Track market-moving stories before they get noisy

SEC FILLINGS: 8-K - Grayscale Horizen Trust (ZEN) (0001748945) (Filer)

Privacy Coins – Will Growing Regulations Strangle Monero, Dash and ZCash to Death?

Altcoins Forging Fresh Highs While Bitcoin Remains Stagnant

ZEN: Horizen Partners with Caldera to Launch Privacy-first Blockchain on Base

Today, Web3 has proven itself for securing assets and moving money. But when it comes to protecting data, maintaining confidentiality, and enabling truly private, compliant applications, the tools remain fragmented and siloed. There’s still no native, generalized “privacy-first infrastructure” for Web3: one that combines confidentiality, regulatory alignment and seamless composability across chains.

Enter Horizen. Horizen is launching its mainnet with Caldera as a dedicated appchain built via Caldera’s Rollup Engine — a full production-ready environment where privacy meets interoperability, moving beyond testnets into live deployments. Horizen is an EVM blockchain built on Base for secure, regulatory-compliant confidential trading and DeFi applications for individual traders and financial institutions.

The Horizen testnet is already live, and open for users to explore and developers to launch applications.

Building the Infrastructure for Confidential Web3Horizen is delivering what many blockchains promise but few deliver: a modular, EVM-compatible chain optimized for confidential, compliant, developer-friendly applications.

Key elements of Horizen’s vision:

Privacy by design: integrating technologies like zero-knowledge proofs, trusted execution environments and selective disclosure.

Compliance aware: giving enterprises the tools to build onchain privacy solutions while retaining auditability, regulatory alignment, and control.

Developer-first: EVM-compatible, enabling development with familiar stacks (Solidity, Ethers, Viem, and Foundry) so privacy isn’t the barrier but the enabler.

Now, by launching on Caldera, Horizen gains access to a high-performance, sovereign rollup environment that’s already connected into a broader interoperable network — giving the chain the advantages of both privacy sovereignty and cross-chain reach.

Why Horizen Needed a Dedicated AppchainIn its evolution, Horizen recognized three core limitations of building on a generic shared layer:

1. Deep protocol customization for privacy
Horizen needed to embed confidentiality, selective disclosure, and custom governance directly into the chain’s native execution model. Only a sovereign rollup can give that level of control.

2. Economic sovereignty and token utility
Horizen’s native token (ZEN) and privacy stack required bespoke fee models, staking mechanisms, and ecosystem incentives aligned with confidentiality and compliance use-cases. A dedicated chain enables full alignment.

3. Uncongested, predictable performance
Privacy-enabled applications demand consistent performance and reliability—not subject to the traffic surges of generic DeFi and gaming activity. A dedicated chain ensures resource availability and premium UX.

How Caldera Powers Horizen’s VisionCaldera brings the infrastructure so Horizen can focus purely on privacy innovation:

Production-ready infrastructure: Caldera’s Rollup Engine handles sequencer operations, batching and settlement, so Horizen doesn’t have to build chain operations from scratch.

Built on Base: As a Base L3, Horizen can tap into the network effects provided by one of the top rollups on Ethereum. Horizen’s token, ZEN, has already completed its migration to Base, unlocking access to liquidity and enabling the onboarding of privacy-focused token holders.

Sovereign yet connected: Horizen retains full protocol sovereignty while being part of a wider Internet of Chains — the best of both worlds.

A New Primitive for the Internet of ChainsWith Horizen’s appchain launch, Caldera’s ecosystem gains a powerful new building-block: a privacy-centric rollup that any other chain in the network can tap. The flywheel is real:

Other chains in Caldera’s ecosystem can plug into Horizen’s privacy primitives: identity systems, confidential finance modules, developer tooling.

Liquidity and value propagate: ZEN via Metatoken moves across chains; developers on Horizen build tools that serve users elsewhere.

Network effects intensify: each added chain (Horizen included) doesn’t just bring more users — it brings unique capabilities that strengthen the entire network.

The Future is Interconnected, Confidential, and SovereignHorizen’s launch shows that the next wave of on-chain innovation isn’t about just decentralizing finance — it’s about privacy, compliance, sovereign execution, and interoperability. By combining a dedicated appchain architecture with the connectivity of Caldera’s Metalayer, Horizen can pioneer a new category of apps: confidential, developer-friendly, multi-chain.

As more projects like Horizen build on Caldera, we’re not just adding chains — we’re adding distinct capabilities that raise the baseline for everyone. The Internet of Chains isn’t just about scaling users. It’s about scaling possibilities.

We’re proud to power innovators like Horizen as they push the frontier. Congratulations to the Horizen team on this major milestone.

About CalderaCaldera is powering the next internet. Its architecture consists of two core components: the Rollup Engine and the Metalayer. The Rollup Engine is a modular operating system used to launch high-performance, custom chains on leading chains and frameworks like Arbitrum, Optimism, Base, and ZKsync. The Metalayer then automatically connects every chain into one network. Through this interoperability protocol, all chains access shared liquidity and secure, intent-based bridging that transforms fragmented networks into a unified Internet of Chains. And now with the launch of the Caldera Bridge Preview, Metatoken, and Stablecoin Module, this expands the product suite and market size that Caldera is tackling.

