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.

Disclaimer: The Block is an independent media outlet that delivers news, research, and data. As of November 2023, Foresight Ventures is a majority investor of The Block. Foresight Ventures invests in other companies in the crypto space. Crypto exchange Bitget is an anchor LP for Foresight Ventures. The Block continues to operate independently to deliver objective, impactful, and timely information about the crypto industry. Here are our current financial disclosures.

© 2025 The Block. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。