to source, vet, and deliver quality applications that have a sustained userbase
5. I have met the principals in person multiple times, and like how they do business.

I have asked Thrive to respond to this proposal and answer questions about how this would work.

I intend to submit this proposal for a ZENIP later this month.

Thank you!

Rolf V - @blockops

Thrive Statement of Work for Horizen

Vision for Thrive and Horizen Partnership

Thrive and Horizen will partner to accelerate Horizen’s ecosystem by funding high-impact, high-usage projects aligned with its mission of scalable, privacy-preserving, cross-chain interoperability, powered by cutting-edge privacy technology.

This collaboration will provide near 100% capital-efficient funding to the next wave of builders leveraging Horizen’s privacy technology stack, boosting ecosystem adoption, cross-chain innovation, and real-world impact.

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About Thrive Protocol

Thrive fuels economic growth for top crypto ecosystems, funding 1,800+ projects across chains like Polygon, Hedera, and ApeChain. We attract top builders and automate treasury allocations, ensuring only ecosystem-aligned impact drives capital deployment.

Powered by Thrive Protocol, every contribution of value is validated through a decentralized network of Guardians (certified reviewers + AI), guaranteeing near 100% capital efficiency and ensuring every token drives real innovation.

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Impact We Want to Create

  • Create Applications that promote ZEN: The ZEN token is the primary token of the Horizen Project. Applications on the Horizen L3 Appchain should be structured to encourage people to buy, use, and hold ZEN.
  • Bring Base Ecosystem Users to Horizen: Create, operate, and improve unique applications on Horizen L3 Appchain to bring Base users to the Horizen Appchain
  • Integrate Privacy into Compelling and Useful Applications: Bring the next wave of users to crypto by building useful applications that maintain user safety by protecting their transactions and other on-chain activity.
  • Enable the Crypto Business Ecosystem: Provide applications for businesses to operate using the crypto payment rails while meeting expectations for basic transaction privacy with customers, vendors, and employees.

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How We Measure Success

  • Commitment: Thrive will allocate a minimum of 70% of available funds to projects committing to milestones directly aligned with the needs of Horizen. A minimum of 70% of all Project Milestones will be achieved by committed Project timelines, as assessed by credibly neutral reviewers. The 70% minimum is measured annually.

  • Typical Onchain Milestones

  • Total Value Locked in ZEN (TVL) [Primary]

  • Transaction Volume in ZEN

  • Monthly Active Wallets (MAW)

  • Active Smart Contracts / dApp usage

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Verticals of Projects We Want to Fund (ordered in priority)

  1. Privacy-Centric DeFi Systems (goal 40% of projects): Confidential financial services, protecting user data while ensuring compliance. These could use a combination of ZK, TEE, FHE, MPC or other advanced technologies to enable confidentiality.
  2. Verified AI and ML with privacy (goal 30% of projects): Build reliable, secure, transparent, and decentralized AI applications without compromising privacy.
  3. Gaming Platforms with Enhanced Privacy Features (goal 20% of projects): Games that incorporate ZK proofs and other technology to ensure fair play and protect player data, as well as verifiable randomness, enhancing user trust and engagement.
  4. Governance with Privacy Capabilities (goal 10% of projects): Systems that work with decentralized identity for voting, polling, and on-chain transactions that provide users with control over their personal data, and protect applications from sybil attacks by non-human actors.

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Examples of Ideal Projects to Fund

  • DeFi use cases:
    • Replicating existing DeFi capabilities like privacy enhanced DEX, lending, predication markets, stablecoins
    • Allowing decentralized organizations to function with crypto as their main method of payment.
  • Verified AI and ML with Privacy:
    • Generate proofs that verify a model’s output is correct without exposing inputs, weights, or architecture.
    • Enable on-chain economy for using a specifically trained AI, wtih proof verified for training specific model use
  • Gaming:
    • Use ZK and other technologies to validate in-game actions and assets, ensuring fairness and protecting player identities.
    • Enable and prove Verifiable Randomness is used in the game
    • Emphasize good gameplay, mobile devices, and features that promote usage - not science projects.
  • Governance and Identity
    • Standalone and integrated voting and polling applications
    • Applications to prevent non-person intelligences from participation

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Funding Pools

Every funding we deployed would come with a token allocation and rev share % in the project receiving the funding. We need to treat these fundings more as micro-fundings vs. free money.

