Celebrating Super Nodes One Last Time, Enter Collators

6 min readJul 18, 2024

Disclaimer: This article is intended for informational purposes only and does not constitute a solicitation to buy or invest in ZEN. I work for the Horizen Foundation, but this article does not represent an official source of information from the foundation. It is important to conduct your own research before making any financial or investment decisions.

This article is also available in French.

This July 18, 2024, marks the sixth and ultimate anniversary of the Super Nodes, which provide an additional layer of security to Horizen’s mainchain. With Horizen 2.0, other node types will be available to secure the network and replace the existing infrastructure.

Already 6 years

The first anniversary of the Horizen ecosystem (then ZenCash) was marked by the introduction of Super Nodes, which followed and complemented the Secure Nodes introduced six months earlier.

This second type of node, requiring more ZENs at stake (500 instead of 42) and more computing power, provided an additional layer of security and enriched the panel of community contributions.

On the occasion of our sixth year (+ 6 months) of successful node infrastructure, I’d like to take a look back at our past structure, present, and future.

From 42 to 500 ZEN: Exploration of Secure and Super Nodes

First of all, let me remind you what a node is in the world of blockchain, and forgive the simplicity of the following explanation for the most aficionados among you. This article is also for curious non-coiners!

A node is like a mini-computer. It has computing power (data processing capacity) and disk space (data storage capacity) and must be connected to the network (Internet or Intranet) in order to communicate with other nodes.

These nodes can have different functions. They can create blocks (to add blocks to the blockchain and thus compete with other nodes), validate blocks (they don’t create the blocks, but still guarantee their validity), or simply maintain a copy (which also ensures the overall security of the network by being a guarantor of past data).

In Horizen in July 2018, there were four types of nodes, some of which are still active today.

There were mining nodes, which are still active today and will remain so until the Horizen 2.0 update. These are the nodes that add blocks to the blockchain and decide which transactions should be added. Mining nodes are rewarded by keeping a portion of the $ZEN created (known as “mined”) with each new block*.
Secure and Super Nodes, on the other hand, do not participate in consensus, but guarantee the security of the blockchain by keeping a copy of it, making attacks more difficult. Both types of nodes are used to earn rewards for users. Secure nodes are no longer active today, but super nodes will remain active until the Horizen 2.0 update.
Regular nodes keep a full copy of the blockchain and guarantee past transactions, but do not earn rewards.

*: For those who want to delve deeper, each new block created (mined or forged) usually results in the issuance of a certain amount of tokens. This amount of tokens is usually given entirely to the miner, i.e. the person who created the block, as a reward for the electricity and time it took to create the block. This is known as the coinbase reward (which has nothing to do with the exchange of the same name).

In Horizen, 60% of this reward goes to the miner, 10% to the Secure Node holders (which now go to the Forger Nodes), 10% to the Secure Node holders and 20% to the Horizen Foundation Treasury, which is a DAO, but we’ll look at that in another article.

Farewell Secure Nodes, Welcome to Horizen EON!

By 2023, we’ve already said goodbye to Secure Nodes and made way for Forger Nodes.

But why?

First of all, Horizen’s mainchain was already largely secure and resilient, and the Super Nodes already provided a sufficient additional layer of security (to the Mining Nodes).

Second, the Forger Nodes make it possible to welcome a new chain into the Horizen ecosystem, a so-called EVM-compatible chain, Horizen EON.

In short, an EVM compatible chain (EVM stands for Ethereum Virtual Machine) uses the same standards as the Ethereum blockchain. The advantage is that Ethereum developers are numerous. In addition, not all blockchains use the same language or have the same features, which sometimes requires developers to adapt to work on a particular blockchain. Therefore, there are many developers available for Ethereum. Having an EVM blockchain means that more developers are available to contribute to the ecosystem.

More developers means more use cases, more applications, and therefore more users and a larger community (and therefore more visibility).

This second chain, Horizen EON, has the advantage of communicating with our main and historical chain, Horizen, making the ecosystem more attractive and open to external blockchains (i.e. other EVM chains, i.e. other chains compatible with the Ethereum blockchain).

Given the diversity of compatible EVM chains, Horizen 2.0 proposes a much more ambitious approach.

Getting Prepared for the Horizen 2.0 Revolution

How does Polkadot work?

We can’t talk about Horizen 2.0 without mentioning Polkadot and its structure.

It’s an ecosystem that consists of two main types of chains:

The relay chain, which is unique and serves to both connect and secure the parachains.
And the parachains, which are all the individual blockchains attached to this relay chain. They are designed for specific purposes.

There are two types of chains, which implies the existence of two different types of nodes.

On the one hand, the nodes of the relay chain ensure that data and transactions circulate within the ecosystem in accordance with the rules imposed (in terms of consensus and security) and can safely reach the parachains. They are the ones who validate the blocks.

Parachain nodes (collators) collect transactions on their specific parachain and forward them to the relay chain for validation.

In short, relay chain nodes are essential for maintaining security and consensus across the entire Polkadot network. Meanwhile, parachain collators focus on collecting and organizing transactions on their parachain, allowing the network to function smoothly and cohesively.

Why is this important?

It’s important to understand Polkadot because this is the technology that Horizen 2.0 will run on.

We’re not looking at a simple ecosystem update, but a complete overhaul.

This overhaul began in February 2024 with the presentation of a ZenIP, a proposal for improvements specific to the Horizen ecosystem, which was presented to the community and received almost unanimous support.

Since the beginning of 2024, Horizen Labs, the largest company in the Horizen ecosystem, has been building zkVerify, a chain for zk proof verification.

Based on Substrate, the same technology used by Polkadot, zkVerify aims to become the relay chain for the new Horizen ecosystem. And by the way, incentives await active developers on the testnet!

Getting back to the nodes, we need to reorganize them.

We need validator nodes on the zkVerify relay chain (reserved for experienced developers) and collator nodes (open to all) on the Horizen EON parachain.

This reorganization marks the end of Super Nodes and Forger Nodes. But don’t worry, there will be exciting rewards on both chains, as well as possible (and very likely) airdrop rewards for everyone involved in the migration.

How do we get there?

Restructuring on this scale takes time, expertise and money. Once again, it was through a ZenIP that the details of the migration were proposed and validated by the community.

It’s important to note that :

$ZEN on Horizen EON (the EVM, and therefore on MataMask or Cobalt) will automatically be available on Horizen 2.0;
$ZEN on Sphere by Horizen, exchanges, and any address starting with “zn” will require certain steps on the user side to retrieve $ZEN on Horizen 2.0.
These steps have not been announced yet. It’s important to only trust and verify official information. I recommend reading this article to protect yourself from scams.

These are the only official sources:

Horizen X: https://x.com/horizenglobal
Horizen Labs X: https://x.com/HorizenLabs
Telegram: https://t.me/horizencommunity
Discord: https://horizen.io/invite/discord
Blog: https://blog.horizen.io
Discourse: https://horizen.discourse.group
Website: www.horizen.io
Github: https://github.com/HorizenOfficial
Newsletter Signup: https://www.horizen.io/developer-newsletter/

Even if I share information from my Medium or Twitter, check the official Horizen accounts. Make this a habit all the time.

Thank you for taking the time to read this article. In this environment of infinite knowledge that is blockchain, it’s important to educate yourself to know where to invest and which projects are worth supporting. At Horizen, we value the contributions of the community, whether in development or in the DAO. Thank you for being a part of it.

If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask in the comments and I’ll be sure to answer them.

See you soon for more Web3 articles!