Horizon Protocol Updated Roadmap

Lida Dinnero — Sat, 09 Jul 2022 17:00:03 +0000

Horizon Protocol Updated Roadmap: Loans, Shorts, Token Wrappers, Futures Exchange, Horizon Homepage, Chainlink Keepers Integration.

It’s been a productive Q2 with the releases of Horizon Exchange, Horizon Genesis 2.0, Horizon Dashboard, Horizon Academy Beta and other various updates.

Now that we are in Q3, and what’s next? What challenges does Horizon Protocol face?

HZN alone as collateral for zAssets is relatively capital inefficient since it requires a higher over-collateralization relative to many other tokens due to its lower market cap and volatility. Utilizing larger cap assets on BNB Chain, like BNB and BUSD that are more liquid and less volatile, as collateral to back zAssets could allow for lower collateralization levels / greater capital efficiency. Opening the doors to these types of users will help Horizon Protocol grow from a liquidity standpoint and that will be a large part of upcoming focus

Horizon Protocol Updated Roadmap, for Q3, the main focus will be on building the infrastructure so that we can introduce futures trading to Horizon Exchange as well as other upgrades that allow us to help improve liquidity for zAssets and increase revenues for HZN stakers.

Loans

Users can use other crypto (i.e. BNB) to borrow zAssets (i.e. zUSD or zBNB) at a lower collateralization ratio than HZN stakers minting zUSD. These loans will be subject to a variable interest rate that will be paid to HZN stakers as a source of zUSD fees. This will open a new avenue for users who hold larger, more liquid cryptos to be able to add liquidity and enter the Horizon Protocol synthetic asset ecosystem.

Shorts

Users will be able to open collateralized short positions against zAssets using zUSD. Users who open shorts will be effectively taking out a loan of the zAsset they are shorting and selling it into zUSD. These positions will be also subject to an interest rate that will also be paid to HZN stakers as zUSD fees when the position is closed. The loaning mechanism is a prerequisite to shorting and will be introduced together. Shorting will give Horizon Protocol users more options to take advantage of different market conditions as well as hedge their positions and the global debt pool.

Token Wrappers

Token wrappers will allow users to wrap their BNB or other BEP-20 tokens (i.e. BUSD, BTC, ETH) into their zAsset equivalent with a very minor fee that is competitive to exchange fee rates. These wrappers will always value the transaction at 1:1 making for arbitrage opportunities should there be any deviations in other open market pegs. These fees are given to HZN stakers as zUSD fees to offset their impact on the global debt pool. These wrappers also create a secondary, non-interest bearing mechanism to increase liquidity for zAssets that is also more capital efficient (as to not require any over collateralization).

Futures Exchange

Futures trading on Horizon Protocol will allow its users to get more capital efficient, leveraged long and short exposure to zAssets with the global debt pool used as the counterparty for trades.

While these smart contract upgrades will take the brunt of our time, we also plan to release some other products and updates to Horizon Protocol listed below:

Horizon Homepage

They feel homepage is due for an update and they plan to make updates to the information presented on it as well as improve the user onboarding experience and overall UI/UX.

Chainlink Keepers Integration

This has been in a pipeline for us for some time and they plan to utilize Chainlink Keepers to not only help further decentralize our protocol, but to also explore new ways to add value/quality of life improvements for HZN users.

Horizon DeFi Podcast series

This podcast will focus on people who interesting in learning more about what is happening in regards to innovation and development in the crypto, DeFi, and synthetic assets worlds.