ZK project Hylé raises $2.6 million in funding round led by Framework Ventures

Zero-knowledge project Hylé raised $2.6 million in fresh financing led by the venture firm Framework Ventures.

Cherry Crypto, Fabric Ventures, First Capital and Heartcore Capital also participated in the round. Hylé’s total initial funding to date is $3.4 million, with an additional $1.5 million in revenue from their NFT project briqNFT, the firm's co-founder Sylve Chevet told The Block. Hylé's board of directors will not change. 

Hylé builds out the Hylé network, which verifies zero-knowledge proofs (ZKP) for scalability and privacy. Hylé wants to be the core layer for the modular ZK tech stack, according to a release shared with The Block. The Hyle network runs its own consensus mechanism and is purpose-built for ZKP verification, offering developers and users options for what suits their systems. 

The firm intends to use the financing to help launch its mainnet as quickly as possible, as well as onboarding backend experts and protocol engineers to build additional proving schemes such as Polygon zkEVM, Cairo and Noir. A proving scheme uses cryptography to verify an item without revealing its sensitive information.

In addition, Hyle will also create tools for developers who want to leverage zero-knowledge technology in their applications. "The objective is to help developers use ZK and abstract the complexity away by packaging all the amazing ZK technology that exists but isn’t organized in a coherent way," Chevet said. "Think of it as building react and react components for frontend, but for ZK."

Chevet adds that zero-knowledge technology "is a radically novel innovation that transcends regular blockchain setups. We’ve only scratched the surface of what is possible."