Hello, our dear followers! We are glad to tell you about Horizen and its advancement. There is little news we want to share with you. So, we are going to write brief information about them, and we hope you will like all of them.
First, the tech team is excited to announce the latest update of Sphere by Horizen. This update enables you to easily manage the stake addresses of your nodes through the multi-functional app and increases the usability and functionality for our users!
Second, Horizen is excited to announce that our first Sidechain node is now up and running! This is a big step in Horizen’s transition toward offering robust Sidechain services to developers and businesses. It’s also a giant leap forward toward completing Horizen’s Sidechain SDK and the novel Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol.
Third, Transparency is one of Horizen’s core values; to its, this means both internally and externally. Each week we have calls where the entire team comes together to give each other updates from their side. These calls have been the source of many beautiful ideas, collaborations among groups, and more. The core team believes that it will benefit the project greatly if Horizen opens up these calls to the community. So, Horizen asked the city all for its thoughts.
To end with, Horizen did an excellent job. We may observe that the development team is making the project better every day, and community managers are engaged in becoming ZEN more popular. Of course, we are going to track the project, which can change our vision of privacy. Keep up the excellent work!
Development
Github metrics:
Developer activity (from Coinlib.io):
Sphere By Horizen V1.2.0b
The tech team is excited to announce the latest update of Sphere by Horizen. This update enables you to easily manage the stake addresses of your nodes through the multi-functional app and increases the usability and functionality for the users!
SPHERE BY HORIZEN’S LATEST RELEASE INCLUDES:
- Batch withdraw — Used to withdraw funds from multiple addresses in a single transaction
- Batch split — Used to deposit funds to multiple addresses in a single transaction
- Added Private Key Balance Sweep to the application Tools menu — Enables the ability to sweep all funds from private keys / WIFs
- Added the ability to view a wallet’s backup phrase in its settings window
Over time, Sphere was the one-stop-shop for most Horizen services. In order to achieve the Horizen vision and incorporate community feedback and requests, Horizen’s UX team has scheduled quarterly upgrades to make necessary improvements to the app.
Due to significant improvements to data handling, users who took part in the version 1.0.1-beta or earlier are advised to create new accounts and restore their wallet seeds.
SPHERE BY HORIZEN’S FUTURE RELEASES WILL INCLUDE:
- Node monitoring
- Ledger integration
- UI rework
- And more!
Social encounters
Transparency is one of Horizen’s core values, to us this means both internally and externally. Each week we have calls where the entire team comes together to give each other updates from their team.
These calls have been the source of many wonderful ideas, collaborations among teams, and more. The core team believes that it will benefit the project greatly if Horizen opens up these calls to the community. So, Horizen asked the community all for its thoughts.
Horizen recently held a community poll about opening team calls to the public. The team received an overwhelmingly positive response, over 400 votes were received and nearly everyone voted yes to opening these calls. So, the team members are excited to announce their decision to open their team calls to the community!
The increased involvement from the community provided through these calls will open direct channels of communication between the community and the entire Horizen team, meaning more opportunities for you to provide feedback enabling the team to better serve you, the community.
About Open Team Calls
- When are the calls?
Calls will be every Thursday at 4:30PM UTC/12:30PM EST. Each call typically lasts approximately 30 mins. You can join as often or as little as you would like.
- Where are the calls held?
Calls are held on the Horizen Discord server on our brand new Weekly Insider channel. Thank you to everyone who cast their vote and helped us select a name!
- What these calls are about?
You can hear weekly team updates from the following divisions:
- Engineering
- Node network
- Product/UX
- Customer service/Helpdesk
- Legal
- Business development
- Marketing
- CEO closing thoughts
- Will I be able to ask questions?
Yes! The team will reserve 5 mins for questions from the listeners at the end of each call.
The first call is this Thursday (8/15), please make sure that you join the Discord channel for those calls!
Finance
Roadmap
Q2 2017 — Horizen launch (as ZenCash)
- Listed on Bittrex exchange
- Full client wallet
Q3 2017 -Expanded privacy features
- ZenChat Messenger
- TLS/SSL Certificate
- Tor nodes
- Wallets: mobile, web, paper, third-party
Q4 2017 — Secure Nodes Live
- First secure & private node system
- Block rewards for node operators
- Arizen lite wallet release
- Interim proposal & voting system
Q1 2018 — IOHK R&D partnership
- Team expansion
- New website launched + soft rebrand
- 20+ partnerships & integrations along the way!
