Lagrange Labs – a zero-knowledge startup driving cross-chain interoperability – announced it raised $4 million in a pre-seed round led by 1kx and joined by Maven11, Lattice Fund, CMT Digital, Daedalus Angels, and several more.
The funding round will be used to advance its proprietary zero-knowledge (ZK) proof system to help solve the longstanding problem of interoperability in the blockchain ecosystem by enabling developers to seamlessly build decentralized apps (dApps) that rely on the state of multiple different blockchains simultaneously.
Zero-Knowledge (ZK) technology has popularly emerged as a promising solution to improve scalability in Ethereum with hundreds of millions being poured into new ZK projects monthly.
Rather than using ZK technology to alleviate scalability problems, Lagrange’s research focuses on using ZK technology to address the interoperability problem. And despite efforts to connect different blockchains via bridges, hacks, and vulnerabilities continue to put users at risk, and the fundamental problem remains: blockchains struggle to communicate with one another.
Lagrange’s ZK technology enables blockchains to seamlessly interact without intermediaries and enables real-time and historical data to validate different states across a wide range of Layer 1 and Layer 2 networks. This makes it possible for dApps to rely on live cross-chain pricing, liquidity, volatility, and other information across various chains.
Co-Director of the Applied Cryptography Lab at Yale University and Faculty member Charalampos (Babis) Papamanthou has joined Lagrange Labs as Chief Scientist and offers years of research on verifiable and privacy-preserving computations and scalable blockchains and cryptocurrencies, to the team.
Hishon-Rezaizadeh and the team expect to see their proprietary ZK proof system being applied to a wide range of use cases in DeFi including cross-chain asset states used in yield aggregators, multi-chain credit scoring, multi-chain DEX pricing, and more.
They are also prioritizing applications in other verticals like decentralized identity, general purpose verifiable computation, cross-chain GameFi, and cross-chain governance. And Lagrange Labs has been actively hiring Ph.D. researchers in applied cryptography coming out of top graduate programs and plans to use the pre-seed funds to accelerate research in ZK-proof systems.
KEY QUOTES:
“Historically, validating cross-chain information required an intermediary protocol to relay the information between chains, and these intermediaries, like bridges, were prone to hacks and vulnerabilities. These intermediaries also tend to be limited in the information they can pass on. Modern DeFi applications require more sophisticated relationships between data on different blockchains, and we’re excited to see how our technology can unlock new multi-chain DeFi primitives.”
— Ismael Hishon-Rezaizadeh, Founder and CEO of Lagrange Labs
“Our unique type of n-to-1 chain interoperability is a paradigm shift that unlocks new cross-chain DeFi use cases like trustless on-chain pricing, multi-chain yield aggregators, volatility indexes, cross-chain cross-margin, and more.”
— Hishon-Rezaizadeh
“Proving arbitrary amounts of any state on any chain is a powerful concept that will empower developers to build novel, secure, and cross-chain-native applications. Lagrange is at the forefront of that research and we are excited to support the team as they bring this new primitive to market.”
— Lasse Clausen, Founding Partner of 1kx
“The current approaches to interoperability have only begun to explore the impact that recursive zero-knowledge proofs can have on verifiable computation of multi-chain states.”
— Co-Director of the Applied Cryptography Lab at Yale University and Faculty member Charalampos (Babis) Papamanthou
