Fhenix Raises $7M Seed Funding Led by Multicoin Capital for Confidential Blockchain
In Brief
Fhenix today announced it has successfully raised $7 million in a seed funding round.
It aims to build the first confidential smart contract platform using fully homomorphic encryption (FHE).
Blockchain firm Fhenix today announced it has successfully raised $7 million in a seed funding round led by Multicoin Capital and Collider Ventures. The round featured participation from Node Capital, Bankless, HackVC, TaneLabs, Metaplanet, and investors such as Tarun Chitra and Robert Leshner of Robot Ventures.
This infusion of capital will be utilized in driving the development of the Fhenix Network, which is slated for release on the public testnet early next year, and fostering the growth of its ecosystem applications.
Fhenix aims to build the first confidential smart contract platform using fully homomorphic encryption (FHE). This cryptographic methodology enables direct computation over encrypted data while safeguarding the confidentiality of the underlying information.
The company also aims to revolutionize application development within the Ethereum ecosystem by introducing data encryption and encrypted-data computation to smart contracts, transactions, and on-chain assets for the very first time.
“Fhenix addresses a huge problem in the Ethereum ecosystem: a lack of encryption for commercially sensitive data,” said Guy Zyskind, the Founder of Fhenix and Secret. “Fhenix gives users the confidence to put sensitive data on public blockchains while also giving developers the tools to compute and transform that data for the first time. The acute need for data confidentiality is rapidly growing which is driving demand for innovative technologies like FHE and fostering collaborations between complementary blockchains such as Fhenix and Secret to ensure a more secure and privacy-centric future.”
Guy Itzhaki, Fhenix’s CEO, underlined the potential of FHE, asserting, “By harnessing the power of FHE, we can solve one of the last remaining challenges in web3, and allow users to not only own their data, but also control who they share their data with. With Fhenix’s encrypted smart contracts, we can empower developers to use encrypted blockchain as an enabler for new business opportunities, including on chain trustless gaming, private voting for DAOs, on chain privacy-preserving AI and much more.”
Fhenix is powered by the fhEVM, a set of extensions for the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) that enable developers to seamlessly integrate FHE into their workflows and create encrypted smart contracts without any cryptographic expertise, while still writing in Solidity. The fhEVM protocol was originally developed by Zama, a cryptography company building open source homomorphic encryption solutions for blockchain and AI, and was integrated directly into the Fhenix Network through a strategic partnership.
“Having the ability to keep things private on-chain will go beyond solving privacy issues; it will pave the way for hundreds of new use cases—blind auctions, on-chain identity attestations and KYC, confidential real-world asset tokenization, private voting for DAOs and more,” said Rand Hindi, CEO, Zama. “We are still discovering the full scope of what developers can do with data privacy as a primitive and exploring the full potential of FHE and its applications. Through this partnership, we expect to not only solve on-chain privacy but also spark a privacy revolution through encrypted blockchains. We believe that this is not only possible, but in fact the only way forward.”
Fhenix is a collaboration between Secret’s founder and Zama, is spearheaded by Guy Itzhaki, a former Director at the Homomorphic Encryption & Blockchain Division at Intel.
“Similar to zero-knowledge proofs, FHE hathers always been a technology with a ton of promise; however, the challenge has always been how to bridge the requisite knowledge in hardcore cryptography and blockchain development. Fhenix radically simplifies that problem, and is making FHE accessible to Ethereum devs practically overnight,” said Kyle Samani, Managing Partner, Multicoin Capital.
Fhenix launched a private devnet in July 2023. The devnet provides an approachable FHE playground for interested developers. Developers seeking early access can apply here.
Fhenix is expected to launch “Renaissance”, its official public testnet in the first half of 2024. “Renaissance” will serve as an FHE blockchain “playground” for developers, with multiple testing and building incentivized campaigns. This decentralized initiative aims to attract blockchain’s best talents and form a thriving ecosystem that propels the implementation of FHE technology throughout blockchain’s landscape.
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About The Author
Victor is a Managing Tech Editor/Writer at Metaverse Post and covers artificial intelligence, crypto, data science, metaverse and cybersecurity within the enterprise realm. He boasts half a decade of media and AI experience working at well-known media outlets such as VentureBeat, DatatechVibe and Analytics India Magazine. Being a Media Mentor at prestigious universities including the Oxford and USC and with a Master's degree in data science and analytics, Victor is deeply committed to staying abreast of emerging trends. He offers readers the latest and most insightful narratives from the Tech and Web3 landscape.
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Victor is a Managing Tech Editor/Writer at Metaverse Post and covers artificial intelligence, crypto, data science, metaverse and cybersecurity within the enterprise realm. He boasts half a decade of media and AI experience working at well-known media outlets such as VentureBeat, DatatechVibe and Analytics India Magazine. Being a Media Mentor at prestigious universities including the Oxford and USC and with a Master's degree in data science and analytics, Victor is deeply committed to staying abreast of emerging trends. He offers readers the latest and most insightful narratives from the Tech and Web3 landscape.
