Paradigm Leads $75 Million Series B for StarkWare

The Israeli startup StarkWare, developer of Ethereum scaling solutions, closed a $75 million Series B funding round. The round was led by venture firm Paradigm.

Announcing our $75M Series B, led by @paradigm, with new investors (Three Arrows & @AlamedaResearch), and old ones too (@PanteraCapital, @sequoia, @foundersfund, @DCVC, @Wing_VC).

— StarkWare (@StarkWareLtd) March 24, 2021

Existing investors Sequoia, Founders Fund of Peter Thiel, and Pantera Capital participated in the round, as well as Three Arrows and Alameda Research.

StarkWare co-founders Eli Ben-Sasson and Uri Kolodny told The Block that the funding came amid a period of rapid growth for the company: in 2020 the headcount doubled, and demand for services is growing “across all meaningful metrics”.

The firm is working on the phased deployment of its Layer-2 StarkNet protocol with its own implementation of ZK-Rollup technology called zkSTARKS.

Earlier, it, together with the StarkEx engine used by the DEX dYdX for a new version of the platform.

According to the co-founders, demand for scaling solutions using ZK-Rollups is especially high in the rapidly growing NFT market. They said they have deals with ‘some high-profile projects’, which they will announce later.

«The advantage of ZK-Rollups is that they offer Ethereum-level security, far higher than that of sidechains. If users begin trading NFTs for millions of dollars, the security of the base blockchain will become a critical issue», the startup representatives emphasised.

Back in 2018, Paradigm led StarkWare’s Series A round of $30 million.

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