Led by Blockchain Capital and Dragonfly, commits to MIT Open Source Technology by Their Fair Onboarding Alpha Milestone
This Brings zkSync’s total mission-driven commitment to $458 million
SOMEWHERE, Earth, November 16, 2022 – Matter Labs, the team behind zkSync, a zero-knowledge rollup (ZK-rollup) Ethereum Layer 2 scaling solution, today announced it has raised $200 million in a Series C round co-led by Blockchain Capital and Dragonfly, with additional participation from LightSpeed Venture Partners, Variant and from existing investors including Andreessen Horowitz (“a16z”). This latest round brings the total money dedicated to the mission of zkSync to $458 million which includes the $200 million raised in Series C, a $200 million dedicated ecosystem fund, $50 million in Series B led by a16z, and $8 million in prior investments.
zkSync’s mission is to accelerate the mass adoption of crypto for personal sovereignty. Its core technology – an EVM-compatible ZK-rollup – is designed to scale Ethereum without degrading its decentralization or security. On October 28th, 2022, zkSync’s EVM-compatible Layer 2 was released on mainnet as part of a three-step process to bring the technology fully into production.
The introduction of zkSync’s ZK-rollup is significant because it holds the promise of being the end-game for scaling Ethereum. Additionally, zkSync 2.0 is being recognized as the long-awaited solution that contains the five necessary components to achieve the end-game.
- Its solution supports general-purpose smart contracts, which means it has the capability to support every possible use case of Ethereum.
- It is easy to port, which means that all existing applications that work with Ethereum can be ported to this new technology quickly and with very little expense.
- zkSync 2.0 supports Solidity, which is the most common programming language in the crypto space and enables developers to seamlessly adopt this new technology without learning a new programming language.
- zkSync 2.0 supports the majority of crypto-specific developer tools used for building blockchain applications, which all but eliminates any adoption friction.
- Matter Labs is announcing that its core platform will be made available through an MIT Open Source license at Fair Onboarding Alpha in Q4 2022.
Releasing this technology as MIT Open Source is a significant moment in the history of ZK-rollups. It will be the first time that a general-purpose ZK-rollup’s technology is released that offers developers the freedom to 1) view the code 2) modify the code and 3) fork the code. Together with supporting EVM, Solidity, and common tools, the decision to go fully open source is likely to not only supercharge the adoption of zkSync 2.0, but also to increase the likelihood that its prover – the core technology that powers zkSync 2.0 – is adopted as the standard in the industry. By open-sourcing such critical technology, zkSync creates benefits for the entire ecosystem of Ethereum including better security, scalability, and lower transaction costs for all. Matter Labs intends to release its code as MIT Open Source at its Fair Onboarding Alpha milestone as defined by its Public Roadmap.
Along with its announcement of $458 million dedicated to achieve its mission and launch zkSync 2.0 on mainnet, Matter Labs announced that it now has over 150 ecosystem projects who have indicated their intent to deploy on zkSync 2.0. This makes zkSync’s Full Alpha Launch the largest in the history of Layer 2 blockchain. Included in this list of ecosystem projects are industry giants like Chainlink, SushiSwap, Uniswap, Aave, Argent, 1inch, Gnosis, Curve, and many more.
Funds from the raise will be used for furthering the mission of Matter Labs including funding ecosystem projects, building more ecosystem projects that benefit the Ethereum community, the creation of Matter University, and hiring additional team members that make all of these projects successful.
About Matter Labs
Matter Labs is the team behind zkSync, an EVM-compatible ZK-rollup which scales Ethereum’s values and technology without degrading Ethereum’s decentralization or security. Its technology enables anyone to port from existing EVM-compatible solutions to zkSync 2.0 easily and holds the promise of being the end game for scaling Ethereum, unlocking millions of use cases, and creating an ecosystem that could benefit billions of people by enabling everyone to achieve personal sovereignty.
