Espresso Systems Raises $32M to Bring Scaling and Privacy to Web 3

Espresso Systems, a scaling and privacy system for Web 3 applications, revealed itself to the world with $32 million in funding led by Greylock Partners and Electric Capital, with participation from Sequoia Capital.

Other participants in the round included Blockchain Capital and Slow Ventures. The funding will go toward expanding the team, product development and bringing products to market.

“We are excited to back Espresso Systems as they tackle two of the key obstacles that will unlock long-promised applications of blockchain systems: lower fees and enhanced privacy guarantees,” said Greylock Partners investor Seth Rosenberg in a press release.

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Espresso Systems is developing layer 1, or base blockchain, infrastructure to deliver fast, low-fee transactions by integrating a proof-of-stake consensus protocol with a zero-knowledge (zk) rollup mechanism that can bundle multiple transactions in a more resource-efficient way.

The company’s Configurable Asset Privacy for Ethereum (CAPE) smart contract application is intended to offer creators customizable privacy regarding sender and receiver addresses and the amount and type of assets held or in movement. The elements can all be set to public, private or only transparent to select parties.

At the outset, CAPE will support the creation and wrapping of ERC-20 tokens with support for non-fungible tokens (NFT) to follow.

“Espresso systems will allow developers and asset issuers to build stablecoins that are fast, private and compliant; NFTs that are accessible; and DeFi applications that are more efficient,” added Greylock’s Rosenberg.

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