Inco Launches Gentry Testnet To Bring Confidentiality To Web3 With A $4.5 Million Funding Round

Inco, developers of a universal confidentiality layer for Ethereum and other networks, has announced its $4.5 million Seed round led by crypto investment firm 1kx. Other investors include Circle Ventures, Robot Ventures, Portal VC, Alliance DAO, Big Brain Holdings, Symbolic, GSR, Polygon Ventures, Daedalus, Matter Labs and Fenbushi.

As a part of the announcement, Inco also launched Gentry testnet that addresses the confidentiality challenges of Web3 for its widespread adoption. Inco combines the traditional Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) with Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE), and is secured by Ethereum via EigenLayer. This cryptographic technology allows programs to manipulate and compute encrypted data without ever decrypting it. In a blockchain protocol with FHE, all the on-chain data remains confidential for other participants and even validators, yet auditable if needed. This technology doesn’t utilize TEEs, circuits, or central coordination off-chain, and brings native randomness.

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The team behind Inco believes that proper confidentiality is essential for building Web2-like apps people really need. With its native on-chain confidentiality and randomness feature, Inco enables a wide range of new apps, spanning various verticals such as gaming and g*******, DeFi, including dark pools, private lending, and blind auctions, enterprise solutions such as confidential stable coins, private RWAs, and private voting, and more.

“We recognize that blockchain’s transparency and immutability, though intended as strengths, have created a paradigm more problematic than its web2 predecessor. This environment enables corporations, hackers, and other actors to misuse the public nature of these ledgers for creating comprehensive data profiles and tracking individuals, thus infringing upon personal privacy and security. Additionally, this level of transparency limits the feasibility of certain decentralized applications (DApps) in areas requiring confidentiality, such as gaming, decentralized finance (DeFi), and enterprise and institutional solutions.” says Remi Gai, Founder of Inco. “We see our mission as to bring confidentiality to blockchains and break down the final barrier to mass adoption of Web3.”

Previously available solutions such as Zero-Knowledge Proofs provide confidential transactions, but they don’t automatically extend it to shared information. Trusted Execution Environments offer security for sensitive data but are vulnerable to side-channel attacks. Thus, FHE, previously unavailable due to significant computational challenges and complexity, emerges as a new promising solution in the field.

“Smart contracts have been limited by their lack of access to programmable confidentiality. This changes with the latest innovations in threshold FHE and blockchain that Inco is bringing to market,” says Wei Dai, Research Partner at 1kx. “We are thrilled to partner with and support the Inco team in their mission to bring confidentiality to Web3.”

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Inco is modular and interoperable with other blockchains using externally validated bridges such as Hyperlane and natively verified IBC. It empowers developers by combining familiar EVM functionality and ease of development with the opportunity to use encrypted data for a wide range of operations like addition, division, and comparisons. In their turn, non-developers, such as investors and others, benefit from the valuable insights derived from this confidential data without the need for decryption.

“As technology providers, we are excited to work closely with the Inco team to bring our breakthrough FHE solutions to their protocol” says Rand Hindi, advisor to Inco and CEO of Zama, the leading FHE research company.

Inco has a strategic partnership with Zama on the development of the protocol, and its other advisors include Sandeep Nailwal, Co-Founder of Polygon, and Anand Iyer, GP of Canonical and venture partner at Lightspeed Ventures.

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