A16z leads $25M funding for Miden blockchain project

A16z Crypto led a $25 million funding spherical into Miden, an impartial blockchain project spun out of Polygon Labs.

Miden closed its $25 million seed rounds led by a16z Crypto, 1kx, and Hack VC, with participation from Finality Capital Partners, Symbolic Capital, P2 Ventures, Delta Fund, MH Ventures, in addition to from angel buyers, together with MakerDAO’s Rune Christensen and EigenLayer’s Sreeram Kannan.

Miden is a zero-knowledge (ZK) proof-powered blockchain targeted on excessive scalability by way of its hybrid consensus mode, which strikes transaction execution from the mainnet on “edge devices,” referring to customers’ gadgets.

Designed for establishments that worth confidentiality, Miden allows purposes to execute each private and non-private transactions with full privateness, in line with an April 29 announcement shared with Cointelegraph.

Execution on edge gadgets may help with the “bottlenecks that limit traditional chains,” mentioned Bobbin Threadbare, the co-founder at Miden and former engineer at Meta, including:

“It allows blockchains to scale without relying on supernodes or sacrificing decentralization, while making privacy a built-in feature instead of an afterthought.”

The $25 million will likely be used to fund Miden’s improvement, and its mainnet launch is slated for the fourth quarter of 2025.

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Miden is “the future of blockchains,” says Polygon Labs’ Nailwal

“Miden is what the future of blockchains looks like. With edge execution at its core, it’s not just an upgrade — it’s the blueprint for the final form of blockchain architecture,” in line with Sandeep Nailwal, the founding father of Polygon Labs.

“With ambitions to rival Solana, Sui, and Aptos — and to be the epicenter of crosschain liquidity for Agglayer as a native chain and help grow the Agglayer ecosystem— building independently naturally positions Miden to attract the capital and focus needed to compete at the highest level,” Nailwal added.

Miden plans to airdrop round 10% of its native tokens to Polygon (POL) tokenholders and stakers to reward its native ecosystem.

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No present blockchain is prepared for mass adoption: Miden co-founder

“The reality is that no existing blockchain is ready for mass adoption,” both missing privateness, scalability, or Web3-native ideas reminiscent of censorship resistance, in line with Miden’s Threadbare.

However, Miden’s infrastructure could also be a “catalyst for large institutional adoption,” he claimed, including:

“The reality is that up until this point, blockchains have not been in the position to offer privacy without compromising on performance or programmability, which is a major issue.”

Large tech corporations becoming a member of the house require privateness options with regulatory compliance, leaving a major hole for options like Miden, added the co-founder.

Other trade watchers have additionally criticized the trade’s lack of confidentiality for limiting institutional adoption.

Confidential computing applied sciences reminiscent of absolutely homomorphic encryption may unlock the following $1 trillion price of capital for the crypto house with continued technological improvement, Remi Gai, the founding father of Inco, instructed Cointelegraph.

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