Matter Labs (the firm behind Ethereum layer-2 scaling protocol zkSync) has raised $50 million in Series B funding. According to the company Monday, this round was led by Andreessen Hoowitz (a16z).
- Matter Labs will use the funding to expand its business, including its engineering and scientific departments.
- Placeholder, Dragonfly, 1kx, and others participated in the round. The Series A funding round closed in February at $6 million.
- Blockchain.com. Crypto.com. Consensys.com. Alchemy.com. Covalent. Aave. ParaSwap. Lido. Futureswap. Gnosis. Rarible.
- Matter Labs is a zero-knowledge (ZK), Ethereum-proof technology company that launched its first ZK rollup prototype publically in 2019.
- ZkSync version One is a ZK rollup that speeds up payments and has been available on the Ethereum mainnet since July 2020.
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Matter Labs wins $50M in a16z funding to bring zero-knowledge rollup scaling up to Ethereum.
The popularity of some of the most well-known cryptocurrencies is at an all-time high. Many new users and app developers are now embracing the Ethereum network. They quickly discover that it remains a very crowded space to do business. Although Ethereum’s network volume limits are too low, it has resulted in slow transactions and high fees for developers working in the blockchain ecosystem for years.
Now is the availability of more “Ethernet rollup” scaling solutions. These developer products decrease the amount of traffic to the Ethereum blockchain by offloading the processing of transactions to more efficient secondary chains. Secondary chains record transaction batches and send data to the main Ethereum platform. Functionally, this means developers can enjoy faster transactions and lower costs without having to compromise security.
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Matter Labs was one of a few blockchain startups working on a complex rollup product. However, the team believes that zkSync has the potential to outperform all the others. TechCrunch has learned that a16z Crypto led a $50 million Series B funding just months after a Series A investment was closed by Union Square Ventures.
Ethereum scaling can be a very serious business. Only a handful of major players are involved. A16z Crypto backed one in February, leading the February Series C of developer Optimism. Lightspeed has backed Off-chain Labs (maker of Arbitrum), another Ethereum scaling solution. While both developers are working on an “optimistic rollup,” Matter Labs has a very different product. They use zero-knowledge (ZK) proofs to scale transactions in a fundamentally safer and computationally intensive approach.
