Blockchain venture Seismic Primed for Test Network Debut, Securing $7 Million in Capital, Chiefly Invested by A16z
Seismic, a new blockchain Layer 1 (L1) platform, has announced that it has secured $7 million in a funding round led by A16z Crypto. The funding round also saw participation from Polychain Capital, Alliance, DAO5, NGC Ventures, and 1kx.
The funding will be used to accelerate the development of Seismic's platform, which aims to address two specific challenges commonly faced in the L1 blockchain space: forced transparency and limited scalability.
Addressing Forced Transparency and Limited Scalability
Most existing blockchains mandate full transparency of all transactions and data on-chain, which can lead to privacy concerns, especially for users and enterprises wanting confidentiality. Seismic seeks to mitigate this by rethinking how transparency is provided—enabling a controlled and purposeful exposure of data rather than blind, forced visibility.
Many current L1 blockchains struggle to scale efficiently to support high throughput and large-scale decentralized applications without significant compromises on speed or cost. Seismic aims to overcome scalability bottlenecks by integrating innovative architectural solutions that enable high performance and scalability without sacrificing decentralization or security.
A Solution on the Horizon
Co-founder Lyron Co Ting Keh's statement suggests that a solution to forced transparency could be on the verge of consensus, although it is not yet universally agreed upon. Ting Keh perceives building applications on large L1 blockchains for real-life use cases like investment vehicles and social payment apps as a significant challenge for developers. He believes that addressing these challenges is crucial, as both forced transparency and limited scalability have been discussed for over a decade.
The Journey to Seismic
Ting Keh drew inspiration for Seismic from a desire to own his own company. This is his first startup, and he is developing the platform to address specific challenges, namely forced transparency and limited scalability. The Seismic developer testnet is scheduled for launch in a month, with the mainnet launch planned by the end of the year.
The new L1 blockchain is also involved in hiring for roles in low-latency, low-level system engineering and blockchain architecture, suggesting involvement in solving core blockchain problems as forced transparency and scalability, which are well-known major pain points in the industry.
Encryption, according to Ting Keh, needed to be the foundation of the chain, not just built onto it. By prioritizing encryption, Seismic aims to provide a more secure and private blockchain infrastructure.
In summary, Seismic's L1 blockchain targets improving privacy-fairness trade-offs by avoiding forced, blanket transparency, and enhancing throughput and scalability to support growing decentralized applications, potentially by adopting novel technical approaches from electronic trading and low-level software engineering disciplines. This combination aims to enable a more efficient, private, and scalable decentralized infrastructure.
In response to the longstanding issues of forced transparency and limited scalability in the L1 blockchain space, Seismic aims to offer a solution by prioritizing encryption, enabling a controlled and purposeful exposure of data, and adopting innovative architectural solutions for high performance and scalability. The $7 million funding secured by Seismic will be used to accelerate the development of this new blockchain, with potential implications for the financing and technology sectors, as well as for investment vehicles and social payment apps.
