By
Steve Muchoki
April 19th, 2024
Ripple’s investment arm Xpring is one of the investors in the latest $2.2 million funding round of Keyless that works on robust security products.
Blockchain startup Ripple is once again in news for investing in a cybersecurity startup called Keyless in the latest $2.2 million seed funding round. Keyless specializes in creating security products that can unlock access to users’ biometric data and private keys.
Based in London, Keyless claims itself to be the first global company combining biometrics with multi-party computation. With its unique product offering, Keyless has attracted major investors like venture fund Cryptos Capital, Blockchain Valley Ventures, Ripple’s Xpring, and LuneX.
Explaining its security product, Paolo Gasti, Keyless co-founder and chief technology officer, said:
“We don’t want the network to spy on user biometrics. This way the authentication happens right there and wasn’t just a session replay of a previous authentication.”
Xpring is Ripple’s investment arm that focuses on funding projects and initiatives in the crypto and blockchain space. Ethan Beard, Senior VP at Ripple’s Xpring told CoinDesk:
“During our technical review, we found Keyless’ solution to be clever and well thought out. We believe Keyless’ solution will be particularly welcomed by wallet providers and exchanges to accelerate the verification process for crypto holders.”
Crypto Wallet Integrations
Keyless is all set to launch its first product Keyless Authenticator and recently completed its beta testing and integrations with two crypto wallet customers. According to the company, Keyless Authenticator will protect users’ personal data across mobile, cloud, and IoT technologies. As per its co-founder Gasti, the company is planning to launch this product by the end of this year.
With the multi-party computation, Keyless lets users split-up the encrypted parts of biometric information i.e. the fingerprint, face or voice. Besides, the computation also lets to split the encrypted parts of the machine-learning algorithm that can identify the information and send encrypted details to multiple nodes. All the users and companies on the Keyless network can run these nodes.
Currently, this technology is in the experimentative phase. One of the major USPs of the Keyless Authenticator product is the speed of authentication. Company co-founder Gasti says that Keyless performs all the above-mentioned computations in less than 100 milliseconds.
“We’ve known since the 1980s that this was possible … and we’ve been working on this for ten years. The product allows low-latency execution without having any effect on security,” Gasti added.
Amidst all the regulatory concerns surrounding its XRP token, Ripple has recently appointed ex Bank of America executive Benjamin Melnicki as its head of regulatory affairs. Melnicki is likely to work with the U.S. SEC to sort of issue about XRP’s ‘security’ status.