Polkadot-based privacy project Manta Network raises $5.5M

Manta Network, a privacy layer project for the Polkadot ecosystem, has completed a new funding round to continue scaling decentralized finance (DeFi) use cases by boosting blockchain privacy.

Announced Tuesday, Manta Network’s latest $5.5-million funding round included participation from more than 30 venture funds, including crypto hedge fund CoinFund and alternative investment firm ParaFi Capital.

Other investors included Web 3. investment fund LongHash Ventures, CMS Holdings, Divergence, Spartan Group, Global Coin Ventures, SkyVision Capital, Zee Prime and SNZ.

The funding has also featured some of the industry’s prominent individual investors from major cryptocurrency companies such as Digital Currency Group, Consensys and Bitcoin.com. According to the announcement, angel investors included SushiSwap’s semi-anonymous core contributor 0xMaki, Dragonfly Capital’s Kevin Hu, ParaFi general partner Santiago Santos and others.

Founded in 2020, Manta Network is focused on building a privacy-focused and interoperable blockchain protocol targeted specifically for DeFi applications, aiming to make DeFi genuinely private. The protocol uses zk-SNARKs with Groth16 proofs, the same cryptographic technology implemented behind privacy-oriented cryptocurrency Zcash (ZEC).

According to CoinFund CEO and founder Austin Barack, Manta is building “one of the core primitives for privacy preservation within DeFi.”

Related: Polkadot Web3 wallet Talisman closes $2.35M seed funding round

“Building upon Substrate, which allows for purpose-built layer one networks, Manta can build ZKSnark privacy-preserving architecture directly into the base layer and solve several existing problems users face today such as front running and lack of privacy when making transfers or managing a portfolio,” he said.

Earlier this year, Manta Network completed a $1.1-million funding round led by Polychain Capital and joined by major industry firms such as Alameda Research and DeFiance Capital.