Fundamental Analysis of Zenon.Network (inspired by Charlie Munger’s investment principles)
I had to spend quite some time researching and talking to many different community members before I was able to get a full picture of Zenon.Network and apply an extensive FA methodology to it. In particular, because the Zenon team does not advertise most of the intriguing contextual facts but rather chooses to keep a low profile. Without the openness of other community members and my regular engagement for one and a half years, I would have never been able to gather all that information.
TL;DR & DISCLAIMER
In this article series, I…
- …share my own FA methodology for low cap crypto projects based on 4 years of professional research and investment activity.
- …apply this methodology to zenon.network, providing an encompassing dissection of the project based on 12 multi-disciplinary criteria.
- …share my own personal views and insights. They do not constitute financial advice whatsoever and are biased since I have a vested interest in the success of the project.
I AM NOT A MEMBER OF THE ZENON.NETWORK TEAM. MY VIEWS DO NOT REPRESENT THE TEAM’S VIEWS AND ARE NOT ENDORSED BY THE OFFICIAL TEAM IN ANY WAY.
What led me here
It all started when I “invested” in altcoins for the first time amidst the 2017 bull run. As a bloody beginner, I had no idea what I was doing, and more often than not I just jumped onto coins that were shilled by crypto Twitter accounts with a large follower base. I was a miserable trader and, unsurprisingly, missed getting out in time when the market turned in January 2018. As a result, I gave back most of my gains in the subsequent weeks — a devastating experience. However, I believe it had a silver lining because I had learned enough to understand that crypto market cycles repeat in relatively short yearly intervals. Because I had a business development background in fintech and a passion for decentralized internet protocols, I convinced myself that I could become a successful crypto investor if I just learned as much as I could about the subject matter before the next bull cycle would start with the next Bitcoin halving in May 2020. After all, I was not rich in any sense and the fear of eternally being financially dependent on employment made me hell-bent on making this happen. I, therefore, focused all my private and professional energy on learning more about fundamental analysis and developing my heuristic on how to research, compare and assess the many different aspects one needs to consider before making a qualified investment decision into a new and relatively unknown crypto project.
The 12 HODL criteria based on C. Munger
I began developing this methodology when I started a job as a product manager at an early regulated crypto exchange in spring 2018. I was tasked with finding high-quality coins and tokens for exchange listings and, as a result, spent a full year researching hundreds of projects — I loved it because it allowed me to create an extremely detailed yet effective due diligence process for which I found inspiration in Charlie Munger’s bestseller “Poor Charlie’s Almanac”. In a nutshell, Munger suggests using a systematic “checklist”-approach which allows an investor to scrutinize a broad range of factors which, on their own as well as in interplay, would allow making a qualified assessment about a company’s potential for success or failure. In a way, all I had to do was to apply this logic to crypto assets by making a checklist of factors that would apply to this particular asset class. On a high level, the factors in question are:
- Initial Distribution
- Project Funding
- Technology
- Degree of Innovation
- Crypto Economics
- Community Engagement
- Holder Base
- Project Adoption
- Secondary Markets
- Team
- Crisis Management
- Conspiracy
What made Zenon stand out?
This approach turned out to be a good idea as it allowed me to spot gems in the rough (amongst tons of literal shitcoins) such as Chiliz, Theta, Ren, and Reserve Rights in their early stages. Though I invested in most of those coins early on, I lacked the conviction to hold them until today. I felt like even these (now highly successful) projects were really solid, they all lacked something I couldn’t point my finger on. Until I found Zenon in November 2019 which I decided to make my long-term hold. It was the combination of the following factors that created this conviction:
• a 100% fair launch and initial distribution,
• an unprecedented dual-ledger architecture,
• an unwavering devotion to the Bitcoin ethos.
It’s almost ironic that I stumbled across Zenon because I did thanks to a tweet of one of the biggest crypto Twitter influencers (thank you @GalaxyBTC) — but I suppose I would never have had the ability to see just how much Zenon stood out from all the other projects at that time, had I not spent the past years refining my “shitcoining” skills, as I call them. Ever since I dove into that project, my motivation was no longer just to improve my research skills, but I was rather on a mission to acquire as much ZNN as I possibly could get my hands on. Since November 2019 I have systematically accumulated ZNN by converting part of my monthly salary and trading profits. And thanks to staking rewards I was able to reduce my average entry price to around $2 per ZNN.
