Zero-knowledge (ZK) startup Lagrange Labs has raised $4 million in pre-seed funding to develop its ZK system enabling secure interoperability across different blockchain networks.

The raise was led by investment firm 1kx and included contributions from Maven11, Lattice Fund, CMT Digital, Daedalus Angels, according to an emailed announcement on Thursday.

Lagrange's work could entice more users to decentralized finance (DeFi) by allowing developers to build decentralized apps (dApps) that can operate across different blockchain simultaneously while alleviating the security threat that this may otherwise bring.

Sharing information across different chains requires an intermediary protocol, which can be prone to hacks and vulnerabilities.

"These intermediaries also tend to be limited in the information they can pass on," Lagrange's founder Ismael Hishon-Rezaizadeh said. "Modern DeFi applications require more sophisticated relationships between data on different blockchains, and we’re excited to see how our technology can unlock new multi-chain DeFi primitives.”

Lagrange has also hired Yale University's co-director of Applied Cryptography Charalampos Papamanthou as its chief scientist.

Zero-Knowledge Proofs Funding Rounds 1kx

Jamie Crawley

Jamie joined CoinDesk as a news reporter in February 2021 after writing widely about crypto and blockchain for two years in other roles. Away from crypto, Jamie runs a lot and loves all things sport. He holds small amounts of BTC, ETH, ADA and LTC.