ApeCoin DAO Launch Partner, Horizen Labs, Will Begin Participating At The DAO& Looking Into ApeChain

There is a new voting block at the ApeCoin DAO after Horzien Labs announced that they will begin participating in the $Ape ecosystem and looking into the creation of an ‘ApeChain.’

One and half years after the Horizen Labs helped launch the ApeCoin DAO and 11 months after the company created the DAO’s staking protocol, Horizen Labs announced that it will start participating in DAO governance by casting its 452,000 $Ape in weekly votes and looking into building an ApeChain for ApeCoin.

“Over the past few months, the @apecoin community has reached out to us, hopeful that we can provide guidance on crucial initiatives for the DAO,” the company tweeted in a six-part thread. “As one of the launch contributors to the @ApeCoin DAO, we believe that our expertise in protocol building and ZK can bring significant value to the APE ecosystem …. As Web3 builders & Ape community members, we commit to engaging in @ApeCoin DAO governance by actively voting on future AIPs. Before voting, we will first engage the community & consider what is best for the APE ecosystem, then look to align with the wishes of the majority.”

As the Bored Ape Gazette previously reported, talks of a possible Apechain for ApeCoin have circulated around the swamp since Yuga Labs’ Otherside mint when gas fees got outrageously high.

“We're sorry for turning off the lights on Ethereum for a while,” Yuga Labs tweeted on April 30, 2022. “It seems abundantly clear that ApeCoin will need to migrate to its own chain in order to properly scale. We'd like to encourage the DAO to start thinking in this direction.”

These ApeChain discussions recently intensified after Polygon Labs Co-Founder, Sandeep Nailwal, posted an idea on the ApeCoin DAO’s discourse forum last month that called for the creation of a “ zero-knowledge powered Layer-2 “ ApeChain for ApeCoin.

For those who are unfamiliar with a zero-knowledge powered Layer-2 it is defined as “scaling solutions that increase throughput on Ethereum Mainnet by moving computation and state-storage off-chain. ZK-rollups can process thousands of transactions in a batch and then only post some minimal summary data to Mainnet,” according to Ethereum.org.

In simpler terms, this means that a layer 2 could be faster and cheaper than a layer 1 option.

Currently, there are no AIPs or concrete plans on how an ApeChain would work or who would build it.

But a lot of players in the $Ape ecosystem are interested in discussing a possible Apechain, including Horzien Labs, Nailwal, and the DAO’s largest weekly voter, MachiBigBrother. “ApeChain $APE @apecoin,” he tweeted last week.

The Bored Ape Gazette will continue to follow Horzien Labs’ involvement at the ApeCoin DAO and will keep you posted on all things ApeChain. Stay tuned for updates!