How was ZNN able to reach its previous all time high of $25?
While the recent price appreciation has certainly benefitted from favorable market conditions, I believe Zenon is still fundamentally undervalued. Since its inception (with a PIVX fork as a placeholder chain) amidst the depths of the bear market in March 2019 (though the team has been working on the project since May 2018), ZNN has maintained a stable price floor despite a considerable emission rate, zero advertising, and not much more than a fully functioning wallet and a yellow / white paper (plus the occasional medium articles). I, therefore, believe the price increase in early 2021 was a precursor of what we will see once the Zenon mainnet is launched, upgraded coin economics are announced, incubator projects are realized, and industry partners are introduced.
Now, someone reading this might think “D’uh, of course, he says he believes the price is going to increase — after all, he invested in it and just wants others to buy in too!”. This is a legitimate objection. Therefore, to minimize the risk that my exposure to ZNN could bias the opinion of others, I will mainly provide a summarized dissection of Zenon Network as per my Fundamental Analysis Methodology which I mentioned earlier. This way, I just share with others the process and steps I went through to come to a conclusion about this project and why it made sense to me to invest in it. This does not need to apply to others — but they nevertheless can get some useful insights in regards to aspects I look at whenever I conduct fundamental analysis on a low market cap coin.
1. Initial Distribution
Did a private sale or pre-mine occur and to which degree did it give selected initial investors or early stakeholders an unfair advantage?
Zenon did not have a coin sale per se. Instead, the team offered initial “investors” to lock up 1 BTC for up to 2 years in exchange for 5000 ZNN. The locked-up BTC would then successively be paid back to initial investors via so-called “xStakes” — an algorithmic refund mechanism. It was also possible to buy less than 5000 ZNN but they were not eligible to xStakes. The goal of this initial allocation procedure was hence not to raise funds but to incentivize committed early network participants in setting up nodes and establishing a stable consensus with a decentralized first version of the network. There was no pre-sale, nor a premine-based team allocation. Anyone with a few years of experience in crypto can confirm that this setup is relatively rare.
In my opinion, the xStakes funding mechanism was also an incredibly smart move to eliminate an attack vector in form of regulatory compliance with financial markets authorities. You see, several financial market regulators have deemed placeholder coins / tokens a financial security if they were issued with the promise of future revenue and/or as compensation for a monetary investment to pre-fund the development of a protocol or platform. If the Zenon team had not collected the initial Bitcoin from early contributors with the promise that they will get it back in time, the trading of ZNN might legally only have been possible on licensed securities exchanges for the time until the Zenon mainnet was released.
2. Project Funding
How is the project funded and what is the intended use of the funds?
This is an interesting one for Zenon. As you recall, all initially raised BTC have been returned to those early contributors who bought 5000 ZNN and ran a node. Also, when the team announced the initial contribution on a BitcoinTalk post, they already provided a fully functioning placeholder chain (based on a PIVX fork) one could interact with via a fully functioning desktop wallet. And ever since that launch, the team has constantly worked on developing cutting-edge DLT architecture while releasing technological, informational, and graphical content at such high quality that it was hard to believe the people behind this were nothing less than professionals.
Until today it remains unclear who or what is funding the Zenon.Network team and it has caused quite some speculation among the community. The only thing we know is that, whoever is funding it, they have deep pockets and they put together one of the best teams this industry has seen. Another aspect to consider is that the Zenon team has always emphasized Zenon to be a community-run project; the team portrays itself as “servants of the people”. In this context, it makes a lot of sense not to disclose their funding source as a way to protect the project from malicious intervention by political or economic actors. This is one of the aspects where the team has emphasized abiding by the Bitcoin ethos.
3. Technology
Which technology is introduced and what are the associated risks and benefits?
