Inco Raises $4.5 Million for Blockchain Privacy

Inco, a blockchain project focused on privacy and auditability, has raised $4.5 million in a fundraising round led by 1kx Ventures, and other investors.

A $4.5 million fundraising round, spearheaded by 1kx Ventures, has been disclosed by Inco. Circle Ventures, Robot Ventures, Alliance DAO, Portal Ventures, Fenbushi Capital, Symbolic Capital, Big Brain Holdings, P2 Ventures, Matter Labs, Daedalus, and GSR Markets LTD were among the other contributors to the fundraising round.

To ensure the privacy and auditability of on-chain data, Inco uses fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) in conjunction with the Ethereum network’s security features. It is an interoperable, modular, layer-1 blockchain with a focus on confidentiality.

Gentry, Inco’s first testnet, will launch in the second quarter of 2024, according to founder Remi Gai. Paillier, the second testnet, will open in the second and third quarters of the same year, just before the mainnet launch in Q4.

Despite the fact that trusted execution environments and zero-knowledge proof-based rollups do offer some privacy features, Gai thinks they are limited, according to The Block.

“Smart contracts have been limited by their lack of access to programmable confidentiality,” stated Wei Dai, a research partner at 1kx, commenting on his company’s leadership position in the seed round. The most recent developments in threshold FHE and blockchain, introduced to the market by Inco, change this.

The CEO of FHE research firm ZAMA, Rand Hindi, has joined board of directors as an advisor, and the two companies have also established a strategic collaboration. Along with Sandeep Nailwal of Polygon Labs and Anand Iyer of Lightspeed Venture Partners, he is a prominent figure in the Web3 business. Iyer is a venture capitalist and is general partner at Canonical Crypto.

To “benefit from Ethereum’s larger economic security and stability to secure our network,” Inco has adopted dual staking using ETH and INCO, despite being constructed using Cosmos SDK.