The Horizen project recently carried out a hard fork with the goal of implementing the ZenIP-42207 update. This change resulted in ZEN losing its status as a privacy token. The event took place on February 8, 2024, and marked the removal of the confidential pool feature from the network, which became a pivotal moment in the project's history.

The ZenIP-42207 initiative was first introduced to the public on January 4, 2024, and by January 11, the majority of ZEN holders had expressed their support for this proposal through voting. The project developers explained this move as a necessity to adapt to evolving regulatory requirements concerning privacy tokens, emphasizing the project's shift away from privacy-focused features.

As a result of the hard fork, all functions associated with z-addresses were disabled, along with some RPCs and the confidential pool. This decision was made in the context of deploying the hard fork at block height 1502800 on the Horizen mainnet.

Furthermore, due to changes in the project, the ZEN token was delisted from the OKX platform and marked for monitoring on Binance. This appears to be one of the reasons that led the team to move away from privacy features. A similar fate befell the Monero (XMR) token, which was delisted from Binance in early February 2024, leading to a significant drop in its value.

These events reflect a general trend in the cryptocurrency industry, where projects are faced with the need to adapt to changing regulatory and normative requirements, especially in the context of anonymity and transaction confidentiality.