As a radically new DLT, the Zenon “Network of Momentum” introduces an unprecedented dual-ledger architecture. It aims at superseding networks such as Ethereum, Polkadot, or Solana by solving the scalability and transaction throughput problem with a unique sharding approach without compromising on network decentralization. On a high level, the former is achieved by combining the concepts of a DAG (Directed Acyclic Graph) which IOTA failed to successfully realize, and a Block-lattice structure which Nano tried to introduce but also somewhat failed, partly because they did not account for network spam (which Zenon prevents through Plasma). There are quite a few aspects to Zenon’s technological architecture which makes it unique and potentially disruptive, such as
• Bitcoin-Interoperability on the protocol level via hash locks and time locks,
• Sharding through a high throughput / low latency dual-consensus, hybrid PoS/PoW mechanism with Pillars, Sentries and Sentinel nodes as validating entities,
• Oracle functionality on the protocol level,
• Proof-of-Work links for plasma generation,
• Censorship- and quantum resistance,
• Enablement of mass-scalable decentralized applications in various industry verticals such as
• Secure Data Storage
• AI & Big Data
• Digital Identity Services
• DAOs and DACs
• Internet of Things (IoT)
• Distributed Computing platforms
• DeFi on Bitcoin
This just shows that the Zenon team has looked at and deeply understood all the fundamental flaws of incumbent protocols, and it seems they have found a way to solve most if not all of them. The main technological risk with such a novel approach as Zenon’s is the possibility that the network cannot be realized or does not work as intended. Currently, the testnet is available to the public, and to my knowledge, the smartest community members are working hard at kicking the tires of the network and trying to break it. So far, the Zenon NoM testnet seems to hold up what it promised. The next-level design and functionality of the recently released S y r i u s wallet, which will be the primary point of interaction with the Zenon mainnet, has also enforced this notion.
For a more extensive technical analysis of Zenon from a layer 1 chain point of view, I’d recommend having a read of the brilliant Hackernoon article “How not to fracture a layer 1 chain”
4. Degree of Innovation
Can the project solve an existing and potentially large-scale business, social, political, or technological problem?
The Zenon Network of Momentum was designed to overcome limitations of network scalability and decentralization while providing a robust layer 1 DLT for an ecosystem of mass-scalable, censorship-resistant, decentralized consumer applications (“zApps”). So far, many different layer 1 DLTs such as Ethereum, Polkadot, EOS, or Solana are trying to achieve this mission but they usually all fall short either in terms of scalability, usage cost, fairness of the initial distribution, or decentralization once they grow big. Zenon was built from the ground up with a unique approach to compete with these incumbent networks and, while theoretically, it is capable of doing so, it has yet to prove this ambitious goal.
5. Coin Economics
How does project adoption drive the valuation of the coin and how sophisticated and sound is the coin economics design?
It seems the Zenon team has put as much thought into the coin economics as it did with the network architecture itself. Zenon.Network also introduces a dual-coin approach with ZNN being the main currency and QSR (“Quasar”) being the secondary currency. ZNN is used as collateral for the network consensus infrastructure that ensures transactions are validated and recorded on-chain. There are three ways to participate in the network as an infrastructure provider: 1) by running a Pillar node (15’000 ZNN), 2) by running a Sentinel node (5’000 ZNN), and 3) by delegating ZNN to Pillars for more ZNN or staking ZNN for QSR (1 ZNN or more). ZNN as the main currency is already extremely rare as most of the circulating supply is held by the community and used to run nodes. Therefore, only a very small amount can be obtained on exchanges. Lastly, 100 ZNN will be needed to pay for the creation of Zenon Network Tokens (the equivalent of Ethereum-based ERC20 tokens but with the difference that they exist on top of the Zenon Network). This will ensure that the Zenon network won’t be flooded with tons of useless or scammy tokens as is the case with Ethereum, for instance.
QSR as the second coin is used as collateral for nodes and to fuse Plasma which is essentially network gas required to submit transactions and influence how fast they are being validated by node operators. QSR will also quickly become very scarce as each new Pillar that is set up will need to burn increasingly large amounts of it (hence continuously raising the opportunity costs for deconstructing a Pillar to sell it). QSR is also needed to create Sentinel nodes although without QSR getting burned in that case.
By taking into account the inflation rate of both, ZNN and QSR it becomes obvious that even just a moderate network growth will significantly drive the valuation of both ZNN and QSR, since such large amounts will be locked up, burned, or used in the network. Last but not least, relatively high staking rewards of 0.1% — 0.15% daily yield create a strong incentive for holders to participate in the consensus process while holding onto their ZNN. Lastly, Pillar holders are also the network participants which can vote on incubator projects which apply for a grant to build applications in the Zenon ecosystem, e.g. by creating a token as per the Zenon Token Standard (ZTS).
