Horizon ran a DAO voting on Horizen 2.0 in the second quarter of this year. It has recently published the most recent whitepaper for Horizen 2.0. This whitepaper includes key information on present ZK issues causing limited adoption and future expansion. It also offers ways for ZK to be less expensive, quicker, and more easily available for developers.

The Horizen 2.0 whitepaper reveals significant technological advancements and strategic approaches designed to tackle some of the biggest challenges in ZK.This summary highlights key insights from the whitepaper, providing a clear understanding of the changes and their…

— Horizen (@horizenglobal) August 12, 2024

Aimed at scalability and privacy, Horizen is a popular blockchain ecosystem. It takes advantage of Zendoo, its sidechain technology, which facilitates distributed apps and public and private blockchain building. For safe communications, Zendoo uses the zero-knowledge proof system (zk-SNARK). 

Horizen 2.0 is a next-generation EVM platform for running ZK applications designed with increased scalability and efficiency. The team combined the finest elements of their mainchain and EON sidechain to develop rich ZK dApps to create a more powerful, one-unified network. This update supports fast and cheap transactions with the newest proving techniques and unmatched user and partner performance. Instead of Proof-of-Work, which Horizen employed, Horizen 2.0 employs delegated proof-of-stake.

Challenges Faced By Horizen

EVM-compatible applications in Web3 provide flawless communication, interoperability, and a single set of tools and protocols. However, the EVM standard was not developed for ZK capabilities, so other tools and protocols are needed to build ZK applications. Unfortunately, these advancements require different programming languages, interfaces, and tools.

How Horizen 2.0 Solves these Issues

Horizen 2.0 aims to offer an environment with sophisticated tools for effectively building ZK apps with costs and energy efficiency. Horizen 2.0 provides lower costs and more productivity for ZK app development.

Horizen 2.0 lets developers use current Ethereum tools and protocols since it is an EVM-compatible chain. This compatibility guarantees developers a seamless transfer and integration, lowering the learning curve.

Finally, it provides strong selective disclosure and security tools. These improvements guarantee that information stays private. Ultimately, Horizen is developing the most recent ZK developments and EVM capabilities to offer a frictionless ZK-proving mechanism.