How Horizen is building privacy features on bitcoin

0:23please start by giving and explaining the goals behind creating horizon and how it rose up from cryptocurrency sure yeah so horizon was actually a response to a couple deficiencies I saw in the industry so things on governance side sustainability creating a coherent ecosystem that rewards people on the margin for participating and also extending privacy technology really into

0:49the commercial domain so with horizon you can see where we're positioning ourselves as a privacy or you could platform and are there specific problems with current blockchain technology that you're solving through horizon namely is there a privacy problem right now and are there other problems for sure there are yeah exactly so a privacy technology that we have

1:11doesn't necessarily scale very well so we're focusing on scalability of the tech and in particular our sighting technology is really the novel unique thing that we've been building very interesting and we'll get into the side chains a little bit later in the interview I do want to ask you about that because that seems very interesting but for the viewers that are familiar

1:30with Bitcoin blockchain and ethereum blockchain could you give you know a clear-cut differentiation on what is the difference between horizons blockchain and aetherium yeah so the big thing is so we came from the Bitcoin tech stack but our big innovation is the side chain technology so basically we have a core blockchain just like that

1:52point has but all of our application specific stuff will reside on their own side chain so basically block chains that are interoperable with our main blockchain really for security and economies of scale so the big difference here with aetherium is aetherium has all of the scripting language in one blockchain so basically you do everything all smart contracts in the

2:13sky jane-anne our system it'll be you can have the tokenization sidechain you can have a small contracting sidechain you could have a sidechain that does invoice factoring so really everything gets carved out into it's more efficient domain so that's not competing with the entire network very interesting and with Bitcoin at its core you can't

2:33really do smart contracts on there what kind of have you built your own technology are you integrating something like root stock to allow for smart contracts and apps on a Bitcoin core technology so we've actually built her own it's called Zen do is our sidechain technology so it's launching it our sighting technology is really the interoperability layer between our

2:53Bitcoin like core blockchain and the side chain so actually the first sidechain that we're launching I know you did an interview with Charles Hoskinson from i/o which gained carbonyl our first sidechain is gonna be a Cardinal like blockchain actually running is a verizon sidechain very interesting and is there a specific reason to choose the Cardinal blockchain

3:14over something like the etherium blockchain which has more smart contracts on it there is yeah so the technology actually lends itself very well to what we're trying to do it so it's a very academically rigorous peer reviewed proof of stake system it is just very efficient for doing the type of sidechain work that we need to do to be the workhorse or initially now the

3:35you know we're also considering integrating and aetherium like sidechain but quite frankly there was much more functionality than we actually need is we want to start very simple and then you build a very elegant architecture then layer on what we absolutely need versus kind of put everything there just because we've gotten great I'd like to take a step back quickly to the

3:58history of horizon and I believe it actually started as a crypto currency that was under a different name and he transitioned into a blockchain platform can you speak on that journey and how horizon has come to be absolutely we launched in 2017 as a project called Zen cache so a privacy wanted cryptocurrency and the goal of Zen cache the time was

4:20really changing the economics of how these watch chains work so we wanted to recognize that more than minors participate in a healthy ecosystem so we serve rewarding different stakeholder classes we built out a very large network we have 40,000 full nodes in our network for an ounce of the largest in the industry and then the next space there was actually taking

4:41the zero knowledge cryptography that we were learning by four key from Z cash code base and extending that now into the sizing system and focusing specifically on commercial use cases very interesting and with these side chains this is not some small one-day project I believe you've been working on the side chains for you know a year or so can you give a roadmap of how long

5:07have you been working on the side chain part for what specifically is live right now and how long is it going to take to complete all of the side chain part that you're looking at completing so this is a really good point in fact I had a conversation with a community member earlier today about you know why is it taking so long to get side chains to market well what you're doing core

5:26protocol work you need to practice it crypto as we like to say so you have to be very rigorous what you're doing you can't you can't rush things you don't want mistakes in your core code base that could destroy the entire ecosystem so our approach is very very rigorous we started with R&D and then we prototyped and then we started building the testing system so where we are today

5:47is we launched an alpha version of the technology last October and alpha is really just a demonstration for developers to start playing around what we're doing so it showed that you can commit Zen from Old Testament Zen into a testament side-chain and that was it had a play consensus basically no real consensus it was just saying we could run something else as a side chain to

6:08this net main chain and that was it now we're going alive in actually at the end of next week but beta beta is closing the loop so now you can send your assessment then back to the test that main chain and it'll have a working implementation or abort Sprouse and the bonus for our community and for other zero-knowledge community developers is we've actually

6:30built from smaller extent is significantly a great cryptographic library to go along with this so it's gonna be a very exciting deliverable for us now going through the rest the year were implementing the next evolution of this technology and working towards production level system great and you mentioned a few questions back about commercial uses once this is all

6:53said and done and functionally working need and looking at applying it into businesses do you as your team have a specific path that you'd like to take in terms of an industry or are you really just putting the platform out there to be used across all industries where do you see this being used in the business world yeah so what we're actually we're

7:14on one hand very much technologists and on the other hand we launched a commercial entity called horizon labs raised AVC capital and they went out and got a bunch of clients so we can actually bring this technology to market so we're you know we've you we tackle it from both sides but I think at the end of the day I believe that you have to have real business use cases to drive

