# Introduction

Horizon Spot Exchange hosts a marketplace of zAssets that represent the real economy by utilizing industry-leading oracle Chainlink to track their price movement. It allows for simple market trades of typical underlying assets including commodities, stocks, currencies and crypto.

### Product Offerings & Features

Horizon Spot Exchange enables permissionless derivatives trading for synthetic assets , there is zero slippage on trades, and deep liquidity because unlike traditional market exchanges, Horizon Protocol has no need for an order book nor counter party matching.

Horizon Spot Exchange also provides a suite of trading tools, including Portfolio tracking and analytics, trade histories, technical charts, and more. Users can build profitable DeFi strategies by trading, borrowing, swapping synthetic assets or hedge their Futures Positions.

### Trading on Horizon Spot Exchange

Trading on Horizon Spot Exchange is very easy. For most users, the starting point is acquiring zUSD from either [staking HZN](https://app.horizonprotocol.com/stake/home), or trading for it directly on [the open market](https://app.wombat.exchange/swap?from=USDC%2Cbsc\&to=zUSD%2Cbsc\&chain=bsc).

Once you have zUSD, you can go to the [trading page](https://app.horizonprotocol.com/exchange/spot/zBTC/zUSD) and purchase the zAsset of your choice.

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