Nexus Laboratories, Inc. is a virtual machine (software that simulates a physical computer) designed to build trust in the Internet. To do this, Nexus is relying on a form of cryptography called “zero-knowledge proofs,” or zk-proofs, which allow one party to prove to another that a piece of data is correct without handing over the underlying data. A simple analogy: a driver’s license scanner that shows a person is 21 years old without revealing their name or address. Nexus believes zk-proofs are a powerful tool and wants to make them available to any developer.
On Monday, Nexus took a step toward that goal by announcing it had raised $25 million in a Series A funding round. The round was co-led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and Pantera Capital. Faction Ventures, Dragonfly Capital and Blockchain Builders Fund also participated, bringing the company’s total funding to $27.2 million.
Nexus envisions “a new future for the Internet in which the integrity of computing and data is protected by evidence,” Daniel Marin, the company’s founder and CEO, said in a statement.
Whether it’s artificial intelligence, cloud computing or blockchains, almost any data set can be verified using zk proofs. For now, however, Nexus is focused on aggregation, a term that refers to a layer 2 blockchain built on top of a layer 1 mainnet such as Ethereum. Rollups are designed to help the core network scale by grouping transactions and sending them to the main blockchain in a single transaction.
“We expect every decentralized network to see critical applications of zk-proofs,” said Lauren Stefanian, general partner at Pantera Capital. “We believe there will be thousands of zk-proof associations in the very near future, all of which will require proof generation.”
So why should we care about verified calculations? Marin told Luck that in a world that is increasingly online and powered by artificial intelligence, use cases have far-reaching implications. This could mean verifying identity, verifying tax software, or even verifying the authenticity of sensitive but sensitive data in the defense industry. “Anything that requires increased security requires evidence,” he says.
What would hypothetically be the largest data set that could be tested in the future? “Ethereum blockchain,” he replied. This would mean confirming all calculations, from block zero to the present, and compressing them into a single proof of approximately 100 bytes in size. “So you can combine the entire history of the blockchain into one proof,” he explains, “which will be updated with each new block. But he admits that we are still a long way from that.
Investor Haseeb Qureshi, managing partner of Dragonfly, said in a statement that the firm first met Marin when he was a computer science and cryptography student at Stanford. “My firm led the initial investment in Nexus when Daniel graduated because we were impressed by his experience and vision for how to improve productivity and lower barriers to using zero-knowledge proofs,” Qureshi said.
Earlier this month, the company announced Nexus 1.0, the first major release of its zk-secure virtual machine. The software uses cryptography to “compactly aggregate evidence” and “optimize and parallelize verifiable computations” across a network of machines.
With this funding, Nexus intends to expand its product offerings, support early adopters, and maintain engagement with the scientific community. The company is also considering cooperation with financing. He is launching both an open-source community and the first stages of a new volunteer computing network that he hopes will break the record for the largest computation ever performed.
Marin admits it’s difficult to grasp the possibility of what verifiability and truth mean in computation, “but there are a lot of possibilities here,” he insists.