6. Community Engagement
How engaged is the community in contributing to the success of the project in an organic way through awareness activities, artwork, creation of educational material, and so on?
A healthy, engaged community is a key success factor for any crypto project. Organic community growth is essential in the early stages to ensure the coin has a broad and committed holder base. On top of that, the community is the primary marketing arm of any crypto project and the best ones will exceed the quality and reach any traditional or crypto marketing agency could offer. I have talked to various early ZNN holders who have also been early investors in largely community-driven projects such as Chainlink, Raiblocks/Nano, or Bitcoin. Especially early LINK holders regularly state how the current stage of the Zenon community reminds them of “Link Marines” — initial project backers who have become famous for their adamant conviction in the Chainlink project and their ability to mobilize large numbers of community members to spread awareness about it. Some Link OGs within the Zenon community even stated that the activity of “Link Marines” won’t even compare to the marketing power of “znnAliens” if they keep going on creating awareness with original, organic content at the current rate. There are currently over 70 Zenon community members creating high-quality, organic, original content daily. It is amazing to see the talent, skill, and passion behind all these community-generated videos, memes, GIFs, write-ups, posts, and articles. I showed some of the content to the founder of a crypto marketing agency I am friends with and she was just blown away, realizing that no single agency could ever keep up with the quality and quantity of a genuinely passionate community that wants to spread the word. However, she correctly stated, coordinating a loosely coupled community of individuals to focus on the execution of a specific marketing strategy could be more challenging than within a centralized agency because it is subject to a much more organic, intrinsic drive.
7. Holder Base
How decentralized is the holder base and what is the approximate average holding duration per investor?
This one is a bit more difficult to assess for Zenon because a rich list in the classical sense does not yet exist. There is a community-built explorer which groups all active wallet addresses with the largest one currently holding 63’031 ZNN but there is no way to discern which holder owns how many ZNN. From my research and chats with early ZNN backers, I concluded that there are probably no more than 5 entities owning more than 100k ZNN. And given that the available ZNN supply in free-float is scarce (there are probably less than 100k ZNN held in exchange wallets and less than 20k ZNN in the sell-side order books of all exchanges where ZNN is listed). Nevertheless, I hope that particularly large holders who have accumulated and held ZNN since day 1 of the project will start to sell some of their holdings in the next couple of months. This would help to limit the price volatility of ZNN by adding free-float liquidity while strengthening the network by further decentralizing the holder base while it is growing.
8. Adoption
How is the adoption rate of the project in terms of strategic industry partners and dApp developers?
This is where Zenon.Network has most of the catching up to do versus its competition but that is mainly attributed to the early stage of the project — consider that the first public testnet has only just been launched. Nevertheless, the community has already voted on and enabled the funding of various developers through the native Zenon project incubator resulting in auxiliary services for the Zenon.Network. Existing projects are a tip bot and a bounty campaign platform, for instance. The currently most anticipated project is called StarLight and will be one of the first projects running on the Zenon mainnet. StarLight will be a liquidity protocol and autonomous market maker for ZTS (Zenon Token Standard) tokens which will be launched in conjunction with zApps running on top of the Zenon Network of Momentum. STARL will quasi be the pendant to what the 0x protocol is for ERC20 tokens.
On top of that, every 90 days after the launch of the Zenon alphanet, the Zenon team will announce up to 10 new strategic partners that will be added to “Zenon Fabric” — a vested Pillars program incentivizing cooperation and synergy maximization between leading industry players that act as key strategic partners to the community.
9. Secondary Markets
Is the coin already tradable on mainstream exchanges and what is the available free float? Less popular exchanges and lower free-float can mean a better entry price.
