Iron Fish, a decentralized blockchain network that aims to create a cryptocurrency as private as cash, has raised $27.7 million in a Series A round led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) ahead of the network’s Dec. 1 testnet launch.
- “While a number of Web 3 teams are now building developer-oriented privacy tools for blockchains, there’s also a need for mainstream privacy solutions that are accessible for everyday users,” wrote a16z general partner Ali Yahya, deal analyst Elena Burger and crypto partner Guy Wuollet in a blog post. ”That’s why we’re thrilled to invest in Iron Fish, a decentralized blockchain network using zero-knowledge proofs to create a user-friendly, private cryptocurrency.”
- Other investors in the round included Sequoia, Electric Capital, MetaStable, Arrington XRP, Terra co-founder Do Kwon, Thesis CEO Matt Luongo and Anchorage co-founder Nathan McCauley.
- San Francisco-based Iron Fish launched its first testnet in April and says it has since attracted nearly 2,000 self-identified miners to its community. The company is now launching an incentivized testnet that will reward member participation with leadership points that will lead to future mainnet Iron Fish coins.
- The Iron Fish roadmap starts with the proof-of-work blockchain with native cryptocurrency and will then extend to include more assets, stablecoins and cross-chain bridges, including layer 2 support.
- “Iron Fish is working toward becoming a universal privacy layer for all chains, unlocking a critical need that has previously been missing in the web3 ecosystem,” wrote a16z in its blog post.
- Iron Fish was founded in 2018 by Elena Nadolinski, a former software engineer at Microsoft and Airbnb.
Read More: New Privacy Coin Iron Fish Launches Testnet With $5.3M in Funding