Website | X/Twitter | Docs | Rollup Engine | Metalayer

PANews reported on December 9th that Horizen, a privacy project founded in 2017, has officially transitioned to a Layer 3 mainnet on Base, aiming to provide "compliant optional privacy" features. The project has abandoned its old mainnet and EON sidechain and relaunched the ZEN token. Horizen plans to invest 100 million ZEN over five years to support the development of privacy-related applications, including those in finance, gaming, and social scenarios. The new architecture supports customized modules by jurisdiction, enabling compliant disclosure. ZEN is now traded on the Base chain and is supported by exchanges such as Binance and Coinbase.

Bithumb was fined for sharing user data overseas without consent.

South Korean regulatory authorities have ordered cryptocurrency exchange Bithumb to pay a 210 million won (approximately $136,000) fine for sharing user personal information with overseas platforms without user consent. According to an announcement released Thursday by South Korea’s Personal Information Protection Commission (PIPC), the relevant user data exposure occurred between September and November 2025. At that time, Bithumb transferred user information to overseas platforms while sharing its USDT market order book data. The PIPC also noted that when assisting users with asset transfers to 13 overseas exchanges, Bithumb failed to obtain full and sufficient user consent before sharing personal details including names, wallet addresses, and dates of birth. For the two violations, the PIPC not only imposed the fine but also ordered Bithumb to rectify its processes and management systems related to cross-border transmission of user information.

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Analyst: SK Hynix’s US listing and fund-raising could trigger a valuation re-rating.

According to Bloomberg, SK Hynix is set to issue American Depositary Receipts (ADRs) on the Nasdaq on July 10. The listing aims to raise nearly $30 billion, making it one of the largest ADR issuances in history. Market participants widely believe the move will significantly expand its global investor base and may drive a valuation re-rating. Multiple asset management firms project that if its valuation converges with Micron Technology’s, its share price could rise by 30% over the next year. One fund manager noted that SK Hynix should trade at a valuation at least on par with Micron, as demand for memory chips is likely to outpace supply for years to come. The listing comes amid an unusually strong boom in the memory chip sector. Shares of Micron, SK Hynix, and Samsung Electronics have all surged over 200% this year, marking their best annual performance in decades. Demand for High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) from AI servers is widely seen as the driver of a structural "memory supercycle".

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Jefferies: Samsung is likely to follow SK Hynix’s example to list in the US via ADRs.

Jeff Kim, Head of Research at Jefferies, said Samsung is likely to follow SK Hynix in listing on the U.S. market via American Depositary Receipts (ADRs), which will boost the share price of the South Korean chipmaker whose valuation lags behind Micron. "Chip stocks are at a turning point. ADRs will serve as an important catalyst to drive their valuations," he added.

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UBS and TD Cowen sharply raise Arm’s target price, betting on a revaluation of Arm’s AI data center CPU value.

Arm’s stock price pulled back this week alongside the high-valuation AI sector, though some Wall Street analysts say the correction does not alter the company’s long-term standing in AI data centers. UBS sharply raised Arm’s price target from $260 to $470, retaining its Buy rating; TD Cowen lifted its target from $265 to $475, also keeping a Buy recommendation. Both firms share the view that as agentic AI evolves, CPUs could gain greater importance in data center architectures, rather than GPUs continuing to monopolize the investment narrative. TD Cowen believes that over the long term, CPUs could hold a more strategic position in certain AI workloads. UBS, meanwhile, emphasizes that the real debate in the market centers on the revenue potential of Arm’s self-developed or independent CPU business. The bank projects Arm’s CPU-related revenue could reach around $14 billion by 2030, though the company itself has stated this business will not have a material impact on its finances until fiscal 2028. Arm’s strengths lie in low latency and energy efficiency—metrics that major cloud providers are increasingly prioritizing as they expand AI infrastructure. Even with its stock pulling back from recent highs in the short term, analysts still view Arm as one of the key beneficiaries of the server CPU upgrade cycle.

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Crypto whale who profited over $23.77 million from BAT ICO liquidates 27,586 ETH

According to monitoring by Yu Jing, a whale that earned $23.77 million from participating in the BAT ICO sold 15,000 ETH (valued at roughly $24.29 million) two hours ago. The whale has now fully liquidated all 27,586 ETH it received from selling 35 million BAT on-chain over the past day and a half, converting the proceeds into 44.836 million USDS at an average selling price of $1,625.

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Sources: Iraqi officials once considered withdrawing from OPEC, but current plans are to remain a member and pursue a higher quota.

A senior Iraqi oil ministry official said that if OPEC quotas are not significantly increased, Iraq will be forced to consider all available options. Sources said Iraqi officials had considered withdrawing from OPEC, but the current plan is to remain a member and push for higher quotas. (Jinshi)

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2025 was a redefining year for Horizen.

In 2025, Horizen made the decisions that define long-term relevance. The team clarified what privacy must mean in an onchain world, sharpened who Horizen is built for, and aligned the network around real users, real businesses, and real developers - not abstract ideals. These choices shaped everything that followed, from product direction to ecosystem design, and set the foundation for sustainable growth.

