Fhenix Secures $7 Million in Seed Funding Led by Multicoin Capital for Confidential Blockchain Innovation

Blockchain firm Fhenix Today, Fhenix celebrated the closure of its $7 million seed funding round, led by Multicoin Capital and Collider Ventures. This round also saw support from Node Capital, Bankless, HackVC, TaneLabs, Metaplanet, and prominent investors like Tarun Chitra and Robert Leshner from Robot Ventures.

This fresh capital will be directed towards the evolution of the Fhenix Network, set to debut its public testnet early next year, and to nurture the growth of its suite of ecosystem applications.

Fhenix is on a mission to create the pioneering confidential smart contract platform utilizing fully homomorphic encryption (FHE), a cutting-edge technique that facilitates computation on encrypted data while ensuring the privacy of the underlying information.

The company’s ambition also extends to transforming application development within the Ethereum ecosystem, by integrating data encryption and encrypted data processing into smart contracts, transactions, and on-chain assets for the first time ever.

"Fhenix tackles a significant issue within the Ethereum ecosystem: the absence of encryption for sensitive commercial data,\" stated Guy Zyskind, the Founder of Fhenix and Secret. \"Fhenix empowers users to store sensitive information on public blockchains securely, while equipping developers with the necessary tools to compute and manipulate that data innovatively. The increasing demand for data confidentiality is evident, driving the pursuit of groundbreaking technologies like FHE, and fostering partnerships between complementary blockchains such as Fhenix and Secret to create a more secure and privacy-focused future.\"

Guy Itzhaki, the CEO of Fhenix, emphasized the transformative power of FHE, stating, \"By leveraging FHE, we are positioned to tackle one of the last significant challenges in the web3 space, allowing users not just to own their data, but to determine who accesses it. With our encrypted smart contracts, we're enabling developers to leverage encrypted blockchains for new business ventures, such as trustless on-chain gaming, private DAO voting, and privacy-preserving on-chain AI, among others.\"

Fhenix operates on the fhEVM, a suite of extensions for the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) enabling developers to seamlessly incorporate FHE into their projects and create encrypted smart contracts sans extensive cryptographic knowledge, all while coding in Solidity. The fhEVM was initially developed by Zama, a firm specializing in open-source homomorphic encryption technologies for blockchain and AI, and has been integrated into Fhenix Network through a strategic alliance.

"The capability to maintain confidentiality on-chain will not only address privacy issues but will also unlock hundreds of innovative use cases—blind auctions, on-chain identity verification and KYC, confidential real-world asset tokenization, private voting for DAOs, and much more,\" shared Rand Hindi, CEO of Zama. \"We are still uncovering the vast possibilities of what developers can achieve with data privacy as a foundational element. Through our collaboration, we aspire to not just solve on-chain privacy, but spark a revolution in privacy through encrypted blockchains. We firmly believe this is not just feasible, but indeed the only path forward.\"

Fhenix represents a joint venture between the founder of Secret and Zama, championed by Guy Itzhaki, a former Director in the Homomorphic Encryption & Blockchain Division at Intel.

"Much like zero-knowledge proofs, FHE has always been viewed as a technology rich in potential; nevertheless, the challenge has been integrating the intricate knowledge of advanced cryptography with blockchain development. Fhenix simplifies this conundrum and makes FHE accessible to Ethereum developers almost instantly,\" remarked Kyle Samani, Managing Partner at Multicoin Capital.

In July 2023, Fhenix launched a private developer network, providing a hands-on FHE environment for interested developers. Those eager to gain early access are invited to apply. here .

Fhenix is set to introduce 'Renaissance', its official public testnet, in the first half of 2024. 'Renaissance' will act as a collaborative 'playground' for FHE on the blockchain, featuring numerous incentivized campaigns for testing and development. This decentralized initiative aims to attract top blockchain talent and cultivate a dynamic ecosystem that enhances the integration of FHE technology across the blockchain sphere.