Crypto startup Curv announced that it has raised $6.5 million to launch its breakthrough technology in crypto wallet design, which will be a software-only, cloud based approach and will eliminate the need for private keys. Curv, headquartered in the U.S., says the digital asset wallet is designed specifically for financial institutions.
According to the firm’s press release, the seed round was led by digital asset investment company Digital Currency Group and Israeli cybersecurity company Team8. The round also included participation from Monex Group, Flybridge Capital, Jump Capital and Liberty City Ventures.
The firm claims that its breakthrough technology will “eradicate the concept of private keys” and provide a new type of cryptography that will deliver a more straightforward and simpler way for securing and signing off on transactions.
Per its statement:
The digital asset wallet will use multi-party computation protocols — a subfield of cryptography that develops methods allowing parties to jointly compute a function over their inputs without disclosing theirs amounts.
In an interview with business magazine Fortune, Curv’s CEO, Itay Malinger, explained that:
Five years ago it would have taken a long time and lots of network traffic to do this. The breakthrough is that the math can be brought down to a sub-second calculation. That means it’s possible to do something through a cloud deployment.
The continuing problem of security breaches at crypto exchanges and the resulting losses that investors have had to absorb have led to the creation of several offline “wallet” storage solutions. It is believed that a dozen firms now vie for $85 million in annual revenues in this sector, but the main demand of late has come from the corporate sector where institutional players are very concerned about the lack of adequate custodial protection services.
The Curv solution speaks to this demand, as have other recent efforts in the crypto ecosphere. For example, cryptocurrency exchange Seed CX, a Chicago-based platform that focuses on institutional clients, recently launched its digital asset wallet solution, which also includes unique on-chain settlement. Ledger, an established cryptocurrency hardware wallet manufacturer, has developed its proprietary institutional custody product, which it has named “Ledger Vault”.
The amusing side story to Curv’s announcement is that it claims that the recent debacle that occurred at the beleaguered Canadian crypto exchange, QuadgrigaCX, would never have happened, if Curv’s technology had been available. $140 million has gone missing, ostensibly since the location of the exchange’s private keys died with its CEO. According to Curv, the lesson to be learned is that this situation occurred due to the “single point of failure associated with the private keys.”