In April 2024, Shiba Inu raised $12 million by selling its unreleased token TREAT to non-US investors. Participating investors included Polygon Ventures, Foresight Ventures, Mechanism Capital, Big Brain Holdings, Shima Capital, Animoca Brands, Morningstar Ventures, Woodstock Fund, DWF Ventures, Stake Capital, and Comma 3 Ventures.
Secret Network is a privacy-focused blockchain and Web3 privacy-preserving computation layer. As part of its Secret 2.0 roadmap, the team is developing the TFHE Layer1 network based on Fhenix and developing privacy-preserving rollups as a complement.
Arcium, formerly known as Elusiv, is a DePIN network for parallel confidential computation on Solana. Arcium was founded by Yannik Schrade, Julian Deschler, Nicolas Schapeler, and Lukas Steiner. It was rebranded as Arcium on May 8, 2024, from its previous identity as a zero-knowledge compliant privacy protocol. Arcium provides developers and applications in DeFi, DePIN, AI, and other fields with flexible access to trustless, verifiable, and high-performance confidential computation capabilities. Arcium is not a blockchain itself but relies on the DA layer and consensus layer of the underlying blockchain. It allows developers to deploy confidential smart contracts across different blockchains and provides non-blockchain users with the ability to configure the trust model of the blockchain layer according to their needs. Arcium network consists of two main components: the Arx network and the Multi-Party Execution environment (MXE). MXE combines MPC, FHE, ZKP, and other technologies to achieve secure computation on encrypted data. Arx network is a decentralized node network where anyone can contribute by running a node. Arcium has launched an incentivized private testnet and invited 100 individual developers or team members to participate in testing. Selected participants can run MPC nodes or intermediate nodes and build on-chain applications using MXE.
In November 2022, Elusiv completed a $3.5 million seed funding round with lead investors LongHash Ventures and State Stripities Ventures. Other participating investors included Jump Crypto, NGC Ventures, Big Brain Holdings, Anagram, Cogitent Ventures, Equilibrium, Marin Ventures, Token Ventures, Moonrock Capital, Monke Ventures, and Solanafm.
In May 2024, Arcium completed a $5.5 million strategic funding round with Greenfield Capital as the lead investor. Other participants included Coinbase Ventures, Heartcore Capital, Longhash VC, L2 Iterative Ventures, Stake Facilities, Smape Capital, Everstake, Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko, and Monad co-founder Keone Han. The total funding for Arcium has reached $9 million. This funding will be used to provide developers and blockchain applications with a trust-minimized and configurable encrypted computation framework.
Privasea is a DePIN+AI project that integrates fully homomorphic encrypted machine learning (FHEML) into a distributed computing network. It has also launched the DApp “ImHuman” using FHE technology to ensure secure execution of “Proof of Human” (PoH). ImHuman allows users to create an account that cannot be recovered if the password is forgotten. It scans the user’s face vector using the front-facing camera on the phone and encrypts it directly on the device without sending it to any server. The encrypted face vector is then sent to Privasea servers to mint a personalized NFT, completing the proof of human process. Users who complete the PoH will receive exclusive airdrops. ImHuman is currently available on Google Play and will soon be launched on the App Store. Privasea has also built the AI DePIN infrastructure called Privasea AI Network, which has already launched its testnet. The testnet provides scalable distributed computing resources for FHE AI tasks, reducing the risk of centralized data processing. Privasea’s FHE solution is supported by Zama Concrete Machine Learning.
In March 2024, Privasea completed a $5 million seed funding round with participants including Binance Labs, Gate Labs, MH Ventures, K300, QB Ventures, and CryptoTimes. In April, Privasea completed another strategic funding round with participants including OKX Ventures, Laser Digital (backed by Nomura Securities), and Tanelabs (backed by SoftBank).
Cluster Protocol is a DePIN computational proof protocol aiming to build a decentralized AI model repository similar to GitHub. It provides secure and consistent rewards to GPU providers using FHE integration. Cluster Protocol completed a seed funding round in March 2024 with Pivot Ventures and Genesis Capital as investors. The specific amount of funding has not been disclosed. Cluster Protocol will also join Pivot’s incubation and acceleration program.
