a16z crypto leads $7 million funding round for encrypted blockchain developer Seismic

The web3-focused venture firm a16z crypto led a $7 million funding round for the encrypted blockchain developer Seismic, according to a Thursday release from the company. Additional participants in the round included Polychain , 1kx, dao5, and NGC. 

A16z crypto is the web3-focused investment arm out of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz .

Seismic is building an encrypted blockchain to implement onchain privacy at the app level, going beyond the wallet-level encryption that obscures user balances and identities. By creating a base-layer for app-level encryption, Seismic intends to create new onchain use cases for financial partnerships, social experiences and other endeavors, according to the release from Seismic. 

"The typical approach to building a private smart contract platform involves clients creating zero-knowledge proofs of correct execution on their local machine, and then sharing those proofs with a decentralized network. This approach can guarantee correctness, but hampers composability," a16z crypto General Partner Ali Yahya wrote on the social media platform X. "Seismic offers a new approach. It is live in devnet and already enabling prototype applications featuring novel mechanism design."

The Block reached out to Seismic for comment. 

Along with leading Seismic's fresh financing, a16z crypto marshaled other recent financing rounds for web3 startups. On Jan. 17, a16z crypto and Blockchain Capital co-led a  $10 million  seed round for the open-source protocol Merit Systems, The Block previously reported.