Afota, Masfen-Yan, and Dhruv Mangtani, three Stanford students, founded Notebook Labs earlier this year. They came up with the idea during the school’s biggest hackathon. Bain Capital Crypto led a $3.3 million seed funding round for the company, which aims to verify the identities of crypto users without compromising their privacy. The cash will be used to expand the development staff, scale the technology infrastructure, and fund platform security audits.
Co-founder Solal Afota had this to say, “Until now, blockchain users have been required to identify themselves with wallet addresses, which has not only compromised their privacy but has also subjected the blockchains themselves to Sybil attacks. Notebook is paving the way towards mass adoption of DeFi by giving Web3 users the privacy and anonymity they deserve, while also enabling more secure logins that will make protocols safer.”
Using a concept known as zero-knowledge (zk) proofs, which algorithmically demonstrate that a statement is true without revealing the example’s specifics, Notebook Labs hopes to provide a mechanism for Web3 protocols to authenticate the identity of users without compromising anonymity. A protocol could, for instance, require confirmation that users are U.S. citizens. The user’s license would serve as proof, but it would not be linked to the user’s wallet.
Trackable yet anonymous verified data can facilitate a range of use cases in crypto, particularly in DeFi, where the lack of standard credit scores leads to overcollateralized loans.