The results of that work became visible toward the end of the year, with milestones that mark the beginning of Horizen’s next chapter.

A major emphasis was placed on research and discovery. Throughout the year, the team developed a structured understanding of market dynamics, emerging privacy technologies, regulatory realities, competitive approaches, developer needs, and real-world user needs. This targeted work was designed to answer one question:

Where can Horizen win, and why?

That research-driven approach created clarity and alignment across product, engineering, and ecosystem growth. It sharpened Horizen’s positioning around practical and regulatory-compliant privacy, and clarified how privacy must function inside open ecosystems like Ethereum and Base, not outside of them.

Several initiatives that will define Horizen’s future were born from this approach, including initial product designs like Horizen Confidential Compute Environment (HCCE). 

By choosing to prepare deliberately, Horizen entered mainnet not as a project searching for relevance, but as a network launching with purpose.

One of the most significant milestones in Horizen’s history took place in 2025 with the successful migration of the ZEN token to Base, accompanied by the introduction of a new tokenomics model designed to support Horizen’s next phase of growth.

This migration marked a strategic shift in how Horizen participates in the broader onchain ecosystem. By migrating ZEN to an ERC-20 asset on Base, Horizen moved from operating as an isolated Layer 1 to becoming a first-class participant in the Ethereum ecosystem. The migration unlocked immediate access to deep liquidity, native DeFi integrations, and composability with the tools, protocols, and capital that developers already use. More importantly, it removed friction for builders, creating a faster and more credible path from idea to live application. 

Just as importantly, the transition was executed with ZEN holders front and center. Horizen delivered a seamless, user-friendly claiming experience that enabled holders to move their assets safely to Base with confidence.

Throughout the migration, the team worked closely with major exchanges to ensure uninterrupted access to ZEN, preserving liquidity and minimizing disruption for the community. This combination of thoughtful execution and broad exchange support ensured continuity, accessibility, and trust at a critical moment of change.

Together, these efforts laid the economic and infrastructural foundation for Horizen’s next phase of ecosystem growth, one that is fully embedded in the Ethereum and Base environments, without leaving its community behind.

That foundation was completed with the launch of the new Horizen chain at the end of the year. With this launch, Horizen finalized its transition to a fully EVM-native, privacy-enabled Layer 3 blockchain on Base. 

By launching on Base, Horizen positioned privacy where it matters most: alongside deep liquidity, mature tooling, and a rapidly growing developer and user base. The new chain will enable a practical and compliance-friendly path to private onchain activity, allowing users and businesses to participate without exposing sensitive strategies, positions, or data. Rather than treating privacy as an add-on or an edge case, Horizen established it as a foundational capability that works natively within real onchain workflows.  

The launch also introduced the first cohort of ecosystem applications and infrastructure partners, reinforcing Horizen’s focus on execution, composability, and ecosystem readiness from day one.

We’re live!

Join us as we celebrate Horizen’s mainnet launch on @Base. Tune in to hear from special guests and core team members as they share insights on what’s ahead.

x.com/i/broadcasts/1…

Most importantly, the mainnet launch marked a clear transition in Horizen’s trajectory. The network moved from preparation to participation, from laying foundations to enabling real usage. With the core infrastructure live, Horizen is now positioned to shift its focus toward growing adoption, supporting builders, expanding the ecosystem, and delivering the next wave of privacy-enhancing capabilities, including staking and confidential compute.

In parallel with these significant infrastructure milestones, Horizen launched the Thrive Builder Program in 2025, establishing Horizen’s long-term commitment to ecosystem growth.

First announcements from our Horizen x @thriveprotocol builder funding program drop next week

These aren’t just ideas - they’re applications already building on our infrastructure

The privacy-first builders we’ve been waiting for are here.

Backed by a community-approved allocation of one million ZEN over five years, the program established a structured path for builders to ship privacy-preserving applications that drive real ZEN usage.

The program introduced milestone-based funding accountability and transparent oversight while prioritizing high-impact use cases across DeFi AI gaming and governance. 

Meet the first builders funded by the Horizen x @ThriveProtocol Builder Funding Program:

- @LighterIM - ZK-enabled DeOTC protocol for private, compliant OTC trading
- @datahubz - Automated compliance workflows (SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA) powered by Hubz
- @tachyonpe -

Together, the program and the new Horizen chain create a reinforcing loop: infrastructure designed for privacy-aligned applications, paired with a funding mechanism built to bring them to life. The program is already supporting a growing set of live and in-development applications, including:

Zendex as a private DEX designed to stop MEV bots from front running trades

Tachyon enabling cross chain transfers that break the surveillance trail

DataHubz delivering enterprise compliance through cryptographic proof instead of trust based audits

Nyra bringing private perpetuals trading onchain

Obscura powering social trading with verifiable PnL

Lighter.IM enabling ZKP based on and off ramps

AdPriva building verifiable ad engagement with zero knowledge proofs

Gamblor introducing provably fair gaming with privacy built into every hand

Learn more about the program

Further Supporting Builders and the ZK EcosystemThroughout 2025, Horizen hosted and supported a select number of workshops and hackathon-style events, in collaboration with the ecosystem partners such as zkVerify. These efforts focused on education, experimentation, and early developer engagement.

