Union Labs, a team focused on creating a hyper-efficient, zero-knowledge interoperability layer, has secured $4 million in seed funding to develop the first fully trustless bridge connecting appchains, layer 1, and layer 2 networks.
The seed funding round attracted investment from notable industry VCs, including Galileo, Semantic Ventures, Tioga Capital, Nascent, Lightshift, and Chorus One.
This funding will also be used to expand the Union Labs team, which includes leaders from Composable Finance, ConsenSys, Tokensoft, and Polygon, in preparation for its upcoming mainnet launch.
The project aims to address the critical issue of bridge hacks in the Web3 space, which saw over $1.6 billion stolen in 2022.
“The most prominent hacks are bridge hacks, yet bridges remain critical infrastructure for almost all projects, showing the need for better, more resilient products,” states Union Labs Founder, Karel Kubat.
Union Labs is building a trustless and censorship-resistant infrastructure layer that facilitates efficient and secure data transfer and interaction across various blockchains. Unlike other bridging solutions, Union does not grant special authority to relayers, making private keys less vulnerable to hackers. Instead, it verifies messages using zero-knowledge proofs.
Union’s ZK bridge architecture consists of two key components: CometBLS, the consensus mechanism, and Galois, the prover. CometBLS is designed to improve scalability for chains like Ethereum by reducing state growth and light client verification costs, emphasizing fast execution, low operational costs, and decentralized infrastructure. This enables Inter-Blockchain Communication (IBC) on Ethereum, opening up new possibilities for Web3 users.
The project’s approach to secure, reliable, and cost-efficient communication between networks and decentralized applications (dApps) through zero-knowledge infrastructure is expected to drive more use cases and users in the Web3 ecosystem. It represents a significant development in trust-minimized interoperability, particularly between Ethereum and IBC-connected blockchains.
Union Labs aims to offer a user-friendly experience through its high-level API, making it easy for developers from various ecosystems to integrate and utilize its technology. Overall, Union Labs’ mission is to establish trustless financial infrastructure for the crypto industry, paving the way for a secure and interoperable cross-chain future.