NEW
YORK, Sept. 17, 2024 /PRNewswire/
-- Fermah, the universal proof generation layer, has announced
the successful closure of its $5.2
million seed round, co-led by the a16z CSX fund and
Lemniscap. The round also included participation from Bankless
Ventures, Longhash Ventures, P-OPS team, Public Works, ZK
Validator, Lambda Class, Daedalus, Zero DAO, Velocity Capital, and
Daemon Ventures.
A number of S-tier builders also participated as angels in the
round, including former Coinbase CTO and a16z GP
Balaji Srinivasan; Celestia's Mustafa
Al-Bassam (CEO) and Nick
White (COO); Co-founders of Polygon, Sandeep Nailwal,
Jaynti Kanani, and Daniel Lubarov; as well as Aztec's Zac Williamson (CEO) and Claire Kart (CMO); and several others.
The funding will go towards product development and team
expansion, with Fermah currently hiring for a number of key roles,
as part of the company's vision to make zero-knowledge proofs the
default substrate for all computation.
Fermah was founded by seasoned cryptographer Vanishree Rao, who has dedicated the last 15
years to designing and building Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKPs), and
holds a PhD in Cryptography from UCLA.
Vanishree was also the Lead Cryptographer at O(1) Labs – the team
behind Mina Protocol, one of the earliest and most innovative ZK
protocols. She has extensive experience working with cryptographic
primitives including secure hash functions, advanced digital
signature schemes, ZKPs, multi-party computation protocols, key
exchange protocols, and program obfuscation.
While ZKP technology is slowly becoming practical enough to
power broad, modern applications, the generation of proofs remains
extremely resource-intensive, requiring expensive, powerful
physical infrastructure. The underutilization of this hardware
inflates the price users pay for their ZK transactions. Beyond
this, designing, implementing, and maintaining the optimal
incentive structure for this infrastructure is extremely
onerous.
Fermah – which is optimized for cheap, fast, and reliable ZK
proof generation – is addressing this long-standing complexity
issue inherent to ZKPs, functioning as a marketplace for ZK proof
generation. Fermah generates proofs for any instance in which ZK is
used – whether it's for ZK rollups, ZK bridges, ZK coprocessors,
ZKML projects or ZKFHE projects. Fermah is neutral and architected
to support all proof systems, including zkVMs, zkEVMs, Groth16, and
all other proof systems.
Fermah aggregates demand from various sources, allowing
suppliers to leverage economies of scale, enabling a reduction in
costs for proof generation. In turn, the range of use cases that
can practically leverage ZKP technology expands – creating a
flywheel that grows the aggregate demand for proofs, and hence
enables further economies of scale to lower costs. This flywheel
makes the economics of ZKPs viable across a much broader range of
use cases. When combined with Fermah's several technical
breakthroughs, Fermah enables the first efficient marketplace for
ZK proof generation.
Roderik van der Graaf, Founder
and Managing Partner of Lemniscap, said: "Lemniscap is
firmly behind Fermah in their mission to provide fast, cheap, and
reliable infrastructure to help developers build category-leading
products. By abstracting ZKP complexity, Fermah is lowering the
technical barriers to entry, enabling more developers and
businesses to integrate these proofs into their systems. This long
awaited democratization of ZKPs extends the reach of these advanced
cryptographic techniques to a broader range of
applications."
Vanishree Rao, Founder and CEO
of Fermah, said: "I'm extremely optimistic that Fermah will
revolutionize the ZK space as we know it. With the right team,
backers, and experience, we're poised to bring our vision to
fruition. Soon, incorporating zero knowledge into applications will
be frictionless. After over 15 years of building ZKPs, I can
clearly see that we are approaching an inflection point: the
infrastructure is finally in place, and we're on the precipice of a
boom in innovative ZK applications. Fermah will play an integral
role in this boom."
About Fermah
Fermah is the universal proof generation layer. It functions as
a marketplace, where the supply side comprises GPUs and FPGAs. On
the demand side, Fermah can generate proofs for any instance in
which ZK is used. Fermah is optimized for cheap, fast, and reliable
ZK proof generation.
About Lemniscap
Lemniscap is an investment firm specializing in investments in
emerging crypto assets and blockchain startups. Since
its founding in 2017, Lemniscap has funded multiple
investments in the crypto blockchain space, on the
core belief that blockchain technology will upend traditional
business models, resulting in profound changes in the world
economy. The Lemniscap team consists of talented people with
backgrounds in financial markets, PE/VC, technology and
entrepreneurship. For more information,
visit https://lemniscap.com/.
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SOURCE Fermah