Horizen Global: Q&A
At Luxor we’re fortunate to get an opportunity to sit down with Rowan, Horizen’s Director of Business Development. He provided a variety of insightful comments on Horizen and where it is heading.
Q1: What is the Zen project trying to achieve?
Our mission is to promote the fundamental human right to privacy but we’re doing it in a responsible way. We believe that the more people that understand and value privacy, the more it will be properly used and respected.
We’re working extremely hard to bring the benefits of next-gen technologies to the mass market by building a technology platform that aims to provide users with complete control of their digital footprint.
Our organisation is working towards the day when anyone anywhere in the world will be able to design, build and earn revenue from privacy-based applications on the Horizen Platform. This will allow us to bring thousands of real-life services that offer people freedom and everyday utility on a global scale.
Q2: What within the Zen roadmap are you most excited about?
I’m personally most excited about the launch of our side chain solution as it is the primary component that enables us to move from a privacy-focused cryptocurrency operating in what is a ultimately a very niche market, to an application platform that operates in the mainstream market and delivers real benefits that will be felt by people all over the world.
Q3: What do you see as the biggest barrier to the project right now?
I think the biggest barriers apply not just to Horizen, but to our entire industry. Our org’s is currently tackling a bunch of large and extremely complex technical challenges but for me the biggest barriers that stand between us and mass adoption are probably; a) usability, b) accessibility & c) utility.
Most of the core tech’ in this industry is still at a very early stage of development so products are almost always too complicated for an average user to pick up and immediately understand. To succeed in our mission to bring crypto’ and Responsible Privacy to the masses, we need to seriously simplify our offerings and put huge effort into creating ‘Apple like’ UI’s that anyone can pick up and intuitively find their way around. That’s exactly why we created a dedicated UI/UX Division when we reorganised/professionalised our org’ back in January of this year. Gustavo Fialho (Director of UI/UX) and his team ensure that everything we create is designed with our users’ needs in mind. We’ll soon be releasing our new flagship wallet which will be a great first step to lowering the technical barrier to entry for people that want to benefit from the products we’re bringing to market.
The next big barrier is the lack of quick and easy access to cryptocurrencies. We rely on exchanges to act as on and off ramps between FIAT (government issued money) and cryptocurrency (digital and generally de-politicalised money) but the problem is that there aren’t many banks willing to assist exchanges with that process for anything other than the biggest projects. That poses a chicken and egg problem for projects like us as it’s very difficult to get adoption without ease of access, and you can’t get ease of access without a large user base. That said, we are constantly working to develop quick and simple ways for people to get their hands on ZEN. At present, you can purchase through Changelly, trade directly with EUR, USD and TRY through SistemKoin and/or trade with directly with EUR via Panda.Exchange. Beyond that, the typical on ramp for ZEN is to buy some BTC then trade that for ZEN at any one of our ~25 exchange partners: https://horizen.global/exchanges/
The other fairly large barrier to entry for many people is the lack of real world utility beyond simply using cryptocurrencies as a medium of exchange. In places like Venezuela a relatively stable medium of exchange is almost certainly enough to entice users however in places like the UK/US where the pound/dollar is stable, you could argue that the primary participation incentive is simply speculative gain. We need to change that! It’s obviously early days but if we want our industry to be wildly successful then we really need to focus on developing consumer products that people soon won’t be able to live without. In a nutshell, that’s why we’re striving to create an app’ based ecosystem. We see it as the first step in bringing real utility to our present and future community.
Q4: Are there any roles within the team that you’re currently looking to fulfill?
We currently have a team of 50+ people which is about the right size for where we are in our roadmap so we aren’t actively recruiting however we are working on an ambassador program which will require talented and passionate people that want to help bring ZEN to new regions of the world. If that sounds like something you’d be interested in, please dive in to our forum and let us know what you want to do to help and why you’re the right person to do it. https://forum.horizen.global
Luxor’s full article on Horizen: Horizen Global: A global blockchain platform and coin with extensive DApp capabilities
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