A16z leads $25M funding for Miden blockchain project

A16z Crypto led a $25 million investment round into Miden, an independent blockchain project spun out of Polygon Labs.

Miden closed its $25 million seed rounds led by a16z Crypto, 1kx, and Hack VC, with participation from Finality Capital Partners, Symbolic Capital, P2 Ventures, Delta Fund, MH Ventures, as well as from angel investors, including MakerDAO’s Rune Christensen and EigenLayer’s Sreeram Kannan.

Miden is a zero-knowledge (ZK) proof-powered blockchain focused on high scalability through its hybrid consensus mode, which moves transaction execution from the mainnet on “edge devices,” referring to users’ devices.

Designed for institutions that value confidentiality, Miden enables applications to execute both public and private transactions with full privacy, according to an April 29 announcement shared with Cointelegraph.

Execution on edge devices can help with the “bottlenecks that limit traditional chains,” said Bobbin Threadbare, the co-founder at Miden and former engineer at Meta, adding:

“It allows blockchains to scale without relying on supernodes or sacrificing decentralization, while making privacy a built-in feature instead of an afterthought.”

The $25 million will be used to fund Miden’s development, and its mainnet launch is slated for the fourth quarter of 2025.

Miden is “the future of blockchains,” says Polygon Labs’ Nailwal

“Miden is what the future of blockchains looks like. With edge execution at its core, it’s not just an upgrade — it’s the blueprint for the final form of blockchain architecture,” according to Sandeep Nailwal, the founder of Polygon Labs.

“With ambitions to rival Solana, Sui, and Aptos — and to be the epicenter of crosschain liquidity for Agglayer as a native chain and help grow the Agglayer ecosystem— building independently naturally positions Miden to attract the capital and focus needed to compete at the highest level,” Nailwal added.

Miden plans to airdrop around 10% of its native tokens to Polygon (POL) tokenholders and stakers to reward its native ecosystem.

No existing blockchain is ready for mass adoption: Miden co-founder

“The reality is that no existing blockchain is ready for mass adoption,” either lacking privacy, scalability, or Web3-native principles such as censorship resistance, according to Miden’s Threadbare.

However, Miden’s infrastructure may be a “catalyst for large institutional adoption,” he claimed, adding:

“The reality is that up until this point, blockchains have not been in the position to offer privacy without compromising on performance or programmability, which is a major issue.”

Large tech firms joining the space require privacy solutions with regulatory compliance, leaving a significant gap for solutions like Miden, added the co-founder.

*Inco: the fourth layer of the blockchain stack*

Other industry watchers have also criticized the industry’s lack of confidentiality for limiting institutional adoption.

Confidential computing technologies such as fully homomorphic encryption could unlock the next $1 trillion worth of capital for the crypto space with continued technological development, Remi Gai, the founder of Inco, told Cointelegraph.