Seattle-based crypto company RISC Zero has just announced the successful completion of a $40 million Series A round of funding. Galaxy Digital, Alchemy Ventures, Fenbushi Capital, Delphi Digital, and others took part in the Series A financing led by Blockchain Capital. The company will use the funds to expand its Zero Knowledge Proof capacity, as the technology continues to spike in popularity and experiences widespread application.
Zero Knowledge Proof and the future of blockchain technology
In cryptography, zero-knowledge proofs are gaining popularity because they allow one entity to prove the truth of an assertion to another without disclosing any extra information. This aligns with RISC Zero’s goal of enabling the next generation of trustless, scalable, and decentralised computing, both on-chain and off-chain, by providing developers and infrastructure providers with cutting-edge cryptographic tools.
RISC Zero’s ZK Virtual Machine (zkVM) makes it possible for developers to create ZK-powered apps using the familiarity of languages like Rust and C++. ZkVM differs from the popular zkEVM architecture in that it is chain-agnostic and does not have a predefined concept of wallet addresses or other blockchain components for verifying transaction data.
With this new round of funding, RISC Zero says it will be able to release its Bonsai computing platform, which allows for the swift creation and deployment of applications in both cloud and decentralised settings. Bonsai frees up developers from the tedium of proof orchestration and server architecture so they can concentrate on creating their application.
It’s quite improbable that large corporations will ever adopt a network where every transaction can be seen by anyone. If blockchains are ever going to successfully onboard commercial clients at scale, some form of privacy will be required. In a world where software supply chains are open and auditable, zero-knowledge computing could make data privacy, security, and trust non-issues. It’s where the most recent applications can tap into the potential of zero-knowledge computing to address some of the modern era’s most intractable problems.