ZkLink, a revolutionary infrastructure layer aiming to streamline trading assets across blockchains, has successfully garnered $10 million in a strategic funding round. Among its investors is the venture capital arm of major crypto exchange, Coinbase (COIN), demonstrating the faith its backers have in its potential. With its sights set on a mainnet launch in the third quarter, zkLink appears to be navigating the choppy waters of crypto venture capital funding rather well.
As the market has witnessed turbulence in 2021, infrastructure projects have managed to maintain their footing. Renowned venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz even recognized the potential of zero-knowledge (zk) technology in their recent annual report on the crypto industry. Consequently, the competition to launch zk-based technology is heating up. Rivals such as Polygon and Matter Labs found themselves neck-and-neck with zkLink, as both teams announced the mainnet launch of their respective zk-EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) offerings in March.
In preparation for its mainnet launch, zkLink plans to initiate a community campaign called “Odyssey” along with the “Dunkirk” asset withdrawal test. Co-founder Vince Yang’s vision for zkLink foresees a scenario where “DeFi trading delivers comparable user experience, efficiency, and speed as centralized exchanges, but also provides the advantages of being trustless and non-custodial.”
To see this vision come to life, zkLink is built around zero-knowledge rollups—an Ethereum scaling approach that uses mathematical proofs to confirm the validity of off-chain transactions, thereby saving time, throughput, and fees. The decentralized trading layer works to connect layer 1 blockchains and layer 2 protocols. Furthermore, developers can utilize zkLink’s application programming interfaces (APIs) to create a diverse range of products, including order book decentralized exchanges, non-fungible token (NFT) marketplaces, and more.
With this recent round of funding, zkLink’s total funds have reached $18.5 million, thanks to the contributions of Ascensive Assets, SIG DTI, BigBrain Holdings, Efficient Frontier, and several other investors. Despite the rollercoaster ride crypto markets have faced in recent times, blockchain infrastructure projects like zkLink continue to forge ahead in their development, perhaps eventually shifting the landscape of the crypto industry itself.
Source: Coindesk