7:35real economic City system so they're not just speculative vehicles definitely so it all comes down to the development first of all because if it's hard to develop on then it will be tough to have those applications to be put into the workforce right exactly and you know you asked specifically what industries to what clients do we have early where actually we have a big

7:59interest in digital invoicing and factoring of those invoices they're very much FinTech related and that's really our core we also have a client in the gaming sector but our product the way that we look at this is really we want to have the technology out there that firms can grab and deploy themselves versus us had to develop everything on our own so truly this is a platform that

8:20we're bringing to market and when you spoke about the developers you mentioned that you had cryptographic libraries and libraries can make it a lot easier for developers to you know get a head start on the development are there other incentives for developers to be developing on horizon as opposed to the Neo blockchain or a theory on blockchain definitely so we're the first

8:42watching it organically or endogenously rewards developers to launch their own their own applications so if you're a developer and you launch a horizon side-chain based application you participate in the red you scream so a percentage of transaction fees on that side chain go to the developer that launched the blockchain so actually it's really for the first time in this industry a

9:03recognition of you have to directly reward developers in order to make these things scale and go viral that's great and is that with the same Zen cache cryptocurrency or has it been renamed and can you talk a little bit about any of the other purposes of the cryptocurrency on the platform yeah so our project it's called horizon the coin itself is just called Zen we

9:25dropped the cache and actually the economics of this worked out really well so if you think about like this from the finance perspective it's where Zen is going to be a collateral asset much like aetherium is a collateral as almost more contracts but it has the money supply characteristics of Bitcoin so a truncated money supply that doesn't grow over time right it's capture 21 million

9:47just like that coin but it's required for staking on side chain these are all proof of stake side chains okay and for transaction gaps on each of the side chains so actually if there's a big source of demand present because well beyond its use of currency very interesting I haven't heard of Bitcoin core technology but with proof of stake do you see a clear advantage in that and

10:11why did you choose that over bitcoins traditional proof of work no definitely and we're actually a hybrid so the core the main blockchain is proof of work just like the coin or more technically like Z cash as we forked from Z cash Tech's tax we use equi hash proof of work but the side chains we want to be very scalable and we want them you know it in net to just be able

10:32to deploy very quickly and proof of stake was for us a natural pathway because we have a very large stake node Network already so we already have 40,000 full modes that are staked so these this was the whole point of that was to build up a network that now we can roll into the sidechain system very interesting and that was going to be my next question about a level of

10:55decentralization of the platform how much does your team care about having a fully decentralized platform and it sounds like you guys are already passed that threshold you know to be honest that we Carol but there's a lot more that we have to do so we have a roadmap for decentralization and what I'd like to say is decentralization is a journey not a destination

11:15so we're decentralizing right now the core architecture of what we have as ecosystem right a main chain with function specific or application specific block chains of active side chains there are many other elements of decentralization right we have a very large node network but we want so now the next step would be decentralizing the tracking and automating payments for

11:37that large node Network right we have the Treasury pool which is really important to fund the team in development but now the next layer is we need to layer in a decentralized voting system for how resources are used so we have a very rigorous program for decentralization but it's really one step at a time definitely you definitely have a lot on your plate so what would

11:59you say is one of the biggest challenges you foresee as the horizon platform continues to grow so the biggest challenge is right now that the proximate challenge is volatility of the markets so as a project our Treasuries denominated in Xen and so you can imagine as you're trying to resource load project plans and hire people to do work you need to flatten out that

12:21volatility for your team or release manage the volatility but from a budget perspective perspective it's very difficult from a competitive posture this industry it looks to be a little saturated but I still argue it's very early days and no single project no project has actually come up with a killer use case yet that actually justify the economics of the system so

12:42it's a wide open path for competition even though it might look like some early players are really entrenched I argue that most people that were in the world have never touched blockchain so actually it is still very large market up for grabs definitely and is your team expanding right now or are you looking for any more partnerships or test users or are you guys just head

13:05down grinding away well both so we're you have what I would consider a largely complete team and our headquarters is in Milan Italy so a little inconvenient given the recent virus outbreak but because we worked so well as a distributed team it was a seamless transition we do have a few open positions for developers for by and large we have in-house

13:27photographers we have in-house mathematicians we have all layers of in-house developers everyone from core C++ watching developers to you know web developers and everything in between so we have a pretty pretty good full-stack business you know running right now and given the recent volatility I'll say we're being more conservative than anything but I think also when when

13:49everyone else is panicked it's also a good opportunity to be bold so actually we have a big software release coming up next week like I said it's a big deal for the industry the cryptographic libraries we're releasing I think are going to be a big deal for the industry especially for the geeks of the industry and that's where you want to focus initially so we're we're kind of this

14:07combination should be conservative and bold at the same time and waiting for this volatility definitely and all the best with that Rob and for the viewers that are looking to learn more information or follow up with these updates that are upcoming what's the best way for them to learn more and to reach out so horizon dr. Lobo is this one-stop shop for everything and on

14:27there I recommend join our community discussion on discord telegram you can sign up for a newsletter so you actually get all all the updates you guys get them and if you want to try out just a little bit of Zen and what I tell people is you don't have to be fully convinced on cryptocurrency before you start getting in come dessert a faucet get Zen cache and we'll give you a little bit of

14:48Zen download a wallet try it out it's really the best way just to get our involvement great I'll leave those links in the description box below thank you so much for your time Rob that's all the time that we have for the interview today but let's follow up in the near future Thank You Ashton it's been a pleasure