Q2 2018 — Transition from currency to platform
Q3 2018 — Super Nodes and Brand Expansion
- Expanded the brand to Horizen
- Prevention of 51% attack research and development
- Innovation: Enhanced the Nakamoto Consensus
- Blockchain improvements
- DAG scaling prototype
- Design sidechain model
- 30+ partnerships & integration
Q4 2018 — Super Nodes Live
- Release flagship app (Radical Usability)
- Begin SDK design for sidechains
- Begin Sidechains prototype
- Public Accounting System (Radical Transparency)
Q1 2019 — Blockchain Improvements (zk-SNARKS circuit)
- ZEN 2.0.16 — zk-SNARKS improvements
- Node tracker improvements
- Full client wallets compatibility
- Sphere by Horizen improvements
- Zen Academy
Q2 2019 — Blockchain Improvements (Sapling & Sidechain SDK)
- ZEN 2.1.0 — Sapling
- Sidechain SDK Alpha
- Reference sidechain testnet
- Sphere by Horizen improvements
Q3 2019 — Platform (Publish Reference Blockchain)
- ZEN 3.X.X
- Reference sidechain beta
- Sphere by Horizen improvements
- Blockchain improvements
- Mobile (iOS & Android)
- Distributed VPN service
- Sidechain SDK Beta
Q4 2019 — Scaling & Performance (BlockDAG)
- ZEN 3.X.X
- Reference sidechain
- Treasury sidechain
- Begin on-chain payment dev (stretch)
- Begin DAG design (stretch)
- Sidechain SDK
Partnerships and team members
We are excited to welcome the newest member of our engineering team, Oleg Alesandrov. Oleg has a wealth of experience and knowledge under his belt. Including programming on Java, Scala, and Functional programming paradigm. Oleg enjoys solving difficult problems with creative solutions!
Ecosystem
Horizen’s First Sidechain Node Live On Devnet
Horizen is excited to announce that our first Sidechain node is now up and running!
This is a big step in Horizen’s transition toward offering robust Sidechain services to developers and businesses. It’s also a giant leap forward toward completing Horizen’s Sidechain SDK and the novel Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol.
If you missed it, you can read about Horizen’s transition to Sidechains HERE or check out its whitepaper.
The First Sidechain Node — A Big Step Forward
Having the first Sidechain node running is the result of 7+ months of development led by Horizen’s R&D Director Alberto Garoffolo. The first Sidechain node allows to integrate independent node components and ensure that they work as expected.
The Sidechain Node consists of 4 independent elements, maintained, and aggregated together by NodeHolder software component:
- State: controls the list of unspent outputs
- History: contains all the blocks of Sidechain and validate them through Sidechain Consensus
- Wallet: contains Node related secrets (like private keys) and balances
- MemoryPool: like in ZEND contains transactions that can be included in to Block
Before creating this first Sidechain node, developers was only able to test components via unit tests. Now we can see all node components in a coherent view as a single entity. This view allows the team to work on testing the Sidechain network and to develop features and fixes to make it more stable. The first Sidechain Node also allows to develop complex integration tests for different workflows. Now, the team will continue to BUIDL (build)!
In the next couple of months, developers will continue working on the API, which interfaces to interact with the sidechain. The tech team will also be spending time building the backward transfer functionalities on the mainchain. Of course, the Horizen team will have to do extensive testing and bug fixing on the delivered code. Lastly, they will be working on the consensus, as the one used now is a simplified version.
The end goal for the beginning of Q4 2019 is the Sidechain Alpha, which will allow developers to build applications with customized transactions and custom business rules.
Learn about Horizen Sidechain use cases by watching this video presented by Rolf Versluis, Horizen Co-founder and Executive Adviser:
Rumours
Social media metrics
Social media activity:
Social media dynamics:
The graph above shows the dynamics of changes in the number of Horizen Reddit subscribers, Twitter followers and Facebook likes. The information is taken from Coingecko.com.
