Developer Obscuro Labs Ethereum ETH
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Layer 2 network TEN (“The Encrypted Network”) announced that it has raised $9 million in a funding round.
Obscuro Labs said on Friday that the round was led by enterprise blockchain company R3, with participation from Republic Crypto, KuCoin Labs, Big Brain Holdings, Magnus Capital, and DWF Labs. An R3 spokesperson confirmed to The Block that R3 led the round.
Obscuro co-founder Gavin Thomas told The Block that the company has raised $9 million in three tranches over the past two years, with its most recent investment of nearly $3 million closed in December of last year. said. Every tranche is structured as a Simple Contract for Future Assets (SAFE) along with token warrants, Thomas said. He added, “SAFE was optional as some investors were only interested in signing token warrants.”
Thomas noted that the latest funding round brought Obscuro’s fully diluted token value to $30 million.
Thomas, a former R3 executive, co-founded Obscuro in 2022 to develop TEN, a cryptographic Ethereum layer 2. More than half of the Obscuro team, 7 out of 13, are from R3, where they developed Corda, R3’s permissioned blockchain. Thomas said. He added that R3 has supported TEN from the beginning, with R3 co-founder Todd McDonald leading Obscuro’s funding round.
Regarding the controversial company DWF Labs’ investment in Obscuro, Thomas said DWF Labs invested in Obscuro “before the controversy surfaced” and that “there seems to be some controversy surrounding their behavior as a market maker, but we are using it “I don’t do it,” he said. . “They are also one of our smallest investors.”
What is Ten?
TEN is a crypto-focused Ethereum layer 2 network that allows developers to choose which parts of their smart contracts they want to be private and which parts they want to be public.
“TEN leverages a practical technology called secure enclaves for ledger encryption,” Thomas said. “The secure enclave ensures strong confidentiality along with certainty about code execution. This allows TEN to run the Ethereum virtual machine in an encrypted space, providing smart contracts, decentralization, scalability, and encryption.”
TEN aims to provide similar efficiency to optimistic-based Layer 2 networks while essentially creating “secret” rollups and maintaining “full encryption.”
When asked how TEN differs from other privacy-focused networks such as Aztec and Fhenix, Thomas said each takes a different technological approach. Aztec utilizes zero-knowledge proofs, Fhenix uses fully homomorphic encryption, while TEN uses secure enclaves. TEN chose the secure enclave because of a variety of factors, including minimal friction and cross-agency support, as the performance, user and developer experience is “equivalent to Ethereum,” Thomas said.
According to Obscuro Labs, TEN, the encrypted Ethereum Layer 2, will “significantly open up the design space” to develop the next generation of on-chain gaming, decentralized finance, real-world assets, and institutional use cases.
TEN mainnet and token launch
TEN is currently in testnet mode and plans to launch mainnet in October. Meanwhile, TEN’s native token will be launched in June, Thomas said.
When asked why they are launching the token before mainnet, Thomas said, “Our token is a governance token, and we want to decentralize key decisions as much as possible ahead of mainnet.”
“What is important to us is the disclosure period, which is the predefined maximum period for which a transaction will be disclosed to ensure regulatory compliance,” he said. “Along with this, a whitelist has been implemented where certain dApps may be exempt from this requirement because they have their own safeguards, such as institutional applications. We hope the community will weigh in on which dApps should be included in this whitelist. “Mainnet is being prepared.”
Thomas added that with the new funding, Obscuro plans to expand its 13-person team by hiring across business development and engineering functions.
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