Manta Community developer raises $25M in Sequence A, launches layer 2 for ZK apps

by Jeremy

P0x Labs, the cryptographic growth workforce behind Manta Community, has introduced that it raised $25 million in a Sequence A funding spherical, with main contributions from Polychain Capital and Qiming Enterprise Companions. The funding provides the corporate a $500 million valuation.

Moreover, Manta Community has launched the testnet of its layer-2 infrastructure, Manta Pacific, inside its ecosystem for zero-knowledge (ZK) purposes, in accordance with an organization assertion. The raised funds will likely be utilized to broaden the community, entice extra customers and discover various use circumstances for Manta Pacific.

In an interview with Cointelegraph, Manta Community CEO Kenny Li highlighted the first aim of Manta Pacific, which is to streamline the event of options and purposes, making certain user-friendliness. Li stated that whereas ZK has garnered consideration as a beneficial proposition, it primarily serves as a characteristic set that facilitates numerous use circumstances for purposes.

Nevertheless, the problem arises from the truth that builders specializing in decentralized app growth could lack experience in cryptography or favor to keep away from a steep studying curve. In Li’s phrases:

“The hurdle is overcome by Manta Pacific’s ZK software layer, which makes use of pre-compiled circuits which could be seamlessly built-in into purposes with minimal code.“

In response to Li, implementing ZK purposes for affected person knowledge is an final aim, which incorporates reaching self-sovereignty and possession of 1’s medical info. Nevertheless, Li stated this aim continues to be years away as a result of challenges related to accessing and aggregating fragmented knowledge from hospitals, which aren’t motivated to handle it successfully or undertake blockchain know-how.

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In response to Li, Manta Community recognized a use case in finance the place staked tokens are issued to customers primarily based on their holdings on platforms like Binance. He said that privateness issues come up when customers are reluctant to confirm their identification as a result of publicity of their whole pockets.

To deal with this, Li talked about {that a} privateness layer via ZK-enhanced staked tokens was launched, just like the Binance account-bound token, leading to roughly 58,000 verified person mints. This enhances the usability of staked tokens for identification functions whereas prioritizing person privateness.

Manta Pacific’s testnet at present options numerous ZK purposes for customers to begin accessing, together with zkHoldEm, a totally on-chain and personal Texas Maintain’em recreation; zkMe, a protocol for personal and verified credentials; and zkPass, a privacy-preserving protocol for knowledge verification.

Manta Atlantic’s flagship nonfungible token personal providing platform launched in April 2023 and has since minted over 300,000 zero-knowledge soulbond tokens throughout key ecosystem companions, together with Arbitrum, Galxe, Linea and CyberConnect.

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