Horizen has set an 8 a.m. ET deadline on Nov. 4, 2026, for users to bridge assets from its Layer 3 network to Base, but its planned return of funds left behind excludes Stargate-bridged $USDC.

“$USDC.e is operated by Stargate, not Horizen, and is not covered by the DAO return; you must bridge $USDC.e out before November 4,” the project warns in its official notice. Holders of that bridged stablecoin cannot rely on the recovery plan available to $ZEN and eligible $ETH holders.

For $ZEN, the Horizen DAO plans to use a snapshot taken at the bridge cutoff to return remaining balances, staking positions and unclaimed staking rewards to the same addresses on Base. $ETH balances above 0.001 $ETH qualify for the same process; balances below that threshold will not be returned. Horizen anticipates distributions in the second half of November, following a one-week public review of the snapshot.

Loading post from X…

View post on X

Different Assets, Different Exit Routes

Users moving funds before the cutoff should first withdraw staked $ZEN and then claim rewards, according to the notice. Horizen directs holders to Stargate to bridge $ZEN and $USDC.e to Base, and to its native bridge for $ETH.

Those routes use different infrastructure. Horizen’s bridge documentation describes $ZEN transfers as burning tokens on the source chain and minting them on the destination. $USDC.e represents $USDC locked on Base. $ETH uses the separate native OP Stack bridge.

The cutoff does not mean an $ETH withdrawal must finish by Nov. 4. The wind-down notice tells users to initiate it before the deadline and says it will be finalized for them on Base in approximately two weeks.

Smart contract wallets require extra attention: Horizen asks holders whose wallet contracts do not also exist on Base to contact security@horizen.io before Nov. 4 to coordinate a return.

Explorer figures retrieved on Nov. 2 showed approximately 156,562 $ZEN on the Layer 3 across 520 token-holding addresses, and 1,847 $USDC.e across 150 addresses. These token-level counts are not a count of individual people or of beneficiaries in the planned staking snapshot.

Why the Bridge Closes Before the Chain Stops

Horizen’s Layer 3 settles to Base. The project says Base’s Denim upgrade will make its existing OP Stack chain unable to process user transactions, accelerating a wind-down that was already being planned. Base’s own documentation confirms Denim changes block production from one block every two seconds to five blocks per second.

Horizen says it chose the bridge cutoff ahead of the expected Nov. 5 shutdown to take a clean snapshot and avoid transactions remaining in flight when the chain stops. The project tentatively schedules publication of that snapshot for Nov. 7, before the public review and subsequent DAO distributions.