Alpen Labs, a startup scaling Bitcoin with zero-knowledge technology and rollups, came out of secrecy on Wednesday and announced $10.6 million in pre-funding.
According to an official company announcement shared with The Block, venture firm Ribbit Capital led Alpen’s seed funding round in 2023, which allowed the company to grow its team of crypto experts and engineers. Other backers of Alpen Labs include Castle Island Ventures, Geometry Research, Stillmark, Village Global, Robot Ventures, Axiom Capital, WillowTree Investments, John Pfeffer, Charlie Songhurst, Charles Cascarilla, Ben Davenport, Ashwin Ramachandran, and Waitkit Lau.
Alpen Labs aims to help solve specific problems related to the Bitcoin network, including privacy, programmability, and scalability, using zero-knowledge proofs (ZKP). ZKP verifies the data without revealing any information about the data itself. Alpen aims to use zero-knowledge technology to help the network scale by breaking down the execution of large programs on Bitcoin into more manageable tasks that verify smaller digital signatures, the company said in a release.
Alpen Labs is also developing Bitcoin Rollup Infrastructure, a way to combine numerous transactions into one on the blockchain. The company plans to release more information about the Rollup ecosystem soon, with a goal of launching a testnet sometime in 2024.
“We envision Bitcoin’s programmable and scalable Layer 2 ecosystem as the best place for on-chain finance, from payments to lending, custody, stablecoins and use cases,” said Simanta Gautam, co-founder and CEO of Alpen Labs. “I’m doing it,” he said. From the release.
Some of the end goals envisioned by Alpen Labs include BTC-collateralized stablecoins, hashrate futures for miners, applications that provide trust-minimized returns on BTC, and overcollateralized lending on BTC.
“With over $1 trillion in Bitcoin stored, we believe it has significant potential to usher in a better monetary future with unprecedented global appeal,” Justin Saslaw of Ribbit Capital said in a statement. “By bringing more scalability, expressivity, and privacy to Bitcoin, the Alpen team is helping open opportunities for application-level creativity and growth for a more dynamic and inclusive financial ecosystem.”
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