New York, NY –– August 22, 2018 –– ZenCash, the privacy-focused blockchain platform for borderless, decentralized communications and transactions, has announced a comprehensive brand expansion to reflect the significant technical, commercial, and community developments the project has achieved since launching in May 2017. The brand expansion, developed with insights from community members, involves ZenCash changing its name to Horizen, a refreshed logo and visual imagery, and an elevated focus for its product offerings to include an on-chain treasury voting system, and side chains with smart contracting capability. The platform’s cryptocurrency Zen will remain under ticker symbol ZEN.
Horizen President and Co-founder Robert Viglione said: “The ZenCash project has greatly evolved since its inception more than a year ago, and it’s now time to expand our brand to more accurately reflect our mission to promote the fundamental human right of privacy worldwide. What initially launched as a privacy-focused cryptocurrency has transformed into a much broader and deeply capable platform that will host a variety of privacy-focused applications, including secure messaging and publishing. The Horizen brand completely embodies our technically-innovative mission and the sentiments of our community — we are a visionary privacy platform in which people can believe and to which they can belong.”
The brand expansion will enable real-life uses beyond peer-to-peer transactions using the ZEN cryptocurrency, such as censorship-resistant publishing, the ability to build privacy-based applications, and the ability to generate basic income through ownership of their personal data. In addition, the Horizen platform will feature a treasury voting system designed to let community members vote on issues such as resource allocation for work proposals. In collaboration with established partners, Horizen plans to research and develop a ZenVault wallet, blockDAG protocols for significantly increased scalability, and ASIC mining resistance.
Horizen Executive Advisor and Co-founder Rolf Versluis said: “Our large and engaged community is one of our greatest strengths. I’m very happy that the development of the Horizen brand included feedback from many people that have been with us since the beginning, as well as more who have joined us along the way. Our enterprise has a track record of delivering success, and Horizen encompasses our ability and desire to continue that growth in many ways. As we to pioneer innovation with our community and technical partners IOHK and Infopulse, our expanded brand encompasses our unlimited capability to deliver new product offerings, improve our platform for partners to build even more profitable applications, and enable personal freedom and liberty using technological privacy.”
The Horizen brand expansion was supported by BrandTuitive, a New York City branding and marketing firm with a client roster including national and global brands such as Nespresso and Episcopal Relief & Development. In its work for Horizen, BrandTuitive conducted extensive research with the community including miners, node operators, investors and employees. This work led to the new positioning, name, messaging and visual identity for the project. The qualitative research was reflected in the new name, Horizen, which reinforces the project’s forward-thinking and visionary mission to promote responsible privacy in every aspect of its users’ lives.
The Horizen roadmap detailing current research and development plans can be found here.
