Axiom, Protocol for Historical Ethereum Data, Raises $20M, Led by Paradigm, Standard Crypto

Axiom, a protocol that allows smart contract developers to access historical data from Ethereum and then perform intensive computations off-chain, has raised $20 million in a Series A funding round led by Standard Crypto and Paradigm Ventures.

The funding will go towards growing the team as well as developing their platform, according to a draft blog post sent to CoinDesk.

“We’re really focused on helping the smart contract developers access this new primitive and plug it into their applications in a native way,” said Yi Sun, the co-founder of Axiom, in an interview with CoinDesk.

Axiom is among a new breed of protocols that use zero-knowledge proofs (ZK proofs) – a type of cryptographic proof that confirms a certain transaction took place without revealing the details of the transaction – to access historical data on Ethereum. Currently, smart contracts on Ethereum are not able to access old data, and solutions like oracles have come into existence to solve these hurdles.

But oracles can easily get expensive and have computational limits. This is where solutions like Axiom come in, which runs a coprocessor, a piece of software which processes data off-chain and then transports that data to the main Ethereum blockchain, and verifies it with ZK proofs.

“We try to work on systems and mechanisms that try to provide lower cost and lower trust requirements to their users, because those are more scalable and can reach a wider user base,” said Georgios Konstantopoulos, chief technology officer at Paradigm, in an interview with CoinDesk.

Axiom’s latest announcement comes on the heels of its latest V2 upgrade, which focused on making the protocol more usable for smart contract developers. In July, Axiom launched its mainnet.

“At the end of the day, a zero-knowledge proof is basically a computer that can provide a receipt for what it did,” said Alok Vasudev, the co-founder of Standard Crypto, in an interview with CoinDesk. “In Axiom’s case, I think now we’re starting to really uncover new areas and think about new markets that can be opened up by this same core technology.”