Smart contract platform Axiom raises 20 million in Series A round

Smart contract infrastructure firm Axiom has raised $20 million in Series A funding led by Paradigm and Standard Crypto, along with Robot Ventures and Ethereal Ventures Fund.

According to a January 25 announcement, Axiom Capital plans to hire developers and accelerate development of its first product. Instead of relying on traditional consensus methods – where all nodes agree on the state of the data – it uses zero-knowledge encryption.

“On-chain applications adapt to increased data costs by removing features or carefully designing contracts to optimize data usage,” Axiom said. According to the protocol, developers are not able to use data in a reasonable amount and because of this problem, they are forced to make smart contracts with complex design.

We're excited to announce a $20 million round led by @paradigm and @standardcrypto with participation from @robotventures and @etherealvc.

We're building an infrastructure that allows modern contract developers to access more information on-chain. pic.twitter.com/M8q61KMid3

— Axiom (@axiom_xyz) January 25, 2024

Zero knowledge technology allows users to verify that a statement is true without revealing any details. In other words, it enables a verification method without revealing the data involved in the calculation. By using ZK cryptography, Axiom says it enables on-chain applications to handle more data at a lower cost.

The protocol debuted in 2023, allowing developers to access historical Ethereum data, perform off-chain calculations, and send data with zero-knowledge proofs. “We believe that the need to store, access and process authenticated data will continue to grow, and we believe that cryptography and blockchains are the right tools to meet this need,” Axiom's statement says.

ZK certifications are increasingly used in various sectors such as banking, healthcare, energy and voting systems. Several crypto organizations are actively working on the technology for research and privacy purposes. For example, Polygon released in March 2023 Polygon zkEVM for the Ethereum ecosystem, which allows thousands of off-chain transactions with minimal data encryption.

Magazine: Beyond Crypto – Zero-Knowledge Proofs From Voting to Finance