Horizen announced Wednesday that it is going ahead with plans to remove support for shielded transactions on the mainchain, a move that will see the native ZEN token no longer considered a privacy coin. This change is expected to activate via a hard fork and will see shielded transactions with transparent inputs prevented at the consensus level.

The deprecation of the Horizen mainchain shielded pools is being taken as a step to drive sustainable and growth for the ecosystem while mitigating against regulatory threats. The goal is to ensure privacy technology is handled the right way, which continues to be a hot topic.

Horizen also notes that its shielded transactions rely on Sprout, an outdated privacy technology by ZCash. This change allows the platform to improve and innovate, with timelines for the removal of the mainchain shielded pools set around August 2023 for the testnet and September 2023 for the mainnet.

After the deprecation, all privacy features will be removed from Horizen main blockchain at the consensus level, meaning ZEN will no longer be a privacy coin.