Stay Ahead in Crypto – Swapzone Insights & Knowledge

Tag: Horizen

  • The Bigger Crypture: AMA with Horizen’s Business Development Manager Vano Narimanidze

    The Bigger Crypture: AMA with Horizen’s Business Development Manager Vano Narimanidze

    On September 3, 10:00 UTC Swapzone was honored to have Vano Narimanidze, BD at Horizen, answering our questions about this well-known and respected crypto project. Was such a pleasure! Thanks Vano for the insights and so thorough explanations. Here’s the AMA Recap for those who missed it. YouTube Live stream for those who like listening and some textual material if you’re more of a visual person. Enjoy!

    The Bigger Crypture w/Swapzone: Horizen’s BD Vano Narimanidze on YouTube

    AMA with Vano from Horizen: textual recap

    Here are the answers by Vano in a concise manner.

    Question for Vano: tell a bit about yourself, your experience with Horizen, your job and your background in general

    I am a Business Development Manager of Horizen. My main job is to cultivate and build a thriving ecosystem within the Horizen network by getting new partnerships and unlocking new use cases for ZEN. I joined the team back in August 2018 as a Country Lead of Georgia, regional representative but since then I increased my commitment with Horizen and my role expanded to BD.
    The experience so far has been amazing. Horizen has one of the best teams out there – everyone is super competitive, knowledgeable, and friendly. I always say – possibly the best level of satisfaction you can get from the job is when you are working for your own company. Working for Horizen is giving you such a level of satisfaction. It is a joy to work with us.
    I also have a strong background in IT and I guess it helps with integrations during my work with project teams.
    AMA with Vano from Horizen

    To start with: how would you describe Horizen, its mission, vision, probably values. What do you do in general?

    Horizen is one of the most secure interoperable blockchain ecosystems supported by one of the largest and most decentralized multi-tiered node infrastructure in the industry.
    Horizen’s mission is to ensure data integrity and privacy freedom by enabling real-world use cases with the most secure interoperable blockchain ecosystem.
    Our sidechain platform focuses on scalable data privacy and enables businesses and developers to custom build their own public or private blockchains using its unique sidechain technology, Zendoo, in a fully decentralized and unfederated way, the first time in the industry as well.
    We are also striving to make things easy for developers. Our Sidechain SDK will include template sidechains and tools needed to launch your first sidechain. Obviously, over time, more tooling and documentation will be available and things will get easier and easier.
    Horizen (ZEN)

    Decentralization and transparency talk: what’s in it for Horizen, how you make use of it. What benefits can these aspects bring for businesses and generally?

    Decentralization and transparency are very important for Horizen. We are having our Weekly Insider livestreams every Monday which is happening in our Discord and is being livestreamed on our YouTube and posted on our podcast as well. This is our weekly public updates from different departments. We are also publishing quarterly reports and Horizen is also a member of Messari’s Disclosure Registry.
    Our team is also spanned across the globe and as part of our decentralization initiative we are building ZenDAO, a voting mechanism to allocate treasury funds to continue the development of the Horizen platform. Nowadays, the project is getting 20% of block rewards in the treasury and in the future, the governance will shift from team to ZenDAO. It will also live as one of our sidechains.
    AMA with Vano from Horizen

    In simplest terms: zero-knowledge cryptography. How is zero-knowledge cryptography implemented at Horizen? How does it influence the ecosystem and what’s in it for the users?

    In the early days of the project, we borrowed the zero-knowledge technology from Zcash and in its current form, it is used for doing private transactions and messaging on the mainchain.
    With Zendoo though, we greatly expanded our zero-knowledge technology use cases and research and we are using it for doing sidechain to mainchain funds transfers, so-called backward transfers in a fully decentralized way. Although everyone can read our whitepapers on our webpage, they are highly technical so I would recommend reading our Academy. It has similar information in much more easily digestible language.
    Also, zero-knowledge technology is becoming super popular these days and it is considered one of the leading technologies for blockchain scaling.
    AMA with Vano from Horizen

    In simplest terms: Zendoo. How did the idea appear? How did it develop? At which stage is it now? How is it used (probably some use cases)?

    Zendoo, the idea of creating a blockchain scaling solution appeared in 2018. Scaling was an issue already back then and the solution is much needed today. R&D was led by our Engineering Director, Alberto Garoffolo and after 3 years of work, the product is ready to be shipped. We will be having a testnet release during September now and mainnet release is planned until the end of October.
    As for use cases, our flagship product on Zendoo will be zkAudit, a Proof of Reserves sidechain product that we are building for Celsius. zkAudit is built for anyone who wants to increase their transparency and credibility while preserving the privacy of their users. zkAudit is equipped with zk-SNARKs, a privacy technology that allows verification without revealing identifiable information. This means all transactions can remain confidential – all of the information is encrypted, enabling privacy while upholding validity in near-real-time. You can find the PoC on Celsius website.
    AMA with Vano from Horizen

    Expanding the ecosystem: highlight the latest partnerships and briefly tell what is their mission/use case/implementation? How do they enhance Horizen?

