The Soul of a Crypto Project
Last week we kicked off a vigorous debate in the Horizen ecosystem about whether we should pivot away from being a privacy coin. I published my thoughts here, basically coming down on the side that we should approve ZenIP 42204 and deprecate the shielded pool on the Mainchain.
The community response has been tremendous. I don’t say that because most people agreed with my position, which they have thus far, it’s the quality of debate that I love. Public blockchains have complex ecosystems of early adopters, later evangelists, devs, institutions, nonprofits, for profits, infrastructure providers, node operators, miners, businesses, etc. and you just never know how sentiment in these systems has evolved until some big audacious discussion kicks off.
For years we’d taken it as a given that the privacy contingent in Horizen dominated. It still might, and the idea of pivoting away from being a privacy coin seemed like a political third rail. We took privacy so seriously that one could say it was part of the “soul” of the project. In fact, that’s exactly what one community member said in voicing his opinion:
That’s a big shoutout to Primordial for being such an engaged community member all these years and voicing what others are probably thinking.
Coin anonymity was the core value proposition of ZenCash (our original name) when we launched, it wasn’t simply a feature in some app. It was our raison d’être and could easily be described as part of the soul of the project. Does moving away from that years later mean we’re “selling our soul?”
Every community has its own culture. Bitcoin incubated in the cypherpunk-libertarian world, Ethereum attracted idealistic devs, Cardano is known for its heavy investments in academic style research, Zcash is all about privacy, and so was Horizen. I argue that Horizen is still very much a privacy-oriented project, it’s just changing focus from coin anonymity to other types of privacy.
There’s more to the Horizen culture than a strong sense that privacy is needed to advance our mission, and I would argue that it has matured beautifully over the years. We’re an open, transparent, and genuinely nice community. You won’t find many maxis, haters, or toxicity that’s unfortunately too common in crypto. This “let’s keep our heads down, stay humble, and keep building a better world” ethos is just as much a part of our soul as the preference for privacy.
Whether it’s a zk-SNARK circuit, STARK rollup, or MPC feature, this is all just technology to bring the world together, decentralize what we can, and empower people to live better lives on their own terms. Privacy must always be a part of that or it just won’t work, but that doesn’t mean all-or-nothing on a particular privacy feature.
Horizen Labs employs a full team of cryptographers, cryptographic engineers, partners with leading academic institutions, and works with research powerhouses in crypto, such as IOHK. We have an entire cryptography-enhanced product roadmap in the works. Privacy is far from dead in Horizen and our soul is very much intact.
