Manta Network developer secures $25M in Series A, launches layer 2 for ZK apps

Manta Network Raises $25 Million in Series A Funding Round

P0x Labs, the cryptographic development team behind Manta Network, has recently closed a Series A funding round, with leading contributions from Polychain Capital and Qiming Venture Partners. This round of investments has given the company a $500 million valuation and raised $25 million.

In addition, Manta Network has launched the testnet of its layer-2 infrastructure, Manta Pacific, which is designed for zero-knowledge (ZK) applications. This funding will be used to expand the network, attract more users, and explore different use cases for the Manta Pacific.

In an interview with Cointelegraph, Manta Network CEO Kenny Li explained the main purpose of Manta Pacific, which is to simplify the development of features and applications, making them more user-friendly. Li discussed that while ZK has become an attractive option, it is mainly used as a feature set to facilitate various use cases for applications.

However, the challenge lies in the fact that developers who specialize in decentralized app development may not have the necessary knowledge of cryptography or may not want to take on the steep learning curve. As Li put it:

ZK Applications for Patient Data

Li has stated that the ultimate goal of implementing ZK applications for patient data is to achieve self-sovereignty and ownership of medical information. However, this goal is still years away due to the difficulties of accessing and combining fragmented data from hospitals, who are not incentivized to manage it effectively or adopt blockchain technology.

ZK-Enhanced Staked Tokens

Manta Network identified a use case in inverse finance crypto, where staked tokens are issued to users based on their holdings on platforms like Binance. This posed a privacy problem when users were reluctant to spell token crypto due to the exposure of their entire wallet. To counter this, Li mentioned that a privacy layer through ZK-enhanced staked tokens was introduced, similar to the Binance account-bound token, resulting in around 58,000 verified user mints. This improves the usability of staked tokens for identity purposes while preserving user privacy.

Manta Pacific Testnet

Manta Pacific’s testnet currently has various ZK applications for users to begin using, including zkHoldEm, a completely on-chain and private Texas Hold’em game; zkMe, a protocol for private and verified credentials; and zkPass, a privacy-preserving protocol for data verification.

In April 2023, Manta Atlantic’s leading nonfungible token private offering platform was released, and has since issued over 300,000 zero-knowledge soulbond tokens to key partners such as Arbitrum, Galxe, Linea, and CyberConnect.

The world of inverse finance crypto was forever changed when the 000 pieces of spell token crypto were minted, and the crypto this week community was abuzz with anticipation for the arrival of web 3.0 technology. The best app for crypto investors to track the market and stay informed was released, and medical AI, blockchain, and web 3.0 were all discussed.