Sovereign Labs has raised $7.4 million in seed funding led by Haun Ventures, co-founders Preston Evans and Cem Özer told londonbusinessblog.com.
The startup is building an “open, interconnected rollup ecosystem” with a software development kit (SDK) to provide a framework for secure and interoperable zero-knowledge rollups (ZK rollups).
“The goal of Sovereign has always been to scale [blockchains] simple,” said Özer. “For people who have been in this space for more than four years, it is pretty clear that rollups and ZK rollups are the way to go for blockchains to scale to the masses.”
A rolling up is a blockchain that gets security from another blockchain, so it’s a way to add functionality to an existing chain without compromising security, Evans said. Rollups can be used to support various use cases such as tokens, NFTs, smart contracts, etc., but they are cheaper to run because they outsource transactions.
The capital will be used to build its SDK and employ protocol engineers and researchers with expertise in blockchains and their frameworks, Özer said. The SDK aims to help developers of Rust (and eventually C++) use ZK technology in any blockchain without having to be experts in cryptography, both co-founders said.
Some major ZK rollup blockchains that exist today include Polygon, zkSync, and StarkWare’s StarkNet platform, all of which aim to increase scalability and security for off-chain developers through faster speeds and reduced costs before they become combined and submitted to Ethereum. Ethereum-focused ZK rollup projects such as dYdX, Sorare, and Immutable are also working to scale up the space and improve user experiences through other areas such as decentralized exchanges, dApps, and gaming.
“Without scaling, current blockchain systems are useless,” said Özer. “The moment an application reaches product-market fit and there is demand, costs skyrocket and it becomes unusable […] applications need to figure out how to be scalable.”
Most ZK rollup solutions are standalone products built by and for the teams working on them, Özer said. Sovereign Labs “doesn’t build rollups itself,” but instead wants to build frameworks for others, he added. “We want to give this technology to everyone so they can use it and create with ease [their own] ecosystems.”
The team will work to create different monetization strategies, but the SDK framework will be open source, free and “always will be,” Evans noted.
In the near term, the co-founders expect roll-ups to be largely inaccessible until frameworks like the SDK are developed. “Over time, SDK products will become accessible,” said Özer. “We expect an explosion of ZK rollups and most developers will take advantage of them.”