Notable activations included:

Fhenix

ETHDenver participation through SporkDAO

SocialConnect New Delhi

0xCairo

Berlin Hackathon

The Horizen community voted in on 7 ZenIPs (ZEN Improvement Proposals) in 2025, including:

ZenIP 42406 Addendum: Proposing a Bold Leap Forward to Base for $ZEN and EON – 99.7% in favor

ZenIP 42407 Addendum: Horizen 2.0 Tokenomics Proposal – 99.4% in favor

ZenIP 42410 Horizen Developer Grants Program - Thrive Partnership – 100% in favor

ZenIP 42411: A Treasury Management Framework for Horizen DAO – 100% in favor

Exchange Listings and Marketing Allocation – 99.2% in favor

The community also voted to elect new Special Council members to maintain strong governance and continuity throughout the year.

March Cohort Special Council Election

September Cohort Special Council Election

Check out all ZEP IPs and their details.

With the core network live and ecosystem taking shape, Horizen enters its next phase focused on deepening utility, expanding adoption, and delivering privacy capabilities that scales with real-world demand. 

A major milestone on the near-term horizons is the release of the Horizen Confidential Compute Environment (HCCE). Designed to make privacy-preserving computation accessible without complex cryptography, HCCE introduces a powerful new execution layer that enables developers to run sensitive logic securely and verifiably onchain. This will unlock a broad class of applications, from institutional workflows to privacy-sensitive business use cases. This will mark a significant step forward in making privacy practical at scale. Read the HCCE whitepaper to learn more.  

ZEN staking will be relaunched in Q1 2026, re-establishing a crucial participation and incentive mechanism for the Horizen community. 

The ZEN staking is designed to strengthen network security, reward long-term participation, and reinforce ZEN’s role as the economic backbone of the Horizen ecosystem. This will turn passive holding to active engagement, tying network growth more closely to community involvement. 

At the same time, the Horizen ecosystem will continue to expand. More new applications are preparing to go live across DeFi, business infrastructure, gaming, and emerging onchain categories. As more teams deploy and iterate, Horizon’s ecosystem will move from early formation to sustained momentum, driven by real usage and real demand for privacy-enabled execution. 

Together, these developments signal a clear shift in Horizen’s trajectory. With infrastructure in place, aligned incentives coming online, and a growing pipeline of applications, Horizen is positioned to turn its vision of practical, compliant privacy into durable, onchain reality.

Stay tuned for what comes next.

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Every day, millions of dollars are silently extracted from DeFi traders. Not through hacks or exploits, but through something far more insidious: the public mempool. MEV bots, front-runners, and sandwich attacks have turned transparency into a tax on every trade. But what if there was a way to trade in silence?

The Horizen x Thrive Builder Funding Program is now in full swing. With 16 approved projects in the pipeline and more under evaluation, we're launching a Project Showcase to give the community a closer look at what's being built on Horizen's privacy-first infrastructure.

For our first showcase, we're featuring one of the most anticipated projects: ZENDEX, a privacy-preserving decentralized exchange that's turning heads with its ambitious mission to become the "Private Liquidity Hub" for the entire Ethereum ecosystem.

To better understand their vision and what they are building, we sat down with the ZENDEX team.

1) In simple terms, what is ZENDEX, why does it exist, and what specific problems in decentralized trading are you trying to solve?

ZENDEX is a high performance trade execution layer built on a Horizen Chain. ZENDEX exists to remove the "Transparency Tax" that extracts millions of dollars from traders everyday in order to benefit MEV bots, front-running schema, and increases slippage costs. ZENDEX ensures that Horizen enabled shielded execution environments disarms public predators from benefiting from intent leakages while delivering measurable value added trading enhancements through privacy technologies.

2) ZENDEX positions itself as a privacy-first decentralized exchange. For a user making their first trade today, what is the most noticeable difference compared to trading on a typical public DEX?

The most noticeable difference is the "Silence." On a typical DEX, you confirm a trade and watch it sit in a public mempool where bots can attack it; on ZENDEX, your order is matched privately on the Horizen Blockchain. With ZENDEX, you get CEX-like execution speed and "Invisible" limit orders, meaning the market doesn't move against you the moment you place a large trade.

3) What message would you like to share directly with the Horizen community, including builders, validators, and supporters, about ZENDEX's mission and progress so far?

Our mission is to turn Horizen into the "Private Liquidity Hub" for the entire Ethereum ecosystem. We've successfully moved from a hackathon concept to an execution powerhouse by turning every trade into a ZEN enhancing event. We are proving that Horizen's zero-knowledge tech isn't just for "hiding" data, it is primed for building the most efficient and fair financial markets in the world.

4) Many exchanges are fully public and transparent by default. How is ZENDEX able to implement hidden order books and shielded trades from a technical standpoint, and what impact do these features have on user experience and market integrity?

Technically, we utilize Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKP) and Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) on Horizen Chain. This allows the exchange to "verify" that a match is valid without "revealing" the details of the orders to the public blockchain until after settlement. This creates a "Dark Pool" effect that protects market integrity by preventing predatory front-running and allowing institutional-sized trades to execute without causing massive price volatility.