This aspect is a strong indicator of the stage a new native cryptocurrency is in. Since ZNN is not an ERC20 token but a native protocol currency, it can’t be traded via an existing DEX such as Uniswap. It is much more likely that Zenon will launch its decentralized exchange for the tradability of ZTS tokens at a later stage. Further, ZNN is not yet found on mainstream exchanges such as Binance, Coinbase, Huobi, or Kucoin. Rather, one has to use more “underground” exchanges such as Mercatox or Stex to buy or sell ZNN. Since many new crypto investors tend to shy away from less popular exchanges, the mere fact that a coin is not yet listed by those is a good indication that it might still be rather undervalued, provided all other fundamental aspects of the project check out. Less popular exchanges are where more savvy crypto investors buy in early. The mainstream exchanges are where the broader retail investor base joins the community.
Considering the very limited amount of ZNN one can obtain on these exchanges can be a positive sign for any experienced crypto investor. Under the provision that no VC or private sale rounds have allocated a large amount of the currency to insiders or institutional backers, low exchange liquidity can be a strong sign that the existing holder base does not have any intention to sell the coin. The degree of decentralization of the holder base should also be high, to prevent any single holder to control an excessive amount of the circulating supply. In the case of ZNN the available liquidity on current exchanges is so low that community members have created an OTC channel for block trades. I would argue that if this channel didn’t exist and everyone was forced to buy and sell solely via the current exchanges, the price of ZNN would already be much higher.
10. Team
How does the team communicate? Which principles do they adhere to and how do they interact with the community? Does the team engage in coin price discussions?
I believe this is one of the most important aspects and one where Zenon stands out. The Zenon team’s anonymity prevents the creation of toxic “founder cults” which are so prevalent in many crypto projects. Further, their anonymity allows the network to eventually become purely community-driven, just as is the case with Bitcoin.
In terms of communication, of the Zenon team’s style is best described in one word: humility. They rigidly follow the principle of “deliver first, talk later” and hence they do not engage in any hype, let alone price talk. The price of ZNN seems to be the last of their worries which is such a strong plus I can almost not overstate it. There are very, very few founder teams who do not engage in activities to influence the price of their coin (let alone price discussions), and the fact that the Zenon team has never done this, and likely never will, has instilled extreme confidence in the community (because it means the team focuses on what matters: Network development, adoption, and decentralization).
Furthermore, the Zenon team is incredibly receptive to community inputs. They proactively give the community the ability to voice their feedback and opinion which they always take into consideration.
11. Crisis Management
How does the team handle unexpected critical network attacks?
When you build a new DLT, not everything will always go smoothly. Apart from technical hurdles, unexpected malicious actors can try to exploit weaknesses of immature networks, willingly jeopardizing years of development work and the investment of hundreds of people for their profit.
In the case of Zenon, such an occurrence proved their technical expertise and experience to the test. As mentioned earlier the Zenon network was launched on a placeholder chain for which a PIVX fork was used. Now, the original PIVX chain had a vulnerability that allowed a malicious actor to mint additional coins through a specific, but rather network exploit. It was a rather unknown one since there aren’t many coins running on a PIVX fork. Nevertheless, there was one particular scammer who specialized in systematically exploiting this specific vulnerability for various PIVX forks, usually to dump all extra-minted coins on an exchange. This would destroy the price of the coin and the investment of every holder.
This individual who had heaps of fake telegram accounts also targeted Zenon at a very early stage and succeeded to mint 2.5 million ZNN out of thin air because of the PIVX vulnerability. Luckily, it seems that said hacker fell in love with the project and, instead of selling those coins, he tried to hold on to them to become one of the largest ZNN holders for good! Shortly after that incident, the Zenon team found out about the exploit, isolated the scammer’s addresses, and forked off the placeholder chain so that his coins would become unusable. But that was not the end of the story as the hacker had also hidden some of his ZNN on an exchange called CryptoBridge. The team had tracked down the location of those funds and when CryptoBridge shut down its operations a few months later, the team forced the hacker’s hand to move off his remaining fake ZNN off the exchange and forked off the rest of his fake coins shortly after. While this incident set back the project development by a few weeks it was a veritable display of the team’s technical abilities and resolve to maintain the integrity of the project. To this day, the hacker is rumored to keep spreading misinformation across social media and fora as he does not seem to have digested being humbled by the very project he tried to scam — but ultimately fell in love with.