Mind Network is an FHE re-staking layer for DePIN and AI, supported by Zama. It aims to achieve the vision of “HTTPZ” (end-to-end encrypted internet). Its products include MindLayer, an FHE re-staking solution for AI and DePIN networks; MindSAP, an FHE-authorized stealth address protocol; and MindLake, an FHE DataLake built on the FHE validator network using MindLayer. In MindLayer, users can re-stake LST tokens of BTC and ETH into Mind Network and introduce FHE-enhanced validators to ensure end-to-end encryption for the validation and computation processes of AI and DePIN networks. It also introduces the Proof of Intelligence (PoI) consensus mechanism designed specifically for AI machine learning tasks to ensure fair and secure allocation among FHE validators. FHE computation can also be accelerated through hardware. MindLake is a data storage rollup designed for on-chain encrypted data computation. Mind Network is currently working with AltLayer, EigenDA, and Arbitrum Orbit to launch rollup chains. Mind Network’s testnet has already been launched.
In June 2023, Mind Network completed a $2.5 million seed funding round with investors including Binance Labs, Comma3 Ventures, SevenX Ventures, HashKey Capital, Big Brain Holdings, Arweave SCP Ventures, and Mandala Capital. Mind Network was also selected for Binance Labs’ fifth season incubation program and previously participated in the Chainlink BUILD program and received an Ethereum Foundation Fellowship Grant.
zkHoldem is an on-chain Texas Hold’em game supported by ZKP and FHE. It has been launched on Manta Network and will soon be launched on Arbitrum.
Framed! is a full-chain “mafia” game supported by Inco Network and fhEVM. It was selected for the ETHGlobal New York finals in September 2023. The official Twitter account for Framed! has not been updated since December last year and is suspected to no longer be in operation.
Penumbra is a fully private cross-chain PoS network and DEX within the Cosmos ecosystem. It was founded in 2021 and operates a shielding pool that allows shielded transfers, staking, and exchange. It uses Threshold Fully Homomorphic Encryption (TFHE) for shielding swaps between pools, which are processed as batch transactions. Penumbra aims to integrate all assets within the Cosmos ecosystem into a shielding pool. In November 2021, Penumbra completed a $4.75 million seed funding round with Dragonfly Capital as the lead investor. Other participants included Interchain Foundation, Lemniscap, Robot Ventures, Volt Capital, Figment, Strangelove Ventures, Informal Systems, and ZKValidator.
BasedAI is a decentralized AI project based on ZK-LLM. Similar to Bittsesor, it can integrate FHE with any LLM connected to its network. BasedAI’s Cerberus Squeezing deep compression principle can improve the operational efficiency of LLMs and reduce computations, ensuring data remains encrypted during processing and transmission. BasedAI’s Prometheus testnet is nearing completion, and Cyan is about to begin.
Polyverse AI is a global AI data engine supported by privacy, Web3, and FHE. It aims to become a “decentralized Google” and solve AI data privacy issues through FHE and ZKP. Its AI data layer provides support for generative AI, DeAI, DeFi, DePIN, metaverse, LLM, and more.
Sight AI is a decentralized AI inference network using FHE. It provides a secure, private, and collaborative network for future DeAI inference. It introduces vFHEML (verifiable FHE machine learning) and uses SNARG on the loop to accelerate proof generation. Considering the difficulty of integrating FHE with ZK-SNARK, Sight AI does not use ZK-SNARK for data verifiability. Instead, it combines SNARG with FHE to create vFHE, reducing computational requirements and speeding up proof generation.
References:
– Vitalik Buterin, “Exploring Fully Homomorphic Encryption,” Jul 20, 2020.
– Mustafa Hourani, “Explaining the Recent Rise of Fully Homomorphic Encryption in the Blockchain Industry,” Oct 10, 2023.
– Taiko Labs, “Introduction to FHE: What is FHE, how does FHE work, how is it connected to ZK and MPC, what are the FHE use cases in and outside of the blockchain, etc.,” Nov 24, 2023.
– Haotian: “超越 ZKP,全同态加密 FHE 如何赋能区块链?” Nov 2023.
– Jeffrey Hu, Arnav Pagidyala, “Challenges & Solutions of Onchain FHE: Unlocking the Holy Grail,” HashKey Capital, Dec 5, 2023.
– Caleb Shack, “Flawed Homomorphic Encryption,” Big Brain Holdings, Apr 18, 2024.
– Haotian: “FHE 全同态加密的想象空间有多大?” May 2024.
– FHE-Rollups: Scaling Confidential Smart Contracts on Ethereum and Beyond – Whitepaper