This is a critical distinction. Traditional DeFi's radical transparency was initially seen as a feature, but it's increasingly clear that full visibility creates attack vectors that sophisticated actors exploit at retail's expense.

5) Comparing ZENDEX to other decentralized exchanges, both the typical AMM platforms and the newer privacy focused exchanges, where does ZENDEX stand out in terms of performance, privacy, and real world usability?

ZENDEX stands out because it doesn't force a trade-off. Typical AMMs are usable but public; most "privacy DEXs" are private but slow or suffer from low liquidity. ZENDEX uses a Hybrid HCLOB/AMM engine that offers the performance of a CEX, the privacy of a ZK-chain, and the ability to route to external liquidity (like Aerodrome) to ensure you always get the best price.

6) What has been the most significant technical or conceptual challenge you've faced so far while building ZENDEX, and how did you and your team overcome it?

The biggest challenge was the "ZEN Converter", mechanically converting multi-asset fees into a single deflationary sink for ZEN without causing high slippage. We overcame this by building a specialized ZEN engine that strategically converts protocol fees, ensuring that our tokenomics constantly strengthens ZEN.

Worth noting: this design creates direct alignment between ZENDEX usage and ZEN value accrual. Every trade contributes to deflationary pressure on the token.

7) Who are the people behind ZENDEX, and what are your team members' backgrounds? How did you all come together to build a privacy centric exchange on Horizen?

ZENDEX was born by a hackathon tested builders guild of ZK enthusiasts and programmers. We were able to solidify a number of our ideas thanks to the Horizen x Thrive program, evolving our current vision for a full-scale institutional grade execution layer driven by the belief that the "Mempool is a bug, not a feature."

8) In traditional finance and centralized exchanges (CEXs), order books and even private or hidden trades are common. What insights or surprises have you discovered about bringing similar privacy features into a decentralized exchange while building ZENDEX?

The biggest surprise was realizing that "Privacy" actually makes the market more efficient. In TradFi, dark pools are seen as exclusive; in DeFi, we believe that when we hide retail trades, we will attract more liquidity because so many interested parties prefer quoting tighter spreads knowing that they will not be picked off by arbitrage bots.

This inverts the common narrative. Privacy isn't a concession, it's a liquidity magnet.

9) What are the biggest misconceptions about privacy in DeFi, and how does ZENDEX address them, especially for traders who might be hesitant about trading privately?

The biggest misconception is that privacy is for "bad actors." In reality, privacy is for confidentiality. Professional traders need it to protect their strategies, and retail needs it to avoid being taxed by bots.

10) Where does ZENDEX stand today in terms of product readiness and public availability, and what is the next major milestone or launch phase you're targeting?

We are currently in the Milestone One (Fortress) phase, with our internal shielded HCLOB (Hidden Central Limit Order Book) and AMM live on the Horizen L3. Our next major milestone is Milestone Two (The Orchestrator), which will introduce the External Router. This will allow ZENDEX to pull liquidity from across the Base then EVM ecosystem while still keeping the user's identity and intent shielded.

11) Looking 12 months ahead, what specific indicators would tell you that ZENDEX is on the right track, in terms of users, liquidity, ecosystem integrations, or actual trading behavior?

Our key indicator is the ZEN Burn Rate. If we see a consistent increase in the amount of ZEN being burned by the protocol, it means we are successfully capturing "Flow." Additionally, we look at "Execution Delta", the percentage of trades filled better on ZENDEX than they would have been on a public AMM.

12) Why did you choose to build ZENDEX within the Horizen ecosystem, was the support of the Horizen x Thrive program a factor in that decision, and how have Horizen's privacy features and appchain technology enabled or accelerated your development?

We chose Horizen because it's the only ecosystem that treats privacy as a first-class citizen. The Horizen x Thrive program was the catalyst that allowed us to scale, but the real "secret sauce" is Horizen architecture. It allowed us to build privately and settle efficiently on BASE.

13) If privacy-preserving trading becomes mainstream and ZENDEX plays a meaningful role in that shift, how do you think trader behavior and market dynamics will change compared to today?

Trading will shift from "Bot-Avoiding" to "Strategy-First." Today, traders spend half their energy worrying about how their order will be exploited. In a ZENDEX led future, traders will focus entirely on their price targets. Market volatility will decrease because large orders will no longer trigger "Cascade Liquidation" bots that react to public mempool signals.

Follow ZENDEX

🌐: https://www.zendex.fi/

𝕏: @zendexfi

Stay tuned for the next Project Showcase as we continue to highlight the teams building on Horizen through the Thrive Builder Funding Program.

Compliance was supposed to protect organizations and build trust. Instead, it became a paperwork nightmare, a frantic scramble of spreadsheets, screenshots, and last minute audit prep that consumes resources while delivering little real assurance. For SMBs (Small, Medium, Businesses) without dedicated compliance teams, the burden is even worse: abstract framework requirements, evidence scattered across dozens of tools, and verification that only happens under audit pressure, months after the fact.

