ZK dark-pool Renegade raises $3.4 million in seed funding

Renegade, a startup developing a new type of DEX, attracted $3.4 million in a seed round led by Dragonfly Capital and former AngelList CEO Naval Ravikant. The report comes from The Block.

Among other venture backers are Balaji Srinivasan, Tarun Chitra of Robot Ventures, Mark Bhargava of Tagomi, and Lev Livnev of Symbolic Capital Partners.

Renegade is an on-chain variant of a dark pool — a private off-exchange venue for trading financial instruments aimed at institutional players. Among the product’s main features are the use of a confidential computing protocol, as well as zero-knowledge proofs.

In traditional markets, dark pools allow institutional investors to buy and sell large blocks of an asset with relatively little impact on price. Renegade’s primary aim is to help traders execute trades at better prices without signaling their intentions to a broader market.

The technology being developed by the startup is aimed at improving trade execution in DeFi by preventing the use of MEV tactics such as front-running, sandwiching, and various forms of algorithmic trading.

A public testnet for Renegade is planned for Q2 2023.

Earlier, the institutional-focused startup Taurus raised $65 million following a Series B funding round.