We are thrilled to announce that we have raised $22 million across two funding rounds and launched our latest testnet (Alpha-3) in our mission to build a decentralized and Ethereum-equivalent (Type 1) ZK-EVM.

Taiko’s goal is to scale Ethereum in a manner that emulates it as closely as possible - both technologically and ideologically. To that end, we are proud to partner with a group of leading investors who share our vision and have put their trust in us.

Our rounds are led by Sequoia China and Generative Ventures respectively, with participation from BAI Capital, GGV Capital, GSR Markets, IOSG Ventures, Kucoin Ventures, Mirana Ventures, OKX Ventures, Skyland Ventures, Token Bay Capital, Yunqi Partners, plus other investors and prominent contributors & community members from across the Ethereum ecosystem.

Scaling Ethereum is one of the most significant and impactful challenges within crypto, as evidenced by the numerous talented teams looking to solve this challenge, each with varying approaches and trade-offs. At Taiko, we strongly believe that the principles that made Ethereum the default settlement layer of the open web — decentralization, permissionless-ness, and security — must be upheld at all cost in Layer 2 solutions. We also believe that an uncompromising Ethereum-equivalent developer experience is paramount for the success of an Ethereum scaling solution. Hence, our goal is to develop the world’s first Type 1 ZK-EVM, with decentralized and permissionless provers/proposers from Day 1. Furthermore, we aim to do this in a manner that is equivalent to Ethereum in other regards: fully open-source and community-driven.

Taiko’s co-founders have extensive experience in launching and scaling ZK projects, as demonstrated by the creation of Loopring — the world’s first application-specific ZK rollup — in 2017. Our founding team comprises Daniel Wang (CEO), Brecht Devos (CTO), Terence Lam (CSO), and Matthew Finestone (COO), who lead a group of 20+ world-class blockchain developers, ZK researchers and crypto-native operators, distributed across more than 16 countries.

With the help of our partners and latest funding we look to continue to build on the success of our first two testnets (alpha-1 & alpha-2), where we saw participation from over 2000 block proposers, ~200 block provers and a tripling in the size of our community. As laid out in Taiko’s roadmap, we have planned several more testnets, each focused on testing a different part of our tech stack, as we gear up for mainnet launch in Q1 2024. Additionally, we plan to expedite the growth of key protocols and partnerships on Taiko, and as such invite builders and projects interested in deploying on Taiko to get in touch with us and join our growing ecosystem!

Commenting on the announcement Daniel Wang, CEO & Co-founder of Taiko, said:

“Thanks to recent advancements in zero-knowledge algorithms, hardware acceleration and leading industry research, we believe that we are now on the cusp of having a truly decentralized Ethereum-equivalent ZK-rollup. This is our core mission at Taiko and we are incredibly proud to partner with leading investors who share our uncompromising vision.”

Will Wang, Partner at Generative Ventures, added:

“We believe in the fundamental value of creating a trustless network and machine economy that empowers informational and financial revolution and Taiko is the top candidate to scale the process and deliver performance.”

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• Website: https://taiko.xyz

• Discord: https://discord.gg/taikoxyz

• GitHub: https://github.com/taikoxyz

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/taikoxyz

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