Quick take:
- Alpen Labs is building an infrastructure for zero-knowledge proofs on Bitcoin.
- The company believes ZK rollups can expand the utility of the world’s biggest cryptocurrency.
- Alpen Labs said its programmable layer can be used to power applications for on-chain payments, custody, stablecoins, and verifiable credentials.
Alpen Labs a blockchain infrastructure company building a programmable layer on Bitcoin has emerged from stealth with a $10.6 million funding round led by Rabbit Capital. The fundraising also attracted participation from Castle Island Ventures, Geometry Research, Village Global, Stillmark, Paxos, Robot Ventures, Axiom and more.
Alpen has been developing its zk-proofs-based scaling layer over the past two years. The company wants to bring more utility to Bitcoin by leveraging zero-knowledge rollups to power new applications on Bitcoin.
Commenting on the announcement via a post on X, Alpen wrote: “We envisioned a programmable, scalable layer on bitcoin as the best place for on-chain finance: from payments to lending, custody, stablecoins, verifiable credentials, and use cases not-yet-imagined.”
Alpen said it will unveil the platform that it has been developing in due course, adding that from here onwards it will continue to develop its programmable layer publicly. The company is led by a team with experience from Blockstream Research, Nethermind, Aleo, Palantir and MIT.
This announcement comes at a time when Bitcoin is evolving into a more diverse ecosystem expanding from a simple blockchain that supports the world’s biggest cryptocurrency into an emerging decentralised app (dApp) network.
This evolution began to gain notice a little over a year ago when Ordinals Market launched, bringing NFTs to Bitcoin. Since then, the Bitcoin Network has grown to see multiple Web3 startups launch DeFi protocols as well as new token standards like BRC-20.
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