The industry's answer? More consultants, more checklists, more documents that sit in folders until someone asks for them. Meanwhile, actual security and privacy practices drift out of alignment with what's written on paper, and nobody knows until an auditor finds the gap.

But what if compliance could be rebuilt as a continuous, verifiable process? What if evidence integrity could be proven cryptographically, not assumed on trust?

The Horizen x Thrive Builder Funding Program continues to spotlight the innovative teams building on Horizen's privacy first infrastructure. With 16 approved projects in the pipeline and more under evaluation, we're bringing the community closer to the builders shaping the future of confidential, verifiable applications.

For our fourth showcase, we're featuring DataHubz, a team building compliance infrastructure from the ground up. Their flagship platform Hubz turns compliance from a manual, document heavy exercise into a living system of record, with evidence integrity anchored on the Horizen blockchain.

1) How would you describe DataHubz and its flagship platform Hubz to someone unfamiliar with compliance automation?

DataHubz builds compliance infrastructure, not just compliance software.

Our flagship platform, Hubz, helps organizations turn compliance from a manual, document heavy exercise into a continuous, structured, and verifiable operational process.

In simple terms: Hubz helps teams understand what a framework actually requires, guides them step by step, automatically gathers and organizes evidence, and proves, cryptographically, that the evidence hasn't been altered. Instead of chasing spreadsheets and screenshots, teams get a living system of record for compliance.

2) What is the single biggest compliance pain point Hubz solves for SMBs?

The biggest pain point is the gap between what frameworks ask for and what organizations actually do day to day.

SMBs don't fail at compliance because they don't care. They fail because requirements are abstract, evidence is scattered across tools, and verification happens months later under audit pressure. Hubz closes that gap by mapping real operational signals and documents directly to controls, in real time, so compliance becomes part of normal work instead of a separate, painful project.

3) How does Hubz orchestrate documents, evidence, controls, and audits from start to audit ready?

Hubz follows a clear lifecycle:

Framework aware roadmaps break requirements into concrete, actionable steps.

Centralized evidence vault ingests documents, logs, configurations, and artifacts.

Control to evidence mapping links every artifact to specific requirements.

Continuous monitoring and validation track drift and missing evidence.

Audit ready views give assessors a structured, time ordered trail of proof.

The result is not just "audit prep," but a defensible compliance posture at any point in time.

4) How does Verifiable Compliance Evidence (VCE) anchored on Horizen change trust assumptions?

Traditional audit trails rely on trust: trust that evidence wasn't modified, backdated, or selectively presented.

With Verifiable Compliance Evidence, Hubz cryptographically fingerprints evidence and anchors those fingerprints on the Horizen blockchain. The evidence itself stays private, but its integrity becomes mathematically provable.

For auditors, customers, and regulators, this shifts trust from process based ("we trust how you prepared this") to cryptographic ("we can independently verify this was unchanged").

5) What real time insights or alerts does Hubz provide?

Hubz can alert teams when:

Required evidence expires or goes stale

Controls drift from their expected state

New risks appear due to configuration or policy changes

Framework coverage drops below a defined threshold

These alerts help organizations stay compliant continuously, instead of scrambling once or twice a year for audits.

6) What makes Hubz accessible to SMBs without compliance teams?

We designed Hubz assuming no dedicated compliance department:

Plain language guidance instead of regulatory jargon

Opinionated workflows that reduce decision fatigue

Automation where possible, human checkpoints where necessary

Interfaces built for operators and founders, not auditors

The goal is to let small teams act like large, well resourced compliance organizations, without the overhead.

7) Can you give a concrete example of AI catching a risk or insight?

One example is evidence intelligence: Hubz uses AI to analyze uploaded documents and configurations and flag mismatches between what a policy claims and what the evidence actually shows.

In practice, this has surfaced cases where policies looked compliant on paper, but operational artifacts told a different story, something that would likely be missed until an external audit.

8) What is the role of context matched AI models in Hubz?

Compliance is highly contextual. A control means something different in CMMC than in GDPR or SOC 2.

Hubz uses context matched models that are constrained by:

The specific framework

The control intent

The type of evidence being analyzed

This reduces hallucination risk and keeps outputs aligned with regulatory reality rather than generic AI responses.

9) How do you balance privacy and transparency when anchoring evidence onchain?

Only cryptographic hashes and metadata are anchored onchain, never raw documents or sensitive content.

This means:

Evidence remains private and access controlled

Integrity and timestamping are publicly verifiable

Organizations maintain full data sovereignty

It's transparency without exposure.

10) What has been the hardest technical or product challenge?

The hardest challenge has been building systems that are rigorous enough for auditors but usable by non experts.

That meant combining formal compliance logic, cryptography, AI reasoning, and UX design into a single coherent experience without overwhelming users or oversimplifying requirements.

11) Who is the team behind DataHubz?

DataHubz is built by a team with deep technical and regulatory expertise, including a PhD in Computer Science with a background in privacy enhancing technologies, alongside professionals with decades of experience in data systems, analytics, and compliance operations.

That blend is intentional: Hubz sits at the intersection of theory, engineering, and real world audits.

12) Why did you choose the Horizen ecosystem?