Though I think it could have gone differently if the hacker had decided to immediately dump his fake coins on the exchanges at that time. Although I assume very little exchange liquidity was available back then too so he might have wanted to wait a bit longer before pulling off the hack. In any case, I am glad it turned out the way it did since it allowed me to experience the team’s abilities and attitude. Since the team is anonymous, I didn’t have much more information about them so this gave me some good contextual data for my FA.
12. Conspiracy
Are there any indications of unofficial ties to influential entities which have the potential to boost or leapfrog the adoption of the project? Are there any known unknowns that intentionally shroud certain aspects of the project in mystery, nurturing the growth of a speculative investor base within the community?
Questions that remain unanswered (but usually aren’t) such as “who is behind an anonymous team?” or “who is funding this project and which third parties might be involved?” can be extremely intriguing known unknowns in the eyes of crypto investors. Why? Because everyone loves a good conspiracy and there is nothing better than a deep rabbit hole for new potential investors to fall into while doing their due diligence. Especially in the crypto industry, people love hidden clues and to derive conclusions from them, especially if they can potentially impact the valuation of the project, should they ever become reality. Of course, imaginative individuals with a vested interest in the success of a project or coin will tend to be biased in their judgment and might just misinterpret random connections as wishful thinking. While speculative conclusions can be dead wrong, the mere existence of known unknowns such as the ones stated above will nevertheless grab the attention of any savvy investor, simply because there must be SOME reason the project team deliberately refrained from disclosing them. Needless to say, an anonymous team and unknown funding source alone does not automatically make for a good conspiracy theory. In most cases, the lack of such information should even be considered a red flag. But if all other aspects of the project turn out to be generally superior, these known unknowns can turn into compelling reasons for someone to make an investment decision. After all, the Bitcoin protocol has also been created by an anonymous team (or individual) with an unknown funding source.
In the example of Zenon.Network, quite a few community members have spent sleepless nights trying to grasp the metaphorical “white rabbit” and it is said some among them have been driven to the cusp of madness by it. The reason being that there is a huge cloud of mystery surrounding Zenon which originates from just a few official, apparently meaningless clues the Zenon team allegedly placed very carefully. From those clues, community members have spun a web of countless potential connections and coincidences which — on their own — may not mean anything. But seen as a whole, these links create (possibly completely constructed) patterns that become just too obvious to ignore, at least for long-term community members. Even the fact that they never result in hard proof supports one of the most fundamental speculative theories around whom the entity or entities behind Zenon.Network may be. In any case, however, it is never clear whether there is something to those close clues or if they are just the product of wishful thinking by over-exposed ZNN holders. After all, the Zenon team always states that the project is an independent entity and any connections to third parties are pure speculation.
Let me explain why these conspiracies are nevertheless an important investment factor to consider. To draw a parallel to a different project, consider the massively successful cross-chain oracle Chainlink Labs which is known for its die-hard holder base, the LINK Marines. Digging around in Reddit or 4chan, one can discover circumstantial evidence putting the Chainlink founder Sergey Nazarov in ultimate proximity of the Satoshi Nakamoto collective. There has never been any hard proof for any direct involvement. But the fact that Mr. Nazarov had provably been active in the blockchain space from very early on contributed to the creation of an extremely powerful meme in the minds of early LINK investors: IF Sergey was involved in the creation of the Bitcoin Protocol, it would strongly enforce the investment thesis for Chainlink. On the other hand, if Sergey didn’t turn out to have any ties to the Nakamoto collective, it would likely not negatively impact the potential success of Chainlink since it already made a very good case to solve the cross-chain data transfer problem. Link Marines had nothing to lose by believing in the possibility of this connection. And this belief contributed to the creation of a fundamentally loyal holder base which greatly benefitted the value appreciation of LINK. Of course, it helped that the Chainlink team showed high integrity by not engaging in hype-building (unlike most other projects). Instead, it chose to reward its community with humility and by just building and delivering what it had promised without making a big fuss about it.
Not without reason, quite a few early LINK holders who have joined Zenon stated that this project reminded them of the early Chainlink days. Since most of the older breadcrumbs before summer 2019 have already been covered by a few “moonpapers” such as this one, I will just highlight a few newer conspicuous hints which reinforced the belief of numerous community members that Zenon has some loose ties to unofficial third parties. I will not give you my opinion on those additional crumbs as they have already been extensively discussed by various members of the Zenon community. And also, because for my investment decision, it is much more important that there ARE some conspiracy theories, as opposed to what they are made of.
