zkMe, the zero-knowledge identity oracle provider, has successfully raised $2 million in pre-seed funding to revolutionize on-chain credential verifications.
Despite closing the funding round at the end of last year, the company has chosen to make the official announcement now, after coming out of stealth mode last month.
With the increasing importance of managing identity and personal information in the era of digital transformation, zkMe offers a solution that addresses the critical concerns of individuals and organizations.
The platform allows users to selectively disclose their credentials to authorized parties without compromising their privacy, giving them full control over their digital identities. This technology has potential use cases in various industries, including anti-sybil protection, anonymous web data attestation, and private KYC compliance.
zkMe has implemented a secure and efficient way for decentralized applications (dApps) to verify user eligibility while safeguarding privacy. Through its SSI mobile app, users can encrypt and anonymize their data and prove claims on their own devices using Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKPs).
This ensures that their personal identifiable information remains exclusively in their control. The ZKPs are then verified by a network of Multi-Party Computation (MPC) nodes before being minted onto the user wallet as an SBT (Selective Blockchain Transfer). zkMe’s proof-of-personhood approach guarantees the uniqueness of the DID (Decentralized Identity) holder.
Following this funding round, zkMe aims to complete testing and onboard customers on the mainnet within a month. They have also announced first go-live partnerships with Infrastructure, GameFi, and DeFi projects through their social media channels.
In the context of stricter KYC/AML requirements in DeFi enforced by the US Department of the Treasury and the SEC, solutions like zkMe’s zero-knowledge KYC play a crucial role. zkKYC enables institutions to participate in DeFi while meeting compliance standards, ensuring verified users can access financial services in a permissioned DeFi ecosystem. Furthermore, zkKYC enhances transparency, trust, and reduces the risk of fraudulent activities or data breaches in DeFi. The company is also expected to expand its credential use cases to include the verification of users’ web2 activities and social status.
CEO and Co-Founder of zkMe, Alex Scheer, expressed his enthusiasm about the funding, stating, “This latest round of funding is a promising first step for us to establish a much-needed trust-layer for digital interactions. We believe that selective, secure, and efficient credential verifications are of fundamental importance for web3 to grow and attract new users and innovative use cases. We are thrilled to have the support of Circle and Spartan as we work to build the zk-credential network of web3 and help users verify themselves privately.”
With this funding round, zkMe is well-positioned to continue its mission of improving privacy and security in digital interactions, setting the stage for the future of decentralized identity verification.
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