Horizon Protocol is Integrating Chainlink Keepers to Help Automate On-Chain Synthetic Assets

We’re excited to announce that Horizon Protocol — a DeFi protocol for the issuance and trading of borderless synthetic assets — is integrating Chainlink Keepers on BNB Chain mainnet. Chainlink Keepers will allow Horizon Protocol to securely and cost-efficiently automate the distribution of Horizon Exchange fees and staking rewards to HZN stakers in Horizon Genesis. This marks another step forward in removing all centralized dependencies and achieving the complete decentralization of Horizon Protocol.

Horizon Protocol brings traditional financial markets products into the world of decentralized finance in the form of synthetic assets. Synthetic assets, known as “zAssets” on Horizon Protocol, can track the price movement and risk/reward profiles of both traditional and crypto assets, and even baskets of multiple assets.

Using Chainlink Keepers helps achieve greater decentralization by eliminating a centralized point of failure — the triggering of smart contract functions. Chainlink’s widely used and time-tested infrastructure helps ensure that the weekly distribution of Horizon Exchange fees and staking rewards are executed on time in a trust-minimized manner, giving users stronger assurances that it will function exactly as intended.

On Horizon Genesis, users who provide collateral and mint synthetic assets via HZN staking will be eligible to earn all the exchange fees accrued on Horizon Exchange in addition to staking rewards. These minted synthetic assets can then be used to trade and develop a portfolio of real-world and crypto assets on Horizon Exchange, Horizon Protocol’s DEX for synthetic assets.

Chainlink Keepers is a decentralized smart contract automation service run by professional DevOps teams. The service is purpose-built to manage tasks on behalf of smart contracts. Decentralized, hyper-reliable, and economically incentivized, Chainlink Keepers trigger smart contracts when they need to perform critical on-chain functions, for example, at regular time intervals (e.g., every day at the same time), based on external events (e.g., when an asset hits a specific price), or according to other predefined conditions.

Some of the notable features of Chainlink Keepers include:

• Decentralized Execution — Chainlink Keepers provide reliable, trust-minimized automation with no single point of failure, mitigating risks around manual processes and centralized servers.
• Increased Efficiency — Projects that use Chainlink Keepers are able to reduce time spent on DevOps, minimize operational overhead, and streamline development workflows.
• Enhanced Security — Chainlink Keepers sign on-chain transactions themselves, enabling automated smart contract execution without exposing private keys.
• Reduced Costs — Chainlink Keepers perform efficient off-chain computation for smart contracts, allowing developers to build feature-rich dApps at lower costs.

Decentralizing reward distributions through Chainlink Keepers is one of many opportunities to further decentralize Horizon Protocol. Moving forward, Horizon Protocol aims to leverage Chainlink Keepers at every available opportunity to help provide our users with the increased security and robustness native to a truly decentralized ecosystem.

“Chainlink Keepers is the perfect solution to further decentralize the many services required to maintain the Horizon Protocol ecosystem. It significantly offloads operational overhead while still removing any central points of failure. The perfect solution for our smart contract automation needs.” — Horizon Protocol Team.

About Chainlink

Chainlink is the industry standard for building, accessing, and selling oracle services needed to power hybrid smart contracts on any blockchain. Chainlink oracle networks provide smart contracts with a way to reliably connect to any external API and leverage secure off-chain computations for enabling feature-rich applications. Chainlink currently secures tens of billions of dollars across DeFi, insurance, gaming, and other major industries, and offers global enterprises and leading data providers a universal gateway to all blockchains.

Learn more about Chainlink by visiting chain.link or reading the developer documentation at docs.chain.link. To discuss an integration, reach out to an expert.

About Horizon Protocol

Horizon Protocol is a DeFi protocol on the Binance Smart Chain that facilitates the issuance and trading of borderless derivatives. Horizon Protocol bridges the products of traditional financial markets and brings them into the world of decentralized finance (DeFi) in the form of synthetic assets. Synthetic assets, or zAssets on Horizon Protocol, allow users to gain exposure to the risk/reward profiles of a wide-range of real-world assets and derivative products, including equities, commodities, cryptocurrencies, NFTs, fiat, and even combinations, or baskets of assets. Horizon Protocol users can invest or speculate on zAssets in borderless spot, futures, and options markets.

Learn more about Horizon Protocol by going to our website, following us on Twitter and joining our Discord or Telegram group.