Elusiv has raised a $3.5M seed round
Elusiv, is a Zero-Knowledge-based compliant privacy protocol and we have recently secured $3.5 million in our seed funding round led by Staking Facilities Ventures and LongHash Ventures. The proceeds will be used to build out our development team, fund security audits, and bring our solution to multiple blockchains.
Other investors include Jump Crypto, NGC Ventures, Big Brain Holdings, Anagram, Cogitent Ventures, Equilibrium, Marin Ventures, Token Ventures, Moonrock Capital, Monke Ventures, SolanaFM as well as several angels, including the founders of Solana, Zeta, Notify, Solflare, FMFW.io and UXD Protocol.
“Financial privacy is a requirement for individual freedom. However, advancing the adoption and acceptance of privacy-preserving tech also requires capable compliance. ZK and new decentralized technologies allow us to overcome the notion that privacy and compliance are exclusive and instead enable us to form a new kind of symbiosis between privacy and compliance,” said Elusiv co-founder Yannik Schrade.
Elusiv aims to become the backbone of the blockchain financial ecosystem — providing everyday users and merchants with privacy while still maintaining safety through low-trade-off compliance solutions. It will make standard transactions private and, at the same time, give users the freedom to choose which transactions to make public using Elusiv.
LongHash Ventures’ General Partner and Chief Operations Officer Wei Shi Khai said, “Privacy is a human right worth protecting, and has been a persistent pain point in Web3. We at LongHash Ventures are excited by Elusiv’s strong position to address this space with their user-friendly and scalable integrations while maintaining a practical approach to compliance. Moving forward, we see privacy as a key modular layer in our multi-chain infrastructure thesis, especially as more social and identity use cases mature.”
The Elusiv protocol comes with full composability. This means Elusiv can directly be integrated into wallets and protocols with the added benefit of working even if only one party is using it to maintain their privacy. That’s a significant advantage over existing solutions requiring both parties to use the same service. For example, if Alice wants to send money privately, the recipient, Bob, does not necessarily need to use Elusiv. Likewise, Bob could receive funds privately without Alice using Elusiv.
Louis Bauer, Venture Partner at Staking Facilities Ventures, said, “Elusiv is building the ground layer for more sensitive transactions to happen on-chain. Enabling privacy in a compliant manner so blockchains can eventually gain wider adoption. Their focus on strong integration partnerships will help bring this closer to the average user, while Elusiv VMs allow developers to deploy their own ZK-proofs in a cost-effective way. We are excited to back such a hungry and dedicated team as they contribute to growing and maturing the blockchain ecosystem.”
To provide compliance, Elusiv has invented various new compliance systems, utilizing Zero-Knowledge proofs and advanced cryptography. On the most basic level, Elusiv allows users to give third parties insight into their private transactions and assets by either sharing individual transaction viewing keys or by appointing so-called trusted third parties (TTPs) to view all transactions. Users can additionally prove to third parties that their transactions have not been sent, for example, by a known malicious actor, all with one or two button clicks.
On top of that, Elusiv’s advanced compliance system uses a decentralized network of trusted execution environments (TEEs) to achieve a consensus over malicious actors. Bad actors do not lose control over their funds but cannot gain privacy through Elusiv. The fact that the system allows to disclose transactions of malicious actors retroactively makes it unattractive for them to use Elusiv in the first place and thus provides safety for every other user.
We also plan to introduce “Elusiv Virtual Machines” to let developers use Zero-Knowledge Proofs for their applications without worrying about the complex cryptography involved. It means developers will be able to build their own ZK applications in a fraction of the time with a fraction of the cost.
About Elusiv
Elusiv is a Zero-Knowledge privacy protocol for privately sending and receiving funds on-chain with a big focus on compliance. Elusiv both provides privacy to the users (even when interacting with normal non-private wallets on the blockchain) and safety by keeping malicious actors out of the privacy protocol. Furthermore, Elusiv VMs, an extension of Elusiv, enable rapid development of solutions leveraging more general ZK circuits.
Media contact: Julian Deschler, julian@elusiv.io
