Decentralized data market developer Masa Network raised $5.4 million in a seed funding round led by Anagram, Inception Capital (formerly OP Crypto), Unshackled Ventures and PEER VC with participation from Avalanche Blizzard Fund, Digital Currency Group, GoldenTree among others.

The newly raised capital will be utilized for the launch of Masa’s subnet on Avalanche this year. The project team plans to design the customizable blockchain to efficiently manage high volumes of zero-knowledge encrypted data.

The new funding brings Masa’s total capital raised to approximately $9 million, contributing to its $3.5 million pre-seed round in 2022.

Masa plans to establish a data platform where users can contribute personal data and be rewarded with Masa’s native token. Developers will utilize this data for training artificial intelligence (AI) models and developing applications while ensuring user privacy through advanced encryption technologies, including zero-knowledge proofs.

Since its launch in August 2022, the platform has connected over 1 million wallets, licensed over 15 million data points, and engaged over 23,000 testnet node operators.

Masa’s ZK System for Data Control

Masa employs a zero-knowledge soulbound token (zkSBT) system, serving as a secure digital tool to manage and control individual personal data. This technology encrypts and stores users’ digital footprints and social graphs, ensuring the privacy of their online activities, including involvement in web3 communities and the use of decentralized applications. 

The project team asserts that, in the past year, over 890,000 user wallets have granted permission for more than 8 million data events on Masa. With the introduction of its zk-data marketplace, users gain the ability to access and share their information through staking in return for compensation.

According to Masa co-founder Calanthia Mei, deploying on a dedicated Avalanche subnet provides a robust architecture for their zk-data network and marketplace. This enables major financial institutions, AI startups and large-scale consumer technology applications to access secure, scalable, zk-encrypted user data without incurring gas fees. 

Masa believes that the prevalent practice of big technology companies hoarding personal data without user consent or compensation is worsened by the growing demand for such data in training AI models and agents.

Masa Finance Gains Momentum

Masa Finance, the creator of Masa Network, seeks to disrupt traditional centralized credit infrastructure by providing users with tools to access credit and enable wealth creation for 4.95 billion people globally.

Masa Finance is a hybrid credit protocol that links traditional financial accounts and assets to cryptocurrency holdings to determine non-fungible credit reports, enabling access to financial tools and instruments.The Masa platform offers users an ability to  create a decentralized credit report, increasing their investing and purchasing power. 

Last year, Masa Finance released its Soulbound Token protocol for Ethereum and Celer. Subsequently, it listed soulbound tokens on Coinbase’s Base network, allowing users to link identifying and reputational characteristics to their wallet addresses, making credit underwriting possible on the blockchain.

With the new investment, Masa is set to launch Masa Network, ushering in a transformative era in decentralized data markets and advancing the vision of user-controlled personal data.

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