  • Genesis (40%): Projects introducing novel applications that drive significant transaction volume and user engagement on Horizen.​
  • Boost (40%): Proven projects from other ecosystems adapted to leverage Horizen’s unique capabilities.​
  • Scale (20%): Campaigns and programs aimed at increasing adoption and awareness of Horizen-powered applications.​

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Target Timeline

  • Planning Start Date: after the proposal passes DAO-vote.
  • Season 1 Launch Date: launch target: Q3 2025

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Target Capital Allocation

  • Funding Average: $50K to $100K in Horizen (ZEN) tokens per project
  • Expected Years: 5 years to allocate with 1-year performance commitments
  • Total ZEN to be allocated: 1 M ZEN tokens over 5 years. Not to exceed spending 200K ZEN per year.
  • Total Number of Projects for Year 1: Target: 50 Projects

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Target Milestones

  • Project Acceptance: 10% Project accepted and good-faith starting effort
  • Milestone 1: 20%: Smart contract(s) live on Mainnet
  • Milestone 2: 30%: Early traction, achieving key onchain impact, demonstrating the adoption.
  • Milestone 3: 40%: E.g. 10x usage, TVL, or participation from the baseline milestone.

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Advisory Board: Thrive x Horizen

The advisory board will oversee strategy and implementation, with members including the below. Any changes to advisory board will be managed by Horizen Foundation:

  • Rolf Versluis - Co-Founder and Horizen Developer Growth Lead
  • Gustavo Fialho - Horizen Community Manager
  • Arman Aurobindo - Horizen Foundation DevRel Engineer
  • Michael Pastko - Horizen Foundation Growth Lead
  • Domenico Cusumano - Product Manager for Horizen
  • Tyler Logsdon - Horizen Finance
  • Gwen Regina - Horizen Business Development

* board participation is voluntary, and board members will not be compensated for their contributions to the board.

Advisory Board Responsibilities:

  • Refining funding rules, builders paths, and contribution validations.
  • Overseeing reward allocation and milestone tracking.
  • Retains veto rights on Thrive-funded projects.
  • This specific role receives no compensation.
  • Time Commitment: 1 hour per week pre-launch, 30 minutes per week post-launch.

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Marketing & Communications Strategy

  • Public Relations: Announce the launch of Season 1, highlighting key projects and partnerships within the Horizen ecosystem.
  • Developer Spotlights: Feature successful builders and projects to showcase the potential of building on Horizen.​
  • Community Engagement: Host AMAs, and workshops to foster a vibrant developer and user community.​
  • Content Collaborations: Partner with influencers and content creators to promote Horizon-powered applications and educate the broader community.

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Funding Model for Thrive Service Fee

Fee Structure: Thrive receives 20% of the total value of rewards deployed via the Horizen ecosystem fund. This pays for a complete Grants program::​

  • All protocol and reviewer fees.​
  • White-labeling and custom integrations for Horizen dApp primitives.​
  • Integration with compliance and security modules.​
  • Dedicated support, including automation for workflows, payments, KYC/AML/KYT, and contracts.​

Horizen DAO Funding Source:

Reporting and Oversight

  • Thrive will provide an annual report to the Horizen Community of the activity and results of the program
  • Horizen Community may, at any time, vote to have this agreement terminated. If the agreement is terminated, it will have a 6 month wind down period to complete the grants in progress.

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Conclusion

Horizen is entering an exciting phase! Moving to a Base token and a L3 Appchain on Base creates an exciting environment. Horizen is bringing its OG community and culture to one of the fastest growing ecosystems in the crypto space

Thrive is looking forward to working together with the entire Horizen Community to deliver great applications. Let’s work together!

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It seems like a good proposal; although the 20% fee feels a bit steep, it’s still a solid offer

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Thank you, Rolf, for the introduction and for your leadership throughout this process.

I’m Daniel Jacobs, founder of Thrive. Our team is honored to support Horizen at this moment of transformation.

With the migration to Base and the launch of a new L3 Appchain, Horizen is positioned to lead in one of the most important frontiers in crypto: scalable, privacy-preserving infrastructure with real-world utility.

To realize that vision, the ecosystem needs top builders, real usage, and measurable onchain impact. That is exactly what Thrive is built to deliver.

We do not run a typical grants program. Thrive is a performance-based funding engine. Projects receive capital only when they generate verified results, such as smart contracts deployed, active users, and transaction volume in ZEN.

We have funded over 1,800 projects across Polygon, Hedera, ApeChain, Arbitrum, and other ecosystems. In each case, we work closely with foundations and communities to define clear outcomes, identify the right teams, and ensure that every token is put to productive use.