Horizen stood out for three reasons:

Strong support for privacy preserving architectures

Flexible infrastructure for anchoring proofs without exposing data

A philosophy aligned with decentralization, verifiability, and trust minimization

Those capabilities map directly to what compliance should become: provable, privacy first, and independently verifiable.

13) What does success look like in 12 to 18 months?

Success means:

Hundreds of organizations using Hubz as their system of record for compliance

Support for multiple major frameworks across security and privacy

Deep partnerships with auditors, platforms, and ecosystems

Compliance shifting from "audit season" to always on assurance

Ultimately, success is when compliance stops being a tax and becomes a strategic asset.

Keep up with the latest updates from DataHubz:

🌐 https://www.datahubz.com/

𝕏 https://x.com/datahubz

Stay tuned for the next Project Showcase as we continue to highlight the teams building on Horizen through the Thrive Builder Funding Program.

ZEN: Bringing Private Cross-Chain Execution to Horizen with Tachyon

Following the crypto market’s subdued performance over the weekend, the new week has opened with a modest recovery. Global crypto market capitalization has risen by 2% in the past 24 hours, signaling a slight uptick in trading activity and gradually improving sentiment among market participants. 

Against this backdrop, some made-in-USA tokens are posting notable gains today and may be worth watching in the coming sessions. 

SuperVerse (SUPER)SUPER has been the standout performer, surging 45% over the past day. On the daily chart, the token trades significantly above its 20-day exponential moving average (EMA), indicating that bullish momentum is rising. The key moving average forms dynamic support below SUPER at $0.581 at press time.

The 20-day EMA measures an asset’s average price over the past 20 trading days, giving more weight to recent prices. 

When a token’s price climbs above this level, it signals that buyers are firmly in control and that short-term sentiment is skewed toward the upside. If this trend holds, SUPER could extend its gains and climb to $0.841.

For token TA and market updates: Want more token insights like this? Sign up for Editor Harsh Notariya’s Daily Crypto Newsletter here.

SUPER Price Analysis. Source: TradingViewOn the other hand, if selloffs commence, the token’s price could fall under $0.761.

Horizen (ZEN)ZEN’s price has soared 11% today as the market regains momentum. As of this writing, the altcoin trades at a three-month high of $7.192.

Its double-digit rally is backed by climbing On-Balance Volume (OBV) on the one-day chart, which confirms that buy-side pressure backs the price surge. As of this writing, the momentum indicator is at 30.27 million.

The OBV uses volume flow to predict changes in an asset’s price. When it climbs, it indicates that demand is increasing and could continue if sentiment remains bullish.

If bullish activity continues, ZEN’s price could breach $7.327 and attempt to reach $8.012.

ZEN Price Analysis. Source: TradingViewHowever, if the bears regain control, they could trigger a correction toward $6.220.

DASHDASH is another made-in-USA coin to watch this week. Its price is up almost 10% over the past day, supported by rising daily trading volume. 

On the daily chart, its climbing Chaikin Money Flow (CMF) confirms the bullish bias toward the altcoin. At press time, this indicator sits at 0.01, having just breached the zero line.

The CMF tracks the flow of capital into and out of an asset by combining price and volume data.. A break above the zero line, as seen with DASH, indicates that traders are committing more capital to the asset. 

If DASH’s CMF holds positive, it could strengthen the case for further gains toward $23.

DASH Price Analysis. Source: TradingViewConveresly, a dip in accumulation could lead to a price fall to $21.68.

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Automata Network, a platform that provides private web facilities to dApps, has recently announced an exclusive development. The company has disclosed the launch of Horizen EON, an EVM-compatible sidechain that runs a smart contract forum focusing on scalability, on 1RPC. 1RPC operates as a Web3 relay that intends to safeguard the privacy of the consumers.

EON Launches on 1RPC, Says Automata Network The company disclosed the development in a recent blog post. The firm mentioned that 1RPC shields the metadata of the consumers from any leakage and exposure. In addition to this, the company has revealed that 1RPC has effectively relayed more than twenty billion requests up till now. The consumers just need to follow three simple steps to utilize the Horizen 1RPC endpoint.

In this respect, the initial move is to go to the search bar of the dashboard and type “Horizen EON” there. The next step is to click the Wallet icon concerning Horizen EON. Following that, the consumer needs to authorize the wallet message. As a result of this, the user can start utilizing the Horizen 1RPC endpoint. For consumers looking for additional granular control as well as more customization, 1RPC Plus provides more features.

The Launch Offers Cutting-Edge Functionalities to the Users For this purpose, it includes cutting-edge anti-phishing functionalities like transfer sanitizers. The respective things prevent likely suspicious or malicious transfers before they take place. This would be assistive in properly safeguarding the funds of the users.

Automata Network works as a layer for modular attestation. It broadens machine trust in the Ethereum network with the help of TEE Coprocessors. By using Proof-of-Machinehood, a worldwide decentralized machine attestation network assists rollups to realize an Ethereum-aligned future. EigenLayer-based TEE AVS are secured under hardware root-of-trust as well as cryptoeconomic security.