Summary of recent speculation
Please mind that all of the following interpretations are not more than theories. Some, many or all of it might be wrong as none of the links have been factually proven. Officially, Zenon.Network is an independent entity and any associations to third parties are pure speculation.
On March 5th, 2021, Zenon released the following cryptic tweet. Translating the binary code results in “Z 3 E 2 N 1 ON” from which one can derive either a countdown “321”, the month March 2021, March 21st, or all of those three possibilities combined.
Turns out, Zenon then announced the test net release on March 21st, 2021 (the different date of the screenshot below would be due to a time zone difference from my and the tweet author’s account).
Why is March 21st a special date? It happens to also be the Twitter birthday of Zenon.
Coincidentally, the 21st of March was also not only Twitter’s birthday…
… but also that of @sqcrypto. This seems to refer to a twin in this tweet
It also happens that @sqcrypto’s first two tweets were a retweet of @halfin (which is the only Twitter account both @sqcrypto and @zenon_network follow), followed by a greeting waving hand. Maybe to a twin sibling?
On the 25th of June 2020, Zenon tweeted a GIF that showed various testnet Pillars named Staking Lab, Warp Gate, ZNN Devs, ZNNAliens Fund, and Paradigm Fund. ZNN Devs likely referred to the developer team and ZNNAliens to the correspondingly named Zenon community members. Staking Lab could refer to the PoS service provider stakinglab.io and Warp Gate could perhaps indicate a connection to the venture capital firm warpgate.ventures. In the case of Paradigm Fund, there are two obvious possibilities: Either the Russian/Japanese research and investment group paradigmfund.io or renowned VC firm paradigm.xyz which was co-founded by Fred Ehrsam (Coinbase co-founder) and Matt Huang (former partner at Sequoia Capital).
Note: Official team member “Erik Zenon” stated sometime later in the official Zenon Telegram channel: “Pillar operators can setup custom naming. Those are fictional names with no association to real entities.”
Jack Dorsey’s opinion on the Bitcoin ethos
His views align extremely well with the way Zenon positions itself. He also highlights how the anonymity of founding teams improves the resilience of DLT, which can be seen in the case of Bitcoin and Monero, for instance. He also mentions his vision and the advantages of a satellite-based Internet (which is already being implemented by projects such as StarLink and Blockstream). Interestingly, Zenon.Network intends to provide “satellite SDKs” to developers sometime in the future, as highlighted by the roadmap on the Zenon website.
Zenon as the potential underlying protocol of Twitter 2.0 “BlueSky”?
Some Zenon community members believe that the Zenon network will become the underlying infrastructure for decentralized global social media applications such as the potential Twitter successor “BlueSky”:
The potential involvement of Lightning Network creators
There’s also a hypothesis that Lightning Network developers Tadge Dryia and Joseph Poon are involved after they concluded that Lightning Network had critical design flaws:
“The price of scalability is eternal vigilance,” says Tadge Dryja, co-author of the Lightning Network protocol. And this function Osuntokun offers to transfer to monitoring organizations, the so-called “watchtowers,” which will notify the user in case of threats. This approach does not cancel decentralization, as the user can connect to any number of watchtowers without relying solely on one “sentinel.”
There is also a recent presentation by Joseph Poon where he elaborates on new DLT architectures in the context of consensus and cryptoeconomic incentive mechanisms and seems to put lots of emphasis on Directed Acyclic Graphs (DAG) and how the Bitcoin Protocol might evolve as the ultimate consensus instance for PoS networks:
A more extensive summary on Bitcoin interoperability crumbs:
Finally, there’s this little coincidence in which early Bitcoin and Lightning Network contributor @theonevortex asked the community how apps built on LN should be called:
As you might have noticed, “zApps” is also the nomenclature used by Zenon for decentralized, mass-scalable applications built on top of the Zenon.Network:
THANKS FOR READING! IF YOU MADE IT THIS FAR, MAKE SURE TO CHECK OUT THE ZENON TESTNET AND STAY TUNED FOR THE ALPHANET LAUNCH BY THE END OF 2021!
