Horizen coin (ZEN) no longer has a blockchain of its own. The original proof-of-work chain was retired when ZEN became an ERC-20 token on Base on 23 July 2025, and on 23 October 2026 Horizen announced that its follow-up Layer 3 network on Base will also shut down, with bridging closing at 13:00 UTC on 4 November 2026. ZEN itself keeps trading: CoinGecko showed a market cap of about $105.7 million and 18.48 million ZEN circulating on 25 October 2026. This page compares the old Horizen with the new one and lists what holders need to do.
Key takeaways
- ZEN kept its 21 million maximum supply when it moved from its own chain to Base in July 2025.
- The Horizen L3 (an OP Stack chain settling to Base) launched in December 2025 and is winding down because Base’s “Denim” upgrade on 5 November 2026 breaks compatibility with it.
- Anyone with ZEN, ETH or USDC.e on the L3 should bridge to Base before 4 November; ZEN staking on the L3 stopped paying rewards on 25 October.
- Old mainchain balances in transparent or multisig addresses needed a manual claim; exchange balances were migrated for customers.
| Fact | Horizen (ZEN), October 2026 |
|---|---|
| Ticker | ZEN (formerly ZenCash) |
| Launch year | 2017 |
| Consensus | None of its own now — an ERC-20 secured by Base; originally Equihash proof-of-work |
| Supply | 21,000,000 cap; 18.48M circulating (CoinGecko, 25 Oct 2026) |
| Status | Migrated to Base (July 2025); Horizen L3 shutting down 4–5 Nov 2026 |
| Official site | horizen.io (do not trust lookalike “claim” domains) |
Horizen coin today: the short version
Horizen started in May 2017 as ZenCash, a fork of Zclassic, which was itself a fork of Zcash. Founders Rob Viglione and Rolf Versluis pitched it as a privacy-focused proof-of-work coin with a large network of incentivised nodes. It renamed itself Horizen in 2018, raised a $4 million seed round led by Digital Currency Group in 2019, and became one of the few altcoins with a Grayscale trust product.
In 2025 the Horizen DAO voted to retire that whole stack. ZEN now exists as a token on Base, Coinbase’s Ethereum Layer 2, and the project describes itself as an “ecosystem for private DeFi” whose privacy features live in applications rather than in the base chain. After the L3 closes, Base itself becomes Horizen’s home chain.
Horizen 1.0 vs 2.0
| Feature | Horizen 1.0 (2017 – July 2025) | Horizen 2.0 (July 2025 onward) |
|---|---|---|
| Where ZEN lives | Its own Layer 1 mainchain | ERC-20 token on Base |
| Security | Equihash proof-of-work miners | Base and, ultimately, Ethereum |
| Nodes | Secure nodes and super nodes earning a share of block rewards | No ZEN-run nodes; staking program funded by the DAO |
| Smart contracts | EON EVM sidechain (2023), Zendoo sidechain framework (2020) | Horizen L3 (Dec 2025 – Nov 2026), then apps directly on Base |
| Privacy | Shielded transactions inherited from Zcash (removed from mainnet in 2023) | Application-level: Vela confidential compute (TEE-based), planned compliant privacy pool |
| Where to trade | Centralised exchanges | Centralised exchanges plus Base DEXs such as Aerodrome and Uniswap |
Why Horizen left its own chain
A small proof-of-work chain is expensive to secure and hard to build on. Horizen had spent years on sidechain technology (Zendoo, then EON), but developers mostly went where users and liquidity already were — Ethereum and its Layer 2s. Privacy also became a liability: Horizen removed shielded transactions from its mainnet in 2023, and exchanges were increasingly wary of assets labelled as privacy coins. Moving the token to Base gave ZEN access to Ethereum wallets and DeFi, and it reframed Horizen as “compliant, optional privacy” rather than a privacy coin.
The DAO’s decision to deprecate the legacy chain was announced in February 2025. In interviews around the December 2025 launch, CEO Rob Viglione said the team had weighed other rollup frameworks but chose Base for business reasons.
How the July 2025 ZEN migration worked
On 23 July 2025, balances on the old mainchain and the EON sidechain were snapshotted and recreated as ERC-20 ZEN on Base. Exchanges handled the switch for customers: Coinbase, for example, paused ZEN sending, receiving and trading from 16 to 25 July 2025 while it migrated balances. The 21 million cap stayed the same, but the tokenomics were rewritten through Horizen governance proposals (ZenIPs), adding allocations for the DAO and foundation that lifted circulating supply. That is why CoinGecko’s circulating figure (about 18.48 million) is higher than the roughly 16 million mined on the old chain.
Not everything moved automatically. According to Horizen’s migration guidance as reported by secondary sources:
- EON balances in ordinary wallets (EOAs) moved to the same address on Base.
- Old mainchain balances in transparent or multisig addresses needed a manual claim, because Bitcoin-style addresses cannot be mapped to Ethereum ones.
- ZEN locked in EON smart contracts, contract-delegated stakes and unrelated wrapped tokens were excluded from the automatic process.
What the Horizen appchain on Base does — and why it is closing
The Horizen L3 went live on 9 December 2025. Built with rollup provider Caldera on the OP Stack, it processed transactions on its own chain (chain ID 26514), used ETH for gas, and settled to Base. ZEN moved between Base and the L3 through LayerZero’s Stargate bridge. ZEN staking opened on the L3 in July 2026, with no lock-up, and a 1,000,000 ZEN developer grant program targeted confidential finance, gaming and SocialFi apps. Horizen’s flagship privacy product, Vela, is a confidential execution environment based on trusted execution environments (TEEs).
