Ulvetanna, a ZK proof startup, raises $15 million in seed funding

Ulvetanna, a zero-knowledge-proof (ZKP) hardware firm, has closed a $15 million seed funding round led by Bain Capital Crypto and Paradigm.

The round, which also saw participation from Jump Crypto, valued the startup at $55 million, according to Ulvetanna’s founder and CEO Radisav Cojbasic.

The firm is building hardware to accelerate the process of generating ZKPs, a cryptographic method of authentication that proves specific information without revealing the content of said information.

In the crypto space, this technology has been historically used in scaling solutions for blockchain networks, particularly Ethereum.

Typically, proof generation can be expensive and computationally intensive using general-purpose computing technology.

To increase efficiency, Cojbasic said that Ulvetanna’s team, which includes programmers and engineers from Coinbase, Microsoft and Intel, will leverage its cryptographic knowledge with specifically designed hardware to accelerate proof production.

Cojbasic believes that the production of proofs will naturally lend itself to revenue generation, similar to how acting as a validator on a proof-of-stake blockchain or solving cryptographic puzzles on a proof-of-work chain reaps rewards.

While currently in pre-production, Ulvetanna plans to primarily focus on generating ZKPs for Layer 2 zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine networks and will use the funding to further build out its team and invest in servers and hardware computer chipping to power its platform.