Company: HZEN
Filing Date: 2025-11-25
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0001193125-25-297573
Chunk: 6

Company: Grayscale Horizen Trust (ZEN)
Filing Date: 2025-11-25
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 1
Chunk 6
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Overview of the Trust and the Shares

Grayscale Horizen Trust (ZEN) (formerly known as Horizen Investment Trust) (the “Trust”) is a Delaware Statutory Trust that was formed on July 3, 2018 by the filing of the Certificate of Trust with the Delaware Secretary of State in accordance with the provisions of the Delaware Statutory Trust Act. 

The Trust’s purpose is to hold Horizen (“ZEN”). The Horizen Network was originally launched as an alternative software implementation of the Bitcoin network in 2017 by a group that forked Zclassic, which is a clone of Zcash. Although the Horizen Network began similar to the Bitcoin Network, the Horizen ecosystem has undergone major systemic transformations. In September 2023, the Horizen Network implemented an update that removed many of these privacy preserving features. More recently, in July 2025, the Horizen Network executed a full migration of ZEN and the Horizen protocol from its legacy standalone blockchain to the Base Network, an Ethereum Layer-2 network that provides the underlying consensus and security. The Horizen protocol on Base has been described by ecosystem contributors as “Layer-3” blockchain environment “built for modular privacy and sustainable on-chain utility.” Whereas ZEN previously operated as the transaction fee token on the Horizen Network’s standalone blockchain and as a governance token for the Horizen DAO, after the July 2025 migration to Base, ZEN is now used throughout privacy-focused projects on the Horizen Protocol and in governance.

The Horizen Network is one of a number of projects intended to enhance blockchain technology. One of the Horizen Network’s primary enhancements of blockchain technology was to add additional layers of confidentiality to traditional blockchain infrastructure so that users could engage in transactions and selectively disclose details related to those transactions. ZEN accomplished this level of confidentiality by using novel cryptographic protocols called Zero-Knowledge Succinct Non-Interactive Argument of Knowledge (“zk-SNARKs”) to protect both the amount and the sender and recipient of the transaction. The result was a confidential transaction known as a “shielded” transaction, which was distinct from a public transaction on the Horizen Network, known as an “unshielded” transaction. However, in September 2023, the Horizen protocol implemented an update intended to deprecate these privacy shields, with the intent of causing it to no longer be considered a “privacy coin,” and, following the update, the Horizen Network no longer supported transactions from unshielded addresses to shielded addresses. More recently