Union Labs, a Denver, DE-based team creating a zero-knowledge interoperability layer, raised $4M in Seed funding.
The round was led by Galileo, Semantic Ventures, Tioga Capital, and Nascent with participation from Lightshift and Chorus One.
The company intends to use the funds to expand operations and development efforts to provide a user-friendly experience through its API, ensuring developers from various ecosystems can easily integrate and utilize its technology, in anticipation of its upcoming mainnet launch.
Founded by Karel Kubat, Union Labs is building an interoperability layer which uses zero-knowledge proofs to connect any appchains, L1s, and L2s without depending on trusted third parties, oracles, multi-signatures, or (Multi-Party Computation (MPC).
Union’s ZK bridge architecture includes two key components that allow the project to enable IBC on Ethereum; CometBLS, the consensus mechanism, and Galois, the prover. CometBLS, developed by Union Labs, is an augmentation of Tendermint—a core contributor to the Cosmos network—that reduces both state growth and light client verification costs. It will replace current systems which are unequipped to adequately scale with the required amount of validators in space-restricted chains such as Ethereum. CometBLS focuses on consensus verification, emphasizing fast execution, low operational costs, and decentralized infrastructure.
Union does not grant relayers a special authority. This way, private keys are not a target for hackers, as they cannot take control of the protocol. Instead, messages are verified using zero-knowledge proofs.
FinSMEs
17/11/2023