zero-knowledge-proofs
(10)
Aleo Wants to Make Money Move Without Making It Public
Public blockchains turned every wallet into a glass bank account. Aleo is betting that programmable privacy - with disclosure on the user's terms - is the missing rail for stablecoins to enter payroll, aid and institutional finance.
Polygon Labs Wants to Make the Blockchain Disappear
The Ethereum scaler has become a payments company. Its new pitch is not another chain to think about, but a stack that makes chains somebody else’s problem.
Space and Time
A smart contract can execute perfectly and still act on a bad answer. Space and Time is building the database layer that sends the answer with its receipt.
Tools for Humanity
Tools for Humanity built a silver sphere to answer the internet’s suddenly urgent question: is anyone here actually human? Its real product is not the Orb, but a new trust layer stretching from irises to apps, blockchains and AI agents.
Fabric Cryptography
Fabric Cryptography is a San Francisco hardware startup building the Verifiable Processing Unit (VPU) - a fully programmable custom-silicon chip with an instruction set designed specifically for advanced cryptography. Founded in 2021 by Michael Gao, Tina Ju, and Sagar Reddy, Fabric aims to do for cryptography what Nvidia did for AI: dramatically accelerate workloads like zero-knowledge proofs, fully homomorphic encryption, and multi-party computation compared with CPUs, GPUs, and fixed-function accelerators. The company has raised $39M total, including a $33M Series A in August 2024 co-led by Blockchain Capital and 1kx.
Alpen Labs
Alpen Labs is a Bitcoin infrastructure company building Strata, a zero-knowledge (ZK) validity rollup and bridge that lets people borrow, earn, and transact in dollars directly on Bitcoin - without wrapped tokens or custodians. Founded in 2022 by a team of MIT alumni, the company uses ZK cryptography to bring programmable smart contracts and DeFi-style financial products to Bitcoin while preserving its security and decentralization.
Drosera Network
Drosera Network is a decentralized incident response protocol that aims to be an 'immune system for Ethereum.' It lets DeFi protocols deploy 'Traps' - small, off-chain-defined smart contracts that continuously monitor on-chain state, detect anomalies or exploits, and trigger automated emergency responses (like pausing functions) before an attack drains funds. A decentralized network of Operators watches those Traps and pushes verified responses on-chain, turning security from an after-the-fact audit into a live, programmable defense layer.
ATAD Corp.
ATAD Corp. is a Seoul-based technology company building an AI-driven multi-cloud operating platform that helps teams run AWS, Azure, and GCP environments from one place. Its flagship product, ODiiN, uses AI to forecast and self-heal infrastructure problems, claiming up to 80% cost savings and large productivity gains. Founded in 2023 by cloud and cybersecurity specialists, ATAD pairs cloud automation with a security stack built on AI, multi-factor authentication, and zero-knowledge proofs, and also runs Heiimdahl (a multi-LLM monitoring gateway) and Kraton (a blockchain-based decentralized VPN). The company has raised about $3.36M and holds a growing portfolio of patents in multi-cloud integration and secure data distribution.
World
World (formerly Worldcoin) is building a global "proof of human" network for the AI age. Created by Tools for Humanity and co-founded by OpenAI's Sam Altman and CEO Alex Blania, World lets people prove they are a real, unique human online without revealing who they are. Users verify with the Orb, a custom iris-scanning device, and receive a private World ID plus access to the World App, World Chain (an Ethereum Layer 2), and the WLD token. The pitch is simple: as AI makes bots indistinguishable from people, the internet needs a privacy-preserving way to tell humans apart from machines.
VIA
VIA (VIA Science, Inc.) is a Somerville, Massachusetts Web3 company building a decentralized, quantum-resistant, passwordless platform that lets governments and enterprises share and analyze sensitive data without exposing it. Backed by 18 issued patents, VIA is the first blockchain application to earn U.S. Department of Defense-wide cybersecurity accreditation, and its tools protect data and identities for the DoD, Fortune 100 firms, and energy utilities worldwide.