With the Ethereum Merge complete, there’s been a heightened focus on scaling the network through Layer-2 solutions like zero-knowledge rollups.
ZK-rollups in particular are a key part of the Ethereum roadmap, being repeatedly mentioned by the likes of Vitalik Buterin and blockchain developers. They bundle transactions and execute them off-chain to improve network speed and lower fees. Currently, Ethereum processes around 30 transactions per second, but in the future with rollups, the goal is 100,000 transactions per second, Buterin said.
In the race to produce the highest quality Ethereum Virtual Machine-compatible ZK-rollups, there are many competitors, from Polygon to Matter Labs, and a lot of interested venture capital firms.
Today, Matter Labs announced a $200 million Series C round co-led by Blockchain Capital and Dragonfly. Other investors include LightSpeed Venture Partners, Variant, and Andreessen Horowitz, the company told Fortune, adding that with the new round, Matter Labs has raised $458 million in total.
Most of the funding will go toward “building up the team, growing, scaling and being ready to mature as a company,” said Steve Newcomb, chief product officer at Matter Labs. “When I joined, we had 40 people. We are now 90 people, and we'll have several hundred soon, so most of that money is going towards people.”
Though Matter Labs released its product, zkSync 2.0, on Oct. 28, the company will now allow its technology to be available through an MIT Open Source license at Fair Onboarding Alpha. This will allow developers to view, modify, and fork the code, and it’s notable since skeptics in the industry questioned the viability of Matter Labs’ zkSync 2.0 viability, largely citing the issue of being open source.