For Horizen, we are committing to helping deploy capital with discipline: targeting builders who accelerate adoption, expand ZEN utility, and deliver meaningful applications.

This is a pivotal moment. We are ready to help make it real. I welcome any questions from the community and look forward to building together!

Daniel Jacobs
Founder, Thrive Protocol

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Thanks @blockops — excited to be here!

I’m Senad, Head of BD at Thrive. I’ve worked closely with ecosystems like Polygon, ApeChain, and Hedera to launch performance-based funding programs that drive real traction – helping projects grow by delivering measurable onchain impact.

It’s been a great pleasure working with the Horizen team so far, and I’m excited to support the community through this next chapter. If you’re building something meaningful, would love to connect and explore how we can support!

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This statement is why I love the idea of working with Thrive.

I’m strongly in favor of this proposal and believe Thrive is the right partner to manage Horizen’s grant program. Their performance-based approach—funding based on verified outcomes like smart contracts deployed, active users, and ZEN-denominated activity—is exactly the kind of high-accountability model we need to grow a real developer ecosystem.

I’ve seen Thrive work phenomenally well in other ecosystems like ApeChain and Arbitrum, and I’ve long hoped to bring something similar to Horizen.

I’ve also had the opportunity to get to know Daniel and his team over the years and have consistently been impressed by their professionalism and execution. Multiple well-respected leaders in the space have pointed to Thrive as one of the most effective grant program managers in the industry.

This would be a huge win for our community.

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Hey Rolf

Just a quick note, staking is actually still live on EON forger nodes

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Yes, and all staking will stop after the migration.

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I am open minded to anything that may help Horizen grow. With that said, I know it’s easy for companies to say they’ve “helped” other projects, even if there aren’t positive results.

With that being said, my question focuses on this comment:

“We have funded over 1,800 projects across Polygon, Hedera, ApeChain, Arbitrum, and other ecosystems.”.

What exactly does that mean in terms of results, specifically positive ones? You can fund something and have nothing to really show for it. Not saying that’s the case, but just trying to see some examples of this funding and partnerships that Thrive is saying they have with many projects that have resulted in success?

Edit: I want to be clear that I’m not opposed to the proposal and welcome anything that can help Horizen. My question is about what you can point to specifically that has actually resulted in positive results where the money projects have given to thrive have actually been worth it. We know there are many projects in the space, so it will always be easy for companies to say they’ve “partnered”, “worked with”, and “helped” many projects, just due to the sheer number in the space.

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@thrivegiraffe @senad What do you consider to be your top 3 most successful projects and why?

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Their site only says they’ve worked with someone, but it’s hard to tell what they’ve done. There’s not much sign of them on X and Google. Does it have substance?
What would you do if you only created an app with fake and short term users?
Also, from the holder’s point of view, it’s no different from the selling pressure coming from the miner

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Any information that can be provided to these questions?

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Thanks for the thoughtful question. You’re right: in crypto, it’s easy to say “we helped.” But Thrive was built to address that exact problem.

We don’t fund promises. we fund proof. Projects only receive tokens after hitting verified milestones tied to actual usage, deployment, or growth. No milestones = no tokens.

Here are examples of provable, high-impact results from ecosystems that have trusted Thrive to deploy their tokens:

Ecosystem-Level Outcomes

Arbitrum
→ 400+ projects funded at verified milestones
→ 600+ new smart contracts deployed
→ Gitcoin moved 87% of its onchain volume to Arbitrum post-Thrive funding
→ 99% of DAO voted for continued funding of Thrive

ApeCoin DAO
→ 300+ projects funded via performance-based unlocks
→ 7x more projects funded than the DAO had managed alone
→ DAO voted to expand Thrive’s funding 20x
→ ApeChain has since invested directly into Thrive

Project-Level Examples

Intraverse (Swell)
→ Millions of transactions
→ 1M+ in-game actions (staking, minting, gameplay)
→ Integrated by 50+ communities

Uppfirst (Polygon)
→ 250K+ users
→ $20M+ in GMV (Web2.5 B2B commerce platform entering crypto)

Snyper (Social Commerce)
→ 100K+ monthly active users
→ Turning social influence into measurable crypto sales

DeFit (Polygon)
→ 1.1M logged physical activities
→ 30K+ monthly active users
→ 14M km (~8.7M miles) of movement gamified

STIP (Arbitrum)
→ Originated from Thrive’s early-stage funding
→ Led to $63M+ in follow-on ARB grants
→ 8,814 smart contract interactions across 44 dApps

TL;DR

At Thrive, we don’t say “we helped.” We fund verified outcomes, and only release funds when performance is achieved.

