Inco Raises $5M To Accelerate Development of Confidentiality Layer for Blockchains

Inco has raised $5M in a strategic round led by a16z Crypto Startup Accelerator (CSX), with participation from new investors Coinbase Ventures and follow-on support from existing investors 1kx Capital, OrangeDAO, South Park Commons, and Script Capital.

We are excited to continue our work leveraging various cryptographic techniques to build a confidential compute protocol for existing blockchains. Our first product, Inco Lightning, is designed to provide confidentiality to any onchain application. Powered by verifiable compute within a Trusted Execution Environment (TEE), Inco Lightning offers confidentiality without compromising on the performance demanded by areas like real-time gaming, high-frequency DeFi, and private transactions. We aim to support multiple L1 and L2 blockchains in the future, starting with Ethereum and Base before expanding to other ecosystems. We are also in the process of building Inco Atlas, an FHE/MPC-based solution, to be launched later this year.

"After solving issues like scalability and chain abstraction, confidentiality remains the final challenge for blockchains," said Remi Gai, Founder of Inco. “Just as SSL/TLS transformed the internet by making secure and encrypted communication the standard, Inco introduces a new paradigm of confidentiality for blockchains, empowering applications to embed privacy directly into business logic, risk management, and compliance. Incorporating privacy as a separate modular layer preserves the performance of the base protocol while allowing cryptographic techniques to be upgraded independently over time without disruption.”

Since our last round of funding, we’ve achieved a lot:

• We launched the Inco Lightning testnet
• We collaborated with Circle Research on a well-received framework for confidential ERC20 tokens 
• We joined the ERC3643 Association to help boost RWAs with programmable confidentiality
• We worked with Zama and OpenZeppelin to create the Confidential Token Association with the aim of creating a widely-adopted encryption-based standard for confidential tokens
• Worked with projects including Toku, Tally, and Blocklive on creating solutions for confidential payroll, confidential onchain governance, and confidential onchain ticketing

Inco’s confidentiality layer is the missing piece of the blockchain stack, and can be to blockchains what HTTPS/SSL is to the internet. With seamless, composable confidentiality, builders will be able to create applications for core use cases users take for granted in web2 but that have, until now, not been possible in web3 due to the confidentiality problem. This includes confidential token transfers, games that require hidden information such as poker, receiving salary onchain without revealing it publicly, and many more.

Inco Lightning is now open to developers. We encourage you to build applications and explore what’s possible with seamless, composable onchain confidentiality.