The personal layer-2 chain Aztec Community announced on Dec. 15 a $100 million Sequence B funding spherical led by enterprise capital agency a16z crypto. Different buyers within the spherical embody A Capital, King River, Variant, SV Angel, Hash Key, Fenbushu and AVG.
By partnering with a16z, the corporate plans to rent new engineers and construct a “next-generation encrypted structure” that enables customers to confirm that blockchain guidelines have been adopted with out revealing any underlying info. Encrypted blockchains enable customers to transact with privateness and anonymity.
“What we’re constructing is a revolutionary piece of expertise that transforms how we work together with one another on-line, by which the top person is the client, moderately than the product. Finish-to-end encrypted blockchains defend people, obviating the necessity for centralized monetary programs,” said Aztec CEO Zac Williamson within the official announcement.
Aztec is reportedly engaged on a testnet launch inside 12 months, with a full mainnet deployment inside 24 months.
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In response to the corporate, its cryptography has been examined in manufacturing with Aztec Join, permitting decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols to combine privateness in a whole bunch of transactions. Aztec Join’s ecosystem contains Ethereum DeFi protocols equivalent to Aave, Curve, Lido, Ingredient, Set Protocol, Compound and Liquity.
The corporate can also be creating a public-private execution layer for its blockchain, which is designed to combine encrypted and unencrypted functions seamlessly. Aztec co-founder Joe Andrews famous:
“From PGP and SSL to finish to finish encrypted messaging, we depend on encryption in our every day lives for companies and commerce to thrive. With a16z we’re standing on the shoulders of giants to deliver the encryption we now have loved since Netscape to our digital Web3.0 lives. We couldn’t consider a greater accomplice to assist us scale Aztec to mainstream.”
Aztec’s privateness community was formally launched on the Ethereum blockchain in February 2020. With Zcash-based expertise, it offered confidential tokens the place the quantities have been cryptographically hidden, Cointelegraph reported.