Horizen has officially launched its EVM-native Layer-3 on Base and migrated ZEN into an ERC-20 — moving from a standalone PoW chain to a privacy-focused rollup that now benefits from Base liquidity, OP Stack tooling, and Ethereum finality. ZEN trading is live on major DEXs and exchanges, with staking set to return and potentially reshape token utility on Base.

The new L3 is built with partners including Caldera, LayerZero, Stork, Den, Goldsky, and zkVerify, and comes with a 1M ZEN (~$8.8M) builder fund with Thrive Protocol. Horizen’s roadmap features privacy-first apps (private DeFi, payroll, verifiable ads) and a Confidential Compute Environment (TEE-based) planned for Q1  ...