Matter Labs Raises $200M For Its zkSync Mission

The raised funds would be pushed into the development of the platform’s zkSync V2 rollup network to reduce fees and increase transaction speeds on Ethereum. 

$200 Million Raised In Series C 

The Ethereum development firm Matter Labs raised $200 million in its latest Series C funding round, which was co-led by Blockchain Capital and Dragonfly Capital. Other participating investors in this funding round include Variant, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). The funds will be channeled toward the platform’s zkSync mission, bringing the total funding to $458 million. In addition, this total funding amount for the project includes a separate $200 million dedicated ecosystem fund. The team had previously raised $8 million in its Series A and Seed Round and $50 million in its Series B, which was led by (a16z). 

What Is zkSync?

Rollups help lower Ethereum’s high fees and increase transaction timings. High gas fees have been a major pain point for the network as it has lost users to other networks that provide more competitive pricing and faster speeds. zkSync is gaining traction as a zero-knowledge roll-up platform that processes transactions on a separate layer (Layer 2) from the Ethereum network, groups them up, and pushes them back to the main Ethereum network, allowing them to be recorded on the ledger for a much lower cost than normal. The funds from Series C will also be used to fund third-party ecosystem projects built by other teams and develop Matter University to focus on spreading knowledge and education on such topics.  

zkSync 2.0 To Be Made Open Sourced

The $458 million will be spent on the launch of the zkSync Ethereum scaling platform. The team announced the latest funding through a blog post, where it also pledged to file its core software under an MIT Open Source license. The team revealed that zkSync 2.0 would be made fully open source at the company’s next milestone point, Fair Onboarding Alpha. This will allow third parties to view, use, and augment the zkSync code. 

The statement reads, 

“We believe open sourcing our technology will supercharge the adoption of our ZK-rollup and cement its core innovation — the zero-knowledge prover — as the gold standard for the ecosystem. This will be the first time a general-purpose ZK-rollup has been fully open sourced.”

The team also announced a strategic partnership with smart contract auditing firm OpenZeppelin which will be leading a full security audit on the code prior to the launches.

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