Alpen Labs has emerged from stealth mode and announced a $10.6 million funding round. The venture firm Ribbit Capital led the seed funding round in 2023, enabling Alpen Labs to expand its team of cryptographers and engineers.
Notable backers of Alpen Labs include Castle Island Ventures, Geometry Research, Stillmark, Village Global, Robot Ventures, and several individual investors. The startup has spent the past year developing Bitcoin rollup infrastructure to bring smart contract functionality.
Alpen Labs aims to address challenges related to privacy and scalability on the Bitcoin network using zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs). ZKPs verify data without revealing information about the data itself.
Alpen Labs is using zero-knowledge technology to simplify executing large programs on Bitcoin by breaking them down into smaller, easier-to-manage tasks of verifying digital signatures, which helps scale the network.
In addition to ZKPs, Alpen Labs is developing a Bitcoin rollup infrastructure, which combines numerous transactions into one on the blockchain. The firm intends to launch a testnet for its roll-up ecosystem in 2024, providing further details on its roll-up solution.
“We envision a programmable, scalable Layer 2 ecosystem on Bitcoin as the best place for on-chain finance: from payments to lending, custody, stablecoins, and use cases not yet imagined,” said Alpen Labs Co-Founder and CEO Simanta Gautam.
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