AUTHOR

Umair Younas is a cryptocurrency-related content writer linked with this work since 2019. Here, at Blockchainreporter, he serves as a news and article writer. He is a crypto, blockchain, NFTs, DeFi, and FinTech enthusiast. He has strong command over writing authentic reviews about brokers and exchanges and he has collaborated with our education team to write educational content as well. He has a dream to raise awareness among people about digital currencies. His works are well-researched and brimmed with information hence they provide fresh insights. Stay tuned to his posts if you want to stay up-to-date with the crypto-verse.

While most people consider every cryptocurrency transaction anonymous, that’s not the case. Bitcoin, for example, has all transactions recorded on a public ledger, which can be easily accessed. In theory and practice, it’s entirely possible to associate a Bitcoin address with an individual, especially if he has ever used a cryptocurrency exchange, which requires identity verification.

However, the apparent need for a fully anonymous payment option ultimately led to the creation of such, called privacy coins. During this week, turbulent movements, a lot of them recorded serious gains, and it’s perhaps to have a closer look.

What Are Privacy Coins? Privacy coins conceal all the information from both the sender and the recipient. They don’t provide any data on the amount of the transaction when they take place and ultimately leave absolutely no traces or records behind.

With this being said, a lot of people consider that privacy coins are generally used by criminals since the transactions are untraceable. One valid example here may come from the kidnapping of a Norwegian multimillionaire’s wife last year. The perpetrators reportedly requested a ransom for $10 million to be paid in one of the most popular private coins – Monero.

However, this report from Q2 2019 indicates otherwise. It examines cryptocurrencies’ involvement in illegal activities, and it concludes that privacy coins are responsible for just around 4% of all similar transactions.

A more popular usage is the basic need of most regular people to protect their anonymity from central authorities and governments. This is where the demand for such coins surfaced in the first place.

Notable Privacy Coins Examples As with most cryptocurrencies, there are already several well-established privacy coins in the market.

Monero is one of the most popular at the moment. It’s also one of the largest cryptocurrencies, as it’s currently situated in 11th place. Besides, it has received a lot of widespread adoption with many different outlets.

Dash is another prominent example of such a coin, which is based on Bitcoin’s software. It continues to grow over the years, and just recently, it partnered with Burger King Venezuela. Dash will be offered in 40 different locations where people can use it to purchase burgers, for instance. Its price also reacted accordingly and surged with over 80% in a day.

Dash: Focusing On Real Solutions Cryptopotato recently had the opportunity to speak with Dash Core’s Business Development Manager for LatAm, Ernesto Escalona, regarding the price movements and company’s updates. He talked about the recently released Dash Platform on EvoNet, which is a “technology stack for building decentralized applications on the Dash network.” He also mentioned Venezuela’s adoption that adds further real usage for Dash.

“We believe the recent positive price action is a reflection of Dash constantly working on fundamentals to allow real use of cryptocurrency. […] So getting cutting edge technology deployed, and focusing on real solutions seems to be getting the attention in 2020, and we will keep working to make real adoption happen!”

As a response to the above, the Dash team added that they are a “user-centric coin with a privacy feature on one wallet and not a privacy coin.”

Zcash falls under the category of privacy coins. The company is behind the Zk-SNARK protocol, which a part of the zero-knowledge proof system. Moreover, it was also recently endorsed by the famous whistleblower Edward Snowden.

A lot of people wonder why I like #Zcash despite the Founder’s Reward. Here’s a reason: that tax funds a quality team that catches and kills serious bugs in-house, before they get exploited. Some other projects learn about bugs like this only AFTER people have lost money. http://t.co/i9MD1CpeNx

— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) February 5, 2019

Other examples for privacy coins are Horizen (ZEN), Verge (XVG), Bytecoin (BCN)< Zcoin (XZC), PIVX (PIVX), and more.

Pricing History Naturally, one can’t overlook the price for a particular coin, especially if he considers taking advantage of their potential as an investment, rather than transmitting payments.

By looking at all charts, one can get some general and conclusive information on how all privacy coins were handling the different trends. For example, during the parabolic price increase of late 2017 and early 2018, all of them reached their respective all-time high (similarly to most cryptocurrencies that existed back then.)

Monero (XMR) was to almost $500, while Dash hit $1,642 in December 2017. Then came the price crash, and all of them followed closely. Just for reference, XMR noted a 92% decline to $42 in late 2018, while DASH’s drop was 96% to $63.

Is The Positive Privacy Coin Trend Back? Despite the price crashes of 2018, most of them appear to be on an extremely positive trend as of the last few weeks. XMR recorded a 10% increase in the previous seven days. Zcash posted 66% gains, and Zcoin was up with 60% in the same timeframe.

Dash managed to surge by 140% to about $125. Besides, DASH entered the top 10 currencies by market cap at one point but it retraced since then.

These movements had the crypto community speculating on whether or not privacy coins are returning to the grand scene. They had a significant role during the previous major bull cycle, and some consider their latest increases as an indication that another one is to come. While it may be too early to conclude this theory to be valid, it’s still worth checking the possibility of actually occurring soon.

Even though all of the privacy coins declined a bit in the past couple of days, the surges were notable and it’s interesting to see whether 2020 will be positive in this regard.

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