Rarimo, a zero-knowledge (ZK) identity protocol, announced the closing of a $2.5 million fundraising round spearheaded by Ethereum’s Vitalik Buterin. Other investors included Celestia’s Nick White and Aztec’s Zac Williamson.
Known as the Vision Round and reserved exclusively for founders of leading chains and ZK protocols, the funding was designed to unite leaders around a shared vision for the future of digital identity.
Investors believe that digital identities must be private, user-owned, and user-controlled. And to achieve this, an identity stack such as Rarimo’s that provides total decentralization is urgently required.
Along with this view, the funds from the Vision Round will be used to launch Rarimo as a ZK roll-up on Ethereum in Q1 2025. This expansion follows the battle testing of Rarimo’s ZK identity system during the Russian elections where it survived Kremlin attacks.
Rarimo’s identity infrastructure started with passport ZKPs. And users can self-issue passport-based identities, store them privately on their mobile phones, and generate ZK proofs locally from their own devices. No third parties are involved in the process.
These passport ZKPs have been used for anonymous voting in Russia, Iran, and Georgia, and for airdrops. And the community is now focused on expanding Rarimo’s infrastructure so that users can build private social graphs and experiment with ZK reputation.
This is the list of investment partners: Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum Co-Founder; Nick White, Celestia Co-Founder; Brian Retford, RiscZero Co-Founder; Daniel Lubarov, Polygon Zero Co-Founder; Stefan George, Gnosis Co-Founder; Alex Pruden, Aleo Co-Founder; Keone Hon, Monad Co-Founder; Ariel Gabizon, Zcash contributor; Zac Williamson, Aztec Co-Founder; Arnaud Schenk, Aztec Co-Founder; Liam Eagan, Alpen Labs Founder; and Pavel Kravchenko, Distributed Lab Co-Founder.
KEY QUOTES:
“In the future, all users will self-issue and privately store their identities on their own device, generating zero knowledge proofs that let them co-ordinate and communicate without compromising anonymity. This decentralized model makes hacks, bans and censorship almost impossible.”
– Lasha Antandze, Co-Founder of Rarilabs, a contributor to Rarimo
“I share the Rarimo team’s passion for improving and protecting freedom and democracy in post-Soviet countries and beyond. I recognize the dual need to protect privacy against oppressive governments and hackers while, at the same time, allowing participants in discussions to trust each other. Free speech must be neither squashed by a boot nor drowned out in noise.”
“Rarimo’s identity model of ZK-wrapping existing proof-of-personhood methods and building applications on top, allowing users to prove important facts about who they are without fully disclosing their identity, is a promising strategy to achieve both goals at the same time.”
– Vitalik Buterin, Founder of Ethereum
“Rarimo’s sovereign, private, digital identity layer will unlock very powerful, cypherpunk applications for crypto. Onchain voting is just the tip of the iceberg.”
– Nick White, Founder of Celestia
“Zero-knowledge cryptography holds tremendous potential for solving digital identity challenges. I’m proud to support the Rarimo team as they tackle this critical need with innovative products like Freedom Tool and the ZK Identity Registry. Their work is paving the way for secure, privacy-preserving solutions that have the potential to redefine how we trust and interact online.”
– Alex Pruden, Founder of Aleo
“It’s more important today than it ever has been that there be open, decentralized and transparent identity protocol that enables *credible* anonymous and pseudonymous online actions. Rarimo is building this and I’m proud to support them.”
– Brian Retford, Founder of RiscZero
“Permissionless identity protocols with strong user privacy protection will be seen as a keystone technology of the new information revolution, and Rarimo is leading the charge. The community is talented, tenacious and targeting real-world deployments of this bleeding-edge technology. I am thrilled to be supporting their journey.”
– Zac Williamson, Co-Founder of Aztec