Performance achieved = funds released. No fluff. Just real impact.

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Great question.

We don’t define “success”, we think in terms of value. And more importantly, we only release ecosystem funds when that value is proven.

Value looks different in every ecosystem. It might mean transaction volume, user growth, protocol revenue, governance participation, or proving a novel use case.

We work directly with each ecosystem to define what value means to them, and release funding only when that value is actually delivered.

This is the core of our model and our protocol: Proving Value.

Every token allocation is tied to pre-agreed performance metrics that reflect real, ecosystem-aligned outcomes, not vague promises or vanity metrics.

Our benchmark is 70%+ performance metric achievement, based on goals set and approved by the ecosystem. For us, it’s not just about execution. It’s about verified, delivered value. That is success.

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Appreciate the question. It’s a good one.

Thrive may not be loud on Google, but many people in the know know Thrive. Nearly all of our work is white-labeled. We’ve been executing behind the scenes as the engine powering funding infrastructure for many of the most respected ecosystems in crypto. Our focus has always been on delivering real outcomes, not on marketing ourselves.

As for the concern about fake users or inflated metrics, that’s exactly the problem Thrive was built to solve. We created a protocol that only releases funds when real, verifiable value is delivered, based on the criteria set by each ecosystem.

If what you care about is long-term retention, governance participation, transaction volume, or meaningful economic activity, that’s what gets measured. If a project tries to inflate its numbers with bots or short-term activity, it simply doesn’t get funded.

From a holder’s perspective, we understand your concern around sell pressure. Bad incentives can create the same effect as uncontrolled mining. But Thrive doesn’t fund speculation or noise. We fund real builders creating value for the ecosystem. Every token we release is tied to verified outcomes that strengthen the network, attract real users, and drive durable growth.

As I shared in a previous response, it’s not just about good execution. It’s about long-term value creation. That’s our focus. And that’s what this industry needs.

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Thank you for your responses. Appreciate the clarity.

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I really appreciate the thoughtful words and support, @finpunk. That means a lot coming from someone who’s been a force for good in this space, and a champion for Horizen from the beginning.

I’ve admired your work for years, both directly and across shared ecosystems. It would be an honor to build something meaningful alongside you, @blockops, and the broader Horizen community.

We are excited to help bring long-term, value-driven funding to Horizen’s builder ecosystem. Thanks again for your support, your trust, and for everything you’ve done to push this community forward.

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Thanks for the answer. Sorry if my question was rude But I wish I could check out a more specific portfolio on the site than on the text

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There’s a huge difference in the market dynamics between the current L1 setup with 80% of new supply going to miners and node operators for providing network security versus the Base L3 model where security costs collapse and we use funds for this kind of grant program.

First the numbers:

  1. Keep the current L1 = 1,676,497.5 ZEN emitted to miners and node operators over the next 5 years.

  2. This proposed grant program will issue 1M ZEN over the same 5 year period (~40% less ZEN)

But numbers aside, the most important thing is that we’ll be funding builders making the platform more useful, which will drive network revenues. I’ll soon be publishing a ZenIP that proposes we use network revenues for a perpetual buyback and burn program for ZEN.

So we get a lot of projects building useful things on Horizen and we get more network revenues instead of a constant sell pressure from infra providers who were previously being paid to secure the network (something absolutely worth doing in the L1 world).

I’m really excited for this and see it as a huge evolution for Horizen.

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The fact that the ecosystems Thrive has supported consistently vote to continue the grant programs is a big plus.

Thanks for the extra data @thrivegiraffe!

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I’m fully in support of this proposal.

It’s easy to assume running a grants program is straightforward but that couldn’t be further from the truth. There are countless examples in this space of funds being wasted or mismanaged. What sets Thrive apart is that they they’ve proven themselves by working with experienced teams who’ve actually shipped successful dApps across multiple ecosystems.

At the end of the day, adoption is what really matters. Instead of constant sell pressure from infrastructure rewards, this shifts focus toward building a thriving ecosystem. The industry has changed real success now depends on genuine adoption and actual utility.

We can have all the technical advantages in the world, but if no one’s using the tech if no dApps are being built it means nothing. That’s exactly why this proposal is so important. It’s not just another grant program it’s a smart redirection of resources toward meaningful growth.

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