1kx

We're excited to back Predicate, the transaction prerequisite layer for onchain interactions.

We are thrilled to announce 1kx's lead investment in Layer. On Layer, devs can build, deploy, and manage actively validated services like smart contracts! Traditional smart contract platforms face scalability limits due to reliance on replicated execution. Actively validated services (AVS), pioneered by EigenLayer, are a new scaling paradigm that bypasses the limitation of smart contracts by relying on economic security. Yet, building, deploying, and maintaining these services remain a complex task. Layer's platform and SDK offer the best-in-class programmability and configurability for AVSes. On Layer, developers can deploy WASM containerized AVSes (CAVS) with configurable economic security, without needing to recruit an operator set. We think this is a game changer. We're excited to back Jake Hartnell, Sam Cassatt, and Ethan Frey on their mission to build out the next generation of crypto infrastructure. The founding team brings a wealth of experience: Jake and Sam brings deep product and operating experience from their past work at DAO DAO, Juno, and Consensys, while Ethan is an early contributor to Cosmos and the inventor of CosmWasm.

We're delighted to have co-led Daylight's seed round. Our Research Principal Nichanan Kesonpat shares more on our investment thesis and why we're excited about what Daylight are building in her post below.

Our Partner Diana Biggs joins host Will Beeson, CFA and Laszlo S., Co-Founder and CEO of Kiln, on the latest episode of Rebank to discuss the landscape of staking, the future of digital asset rewards and 1kx's investment in Kiln.

Today, we are thrilled to announce that 1kx have co-led a $33m Series A for Fabric Cryptography, a company dedicated towards accelerating the adoption and proliferation of advanced & programmable cryptography, including zero-knowledge (ZK) and fully homomorphic encryption (FHE). We believe that one of the major shifts in our lifetime is the migration from trusted legacy systems to systems utilizing advanced programmable cryptography. For example, ZK & FHE enable scaling and privacy unlocks for rollups, blockchains, and beyond. It is our thesis that this transformation will not only be seen in crypto, but also in industries with high costs of trust. Unfortunately, the applicability of programmable cryptography has been limited due to the cost overhead, despite rapid theoretical and engineering advances. We believe that the true potential of programmable cryptography can only be unlocked with hardware tailor-built for advanced cryptography. Fabric’s Verifiable Processing Unit (VPU) is specifically-designed for advanced cryptographic computation while architectured to be as programmable as a GPU. This means the VPU is both performant and future-proof–it pushes the industry close to real-time ZK proving while being able to adapt to new proof systems without compromising on performance. Furthermore, the opportunities for co-design between hardware, software, and research on the VPU platform is endless. We believe the next order-of-magnitude gain will come from co-designing advanced systems on the VPU platform. VPUs will transform the programmable cryptography space just like how GPUs transformed AI. We’ve been impressed by the progress that has been made by the Fabric team under the leadership of Michael Gao, Tina Ju, sagar reddy, Gilbert Hendry, and others. The VPU is poised to accelerate not only the current in-demand workloads, but also the upcoming next generation of systems. We cannot be more excited about what is in the works by Fabric and its partners. Programmable cryptography is the endgame. Fabric is accelerating the world towards it.

We are pleased to further our support of Rhinestone by leading their $5M Seed Round. It was immediately evident to us that they are building critical infrastructure that will make it easier for developers to build smart account modules account-agnostically. Smart accounts have the potential to onboard the next wave of Web3 users by abstracting away a lot of the complexities involved with self-custody. Unfortunately, key infrastructure has been missing to make these smart accounts modular and extensible. In the absence of this, developers have had to re-configure smart accounts for each individual implementation at a huge time cost. Rhinestone was among the first to recognize this problem. They were the ones who introduced #ERC7579, a new ERC standard to unlock interoperability across smart accounts which immediately garnered significant support from the likes of Biconomy, ZeroDev, OKX & more. Their recent focus has been on building an open module marketplace for developers, which allow developers to build smart account modules that are interoperable and secure. We believe their efforts are all the more important given the upcoming Ethereum hardfork, which will likely allow smart account features to apply to all of Ethereum users. We are thrilled to have been part of Kurt Larsen's journey building Rhinestone for over a year, and continue to be bullish on the valuable contributions they are making to the ecosystem. https://lnkd.in/gFFtyXtM

We are thrilled to lead a $3M seed round in Blockscout, a block explorer serving critical infrastructure for the EVM ecosystem. They have already become a household name for 600+ networks including Filecoin Foundation, Optimism Foundation, Coinbase (Base), The Arbitrum Foundation and more, and we are pleased to support them as they provide transparent and accessible data for devs, analysts and end-users alike.

If you're heading to EthCC in Brussels next week, we'd love to connect with you. We'll be hosting a Builders Coffee & Coworking Hub, RSVP here for access: https://lu.ma/5l0l3yux

Welcome, Rafael Morado! Rafael recently joined the 1kx team as an EIR, where he will focus on gaming, incentive systems, & consumer products. His extensive background includes working on the strategy for MUD and Redstone while at Lattice, five years at Dapper Labs where he saw the launch of Flow Blockchain and NBA Topshot, and experience working as a game designer at Ubisoft for CCP Games. He will spend his time at 1kx building & ideating with current teams from the portfolio, and we are thrilled to have him lend his expertise across our network. We sat down with him for an informal Q/A to get to know him better. Read the full conversation here: https://lnkd.in/gPT-Qg-z

??Just dropped: our latest research piece by Robert Koschig on Evaluating Token Economics for DePINs, a cost estimation: https://lnkd.in/gbBBJ8-p DePINs have received considerable attention from builders and investors alike over the last year. But understanding costs involved in running these networks is an all-too-often overlooked part of the DePIN puzzle. DePINs rely on the participation of nodes to secure the operations of their networks. These nodes are incentivized to participate via token reward emissions. If nodes operate at a loss, overall network supply may decrease, thus posing a risk to the network. Knowing the cost of operating a DePIN network and its largest drivers can equip network stewards to kickstart governance discussions prior to the supply of network services degrading, which is why this research is critical. Our framework for evaluating cost estimations of running nodes involves three steps: 1. Define networks contributors, which can be mapped to specific roles 2. Identify the cost components associated with node operations 3. Consider differences in cost structures when deriving an estimate The report dives comprehensively into each step, outlining all the factors that should be considered at each stage. It then dives into several case studies from across the DePIN landscape, illustrating how to apply the research on a practical level. This research wouldn't have been possible without valuable contributions from leaders across the DePIN ecosystem. Whether they participated directly in the research or have been a consistent thought partner of ours, we would like to personally thank the following: Diana Biggs, Christopher Heymann, Mihai Grigore, PhD, Raullen R, Nodies, Grove , POKT Network, DIMO, Livepeer. Please reach out to Robert Koschig for any feedback or to inquire about collaborating on future research. ?