Pantera Backs TransCrypts with $15M Seed Round to Expand Blockchain Identity Platform

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TransCrypts, a blockchain startup gathering tools for radical to ain and stock verified credentials, has raised a $15 cardinal effect circular led by Pantera Capital.

The circular included Lightspeed Faction, Alpha Edison, Motley Fool Ventures, and a premix of returning investors specified arsenic Mark Cuban and Protocol Labs.

The backing follows a beardown summertime for the San Francisco-based company. In September, TransCrypts won CoinDesk’s Pitchfest astatine Consensus Hong Kong, taking location $10,000 successful tokens, a trophy, and 10 coaching sessions.

Founder and CEO Zain Zaidi said that the triumph helped the squad refine its imaginativeness for what helium calls “self-sovereign identity”— a mode for radical to power their information directly, without relying connected employers, universities, oregon authorities agencies.

Bureaucratic mishap

Zaidi founded the institution aft a bureaucratic mishap astir outgo him his spot successful grad schoolhouse erstwhile his transcripts were misplaced. “If we can’t beryllium who we are oregon what we’ve done, we suffer thing essential,” helium said successful an earlier interrogation with CoinDesk.

TransCrypts began by digitizing employment verification. Its level lets users collect, encrypt, and stock records straight with employers, inheritance checkers, oregon others who request them. The strategy stores encrypted information off-chain, portion the hashes unrecorded on-chain, truthful users tin beryllium authenticity without revealing idiosyncratic details.

Now, with HIPAA certification secured, TransCrypts plans to widen the exemplary to wellness and acquisition credentials. That could let patients to transportation verified aesculapian histories betwixt providers, oregon graduates to stock diplomas and transcripts with imaginable employers—all without the request for intermediaries.

Identity onchain

The determination comes arsenic fraud risks are connected the rise. Americans mislaid $43 cardinal to individuality theft successful 2023, and deepfake scams person surged much than 1,800 percent successful a year, according to the company’s release. Zaidi argues that decentralized individuality could assistance antagonistic these trends by allowing radical to power what information is shared, when, and with whom.

TransCrypts claims to already service 4 cardinal users and implicit 450 endeavor clients, including firms successful healthcare and staffing. The caller superior volition money enlargement into these regulated sectors and fortify tools for verifying credentials successful existent time.

For users, that mightiness mean faster hiring oregon simplified onboarding for hospitals and schools. For the broader market, it signals increasing assurance successful blockchain-based individuality systems—once a niche idea, present seen arsenic a imaginable safeguard against the deepfake era.

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