Horizen ZEN
Rank #268 by market cap
Last 7 days
CM Profile: Horizen
Cryptominium Profile. What we have established, measured and written about ZEN, and what we have not.
- Measured
- Selling $100,000 of ZEN on Base returned 0.2% less than the quoted price, on 13 October 2026.
- Its price, recorded by us every day since 9 August 2026.
- Written, with sources
Read from our own records when this page was made. It describes what we know, and is not a view on whether to hold ZEN. How each part is worked out
What changed
Week to 13 October- Price down 12.4% since 6 October.
From our own measurements only, each against the month before. We do not say why a price moves. How this is worked out · Every coin this week
What it actually costs to sell ZEN
Selling $100,000 of ZEN returned 0.2% less than the quoted price — Deep. Measured 2026-10-13 on Base.
What Horizen is
Horizen is a privacy-focused platform launched in 2017 as a fair launch, non-ICO project. It is now undergoing a transition to Horizen 2.0, a Layer 3 appchain deployed on Base, the Ethereum Layer 2 built by Coinbase. ZEN is the project's native token throughout this change.
Horizen 2.0 settles through Base and inherits Ethereum's security guarantees, while adding its own application-level integrity layer. It departs from the project's earlier hybrid PoW/PoS design in favor of a simplified architecture built around decentralized privacy infrastructure, including decentralized proof generation. The platform combines several privacy-enhancing techniques — zero-knowledge proofs, trusted execution environments, attribute-based encryption, multi-party computation, and fully homomorphic encryption — and integrates with external zk infrastructure providers for proof generation. ZEN functions as the governance token of the Horizen DAO, as a payment token within privacy apps, and feeds a sustainability fund; with migration to Base it becomes an ERC-20 token. Governance proposals are handled through a process called ZENIPs.
What this amounts to is a protocol in the middle of a structural rebuild: moving from a standalone chain to an appchain dependent on Base and, by extension, on Ethereum's settlement layer and Base's own rollup security — so its risk profile is now partly inherited rather than self-contained. The privacy stack described is broad, combining five distinct cryptographic approaches, but the source does not specify which are live in production versus planned. Tokenomics mention 5 million unminted tokens earmarked for ecosystem growth, with no schedule given for issuance. ZEN's utility is governance, payments within privacy apps, and DAO participation — it is not described as accruing protocol revenue or offering a yield. Deployment spans Base and Horizen's own ecosystem; how thoroughly the migration is completed, and how decentralized proof generation is in practice, are not addressed in the source.
What Horizen can do
Selling $100,000 through the pools on Base returned 0.2% less than the quoted price. The full measurement →
Our own measurement · measured 13 October 2026
Horizen's site gives ZEN a fixed maximum supply of 21 million. ZEN began in 2017 as a fork of Zcash and moved to the Base network in 2025.
Source: Horizen: the ZEN token · checked 2 October 2026
What a coin can do is not a reason to buy it or to sell it. Each answer names its source and the day we read it; where we could not source one, the row is left out. How these are written · Every coin we have written up
Where ZEN lives
On Ethereum, Base and BNB Chain, GoPlus's analysis of each contract is read weekly: whether it has a function to block addresses or pause transfers, and whether an owner holds it. That is GoPlus's reading, not ours. Where a token exists on several chains, one copy's settings say nothing about the original coin.
Always verify a contract address against the project's own site before sending anything. Addresses are shown as published by CoinGecko, not as an endorsement — and identical-looking tokens on other chains are the most common way people lose money here.
Price change
Horizen data synced 2m ago from CoinGecko. Figures shown in USD. This page is market information, not financial advice — and nothing here is a recommendation to buy or sell ZEN.