That chapter ended quickly. In a blog post dated 23 October 2026, Horizen said Base’s “Denim” upgrade, which moves Base to 200-millisecond blocks and is scheduled for 5 November 2026, will stop OP Stack chains that settle to Base from including transactions about 40 minutes after activation, and that its infrastructure provider had confirmed there is no fix. Horizen added that its most promising projects use zero-knowledge proofs and TEEs that don’t need dedicated block space anyway. Its key dates (UTC):
- Already done: bridging ZEN from Base to the L3 disabled; L3 staking rewards ended 25 October.
- 4 November, 13:00: L3-to-Base bridging closes and a snapshot of all balances and staking positions is taken.
- 5 November, 18:00: Denim activates; the L3 stops processing transactions.
- About 7 November: snapshot published for a one-week public review.
- About 15 November onward: the DAO returns remaining ZEN (including unclaimed rewards) and ETH above 0.001 to the same address on Base.
Horizen said a new ZEN staking program will launch on Base, funded under ZenIP-42408, and that a three-year roadmap will go to its DAO for input. For background on how settlement layers like this fit together, see our guide to layer 2 crypto.
If you still hold old-chain ZEN
Work out which of three situations you are in:
- ZEN on an exchange. Exchanges that supported the migration converted balances for you in July 2025. Check your account history; nothing else is needed.
- ZEN on the legacy mainchain in your own wallet (transparent addresses starting with “zn”, or multisig addresses starting with “zs”). You need Horizen’s official claim process. Secondary reports said Horizen set no deadline for eligible claims, but we could not confirm that on an official page in October 2026, so check horizen.io and the project’s official Discord before assuming time is unlimited. If any of your ZEN still sits in a shielded address, read the official guidance carefully, because the reported claim process covered transparent and multisig outputs.
- ZEN, ETH or USDC.e on the Horizen L3. Bridge to Base before 13:00 UTC on 4 November 2026. USDC.e is operated by Stargate and is not covered by the DAO’s return process. Smart-contract wallets that don’t exist on Base should contact Horizen’s security team before the cut-off.
Anti-phishing warning: every migration attracts fake “claim” and “bridge” sites, airdrop DMs and impostor support accounts. Horizen says its team will never DM you first, ask for your seed phrase or ask you to send funds. Type horizen.io yourself, reach staking and bridge tools only from there, and verify the ZEN contract address on Base against official documentation before approving any transaction. We deliberately do not link to claim tools from this page.
Exchanges and risks
When we checked public market lists on 26 October 2026, ERC-20 ZEN had live spot markets on Binance (USDT and USDC pairs), Coinbase (ZEN-USD), OKX, Bybit, KuCoin and Binance.US, and Kraken and Upbit did not list it. On-chain, ZEN trades on Base DEXs such as Aerodrome and Uniswap. Deposits must be sent on the network the exchange specifies; old mainchain ZEN cannot be deposited anywhere. Compare Horizen with other repositioned privacy-era coins via our coin directory, or read about its ancestor in our Zcash profile.
- Strategy churn. Horizen has changed architecture three times in under two years (L1, L3, then Base apps), which makes roadmaps hard to rely on.
- Dependence on Base. The L3 shutdown shows how an upstream upgrade can force a project’s hand at short notice.
- Token role. ZEN no longer pays for block space; its value rests on staking, governance and ecosystem adoption that is still early.
- Claim and bridge risk. Stranded legacy balances and phishing remain the most common ways holders lose funds.
- Privacy-compliance positioning. “Compliant privacy” must satisfy regulators and users simultaneously, which few projects have achieved.
FAQ
Is ZEN crypto still a privacy coin?
Not in the traditional sense. The old Horizen chain inherited shielded transactions from Zcash but removed them from mainnet in 2023. ZEN on Base is a standard, transparent ERC-20. Horizen’s privacy work now sits at the application layer — chiefly Vela, a TEE-based confidential compute environment — and is framed as optional, compliance-friendly privacy rather than default anonymity.
What is Horizen 2.0?
Horizen 2.0 is the name for the project after its 2025 relaunch: ZEN became an ERC-20 on Base on 23 July 2025 with the same 21 million cap and revised tokenomics, and a Horizen L3 appchain launched in December 2025. On 23 October 2026 Horizen announced the L3 would close in early November 2026, leaving Base as the ecosystem’s main chain.
Is Horizen on Base the same token as ZenCash?
It represents the same asset and supply, but technically it is a new token contract. ZenCash was the 2017 name of the original proof-of-work coin; it became Horizen in 2018. In July 2025 balances were migrated one-for-one to an ERC-20 on Base, and the old chain was deprecated. Exchanges and data sites still show ZEN, and CoinGecko still uses the “zencash” identifier.
What happens to Horizen L3 funds after 4 November 2026?
According to Horizen’s 23 October 2026 announcement, any ZEN or ETH left on the L3 after the bridge closes will be captured in a snapshot and returned to the same address on Base by the Horizen DAO, expected in the second half of November after a one-week public review. ETH balances of 0.001 or less and Stargate’s USDC.e are not covered, so bridging before the deadline is the safer path.
Crypto is volatile and risky; this is education, not financial advice. Do your own research.