    Some of the recent partnerships around Zendoo include:
    • Dash
    Rewarding marketing activity with DASH cryptocurrency will be both transparent and include data protection thanks to Horizen’s scalability protocol Zendoo with zero-knowledge proofs.
    • Morpheus.Network
    Partnership enables the Integration of blockchain technologies and provides ZK-based privacy for the supply chain. It will enable businesses to record each step in the supply chain process on a public, permissionless, and decentralized blockchain.
    • Partnerships with IOTA and DIA
    Enhancing Zendoo and bring Oracles to our ecosystem
    • Dragonchain
    Providing identity protection capabilities to our Sidechain SDK
    • Partnership with Sikoba
    Bringing transparency to the decentralized credit market
    • Companies like LTO Network and APIS

    Utilizing Zendoo technology and build in our ecosystem

    The latest press releases are always published on our newsroom.
     AMA with Vano from Horizen

  • Privacy coins: explore crypto anonymity

    Privacy coins: explore crypto anonymity

    Anonymity is one of the values that crypto users look forward to in cryptocurrencies. Although most cryptos offer a certain level of anonymity not all are truly anonymous cryptos. This is where privacy coins come in. In the last decade, fully anonymous crypto has surfaced as the center focus of blockchain research with millions of dollars poured into it. We are starting to see privacy coins take the center stage as people opt for private crypto as the new option to the regular cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum, etc.

    What are privacy coins?

    What are privacy coins?

    Privacy coins are a group of anonymous cryptocurrencies that are used to power anonymous and private transactions on the blockchain. This is achieved by concealing the origin of the transaction and the destination. There are several techniques that are used and some of them are mixing several transactions together to evade blockchain analysis and concealing the real wallet address and balance of the user.

    For cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and other non-privacy cryptos, they allow anybody to see the transactions and public addresses of the users on their chain for the sake of transparency. This makes it easy to track users’ withdrawals and deposits.

    However, private cryptocurrency introduces two new features – untraceability and anonymity. Untraceability prevents the tracing of transactions by third parties on the chain making it very hard to do even with services like blockchain analysis. Anonymity makes it possible to conceal the identity of those behind the transaction process.

    What are privacy coins?

    List of private cryptocurrencies

    Here are some of the topmost private cryptocurrency coins, the list of privacy coins includes the likes of Monero, Zcash, Verge, and more.

    • Monero (XMR)

    The XMR coin is gaining popularity rapidly and that is because it is able to provide users with the anonymity they crave for. Transactions that occur on Monero are quite hard to trace due to the technical features that are used such as stealth addresses and ring signatures. These features enable the platform to conceal the identities of the receiver as well as the sender. Also, by using Ring Confidential Transactions (RingCT), Monero is able to hide the amount transacted thereby offering more privacy. It is easily one of the top privacy coins.

    Monero (XMR)

    • Verge (XVG)

    Talking of cryptocurrency privacy coins, we have to consider Verge. In the quest to provide anonymous crypto, Verge uses the tested and trusted Onion Router Technology (TOR) and Invisible Internet Project (I2P) instead of cryptographic techniques. By using TOR, it allows Verge to relay user’s connections through a distributed network of relays and tunnels operated by volunteers worldwide. This allows Verge to conceal the user’s identity. The other feature, which is the I2P enables data encryption before it is sent through the TOR network. The IP addresses of users involved in the transaction are hidden. The main reason Verge was developed was to make it one of the most private cryptos.

    Verge (XVG)

    • Zcash (ZEC)

    Zcash calls itself the “HTTPS of crypto” to highlight its focus on privacy features and improved security. To create anonymous crypto, ZEC private cryptocurrency uses the Zero-Knowledge Proof while providing an option for users to conceal their transactions. Users can carry out transactions on Zcash without anybody knowing the address of the other party. Also, Zero-knowledge Proof conceals the amount that is transacted. Many users see Zcash as one of the top anonymous crypto coins.

    Zcash (ZEC)

    • Pivx (PIVX)

    The full name for PIVX is Protected Instant Verified Transaction and it was launched in 2016 as an MIT-licensed open-source and decentralized private cryptocurrency that protects users’ financial data. The protocol is community-oriented with the platform developed, stewarded, managed, and governed by community-driven DAO. PIVX anonymous crypto is built and tested using advanced cryptography. The financial data protection feature of the PIVX protocol is backed by the trusted zero-knowledge proof (zk-SNARKs). A feature called SHIELD shields every transaction.

    Pivx (PIVX)

    • Horizen (ZEN)

    One of the top privacy coins is Horizen that provides two options for users, which are the public T-Addresses and the privacy shielded Z-Addresses. The public T-address is similar to the Bitcoin address and transaction on this address is transparent. The Z-address is protected and the transaction concealed. ZEN private cryptocurrency has a wide range of network nodes that help keep ZEN one of the best private cryptocurrencies.

    Horizen (ZEN)

    So, here we’ve gone through some of the best privacy coin cryptocurrencies in the market. Deciding which of these anonymous crypto coins to go for will depend on what you want in a private token. By now, you should know what are privacy coins. As well as the list of privacy coins to choose from in the market.

    What is the most private cryptocurrency?

    It seems Monero takes the crown of the most private cryptocurrency according to its popularity and usage among users. Checking CoinMarketCap shows that the XMR is leading the list of private crypto coins. Monero’s ability to shield receiver and sender addresses as well as the amount may be why users find it appealing among cryptocurrency privacy coins.

    What is the most private cryptocurrency?

    How to exchange crypto anonymously?

    To get how to exchange crypto anonymously, simply head to Swapzone. There you can exchange any of the best privacy coins.

    1. Visit Swapzone and select any coin from the list of privacy coins. Ensure you know the exact amount of private tokens you want to buy.
    2. Swapzone will pull up all the best privacy coin exchanges.
    3. Input the number of private cryptos you want to exchange, then you can select the private cryptocurrency exchange that suits you by clicking on the “exchange” button.
    4. Input the address where you want to receive the private token.
    5. There is also an option for a refund address, which is the address where the asset you are swapping for the private token will be refunded to incase of any issues.
    6. Click on the “proceed the exchange” button to carry out the exchange.
    7. Take your time for leaving a review and rating the exchange. We care for making it better and would love to hear about your experience.

    How to exchange crypto anonymously?