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Babafemi Adebajo
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Decentralized identity Startup Spruce has secured $34 million in its Series A funding round. According to the firm, the round was led by Andreessen Horowitz. The funding round also saw participation from Okta Ventures, OrangeDAO, Robot Ventures, and SCB 10X.
Previous investors from its $7.5 million seed round like Ethereal ventures, Electric Capital, Y Combinator and A-Capital Ventures also participated. Founded in 2020 by Wayne Chang and Gregory Rocco, Spruce hopes to use the blockchain to help users control their data.
How Spruce Helps Users Control Data
While it has become commonplace to log in to websites using your Facebook and Google accounts, these pose a privacy problem. It means sharing data you may otherwise want to keep private. Regarding this, co-founder of Spruce, Wayne Chang previously noted to TechCrunch that “Web2 platforms that offer sign-in capabilities have accessed this data in the past.”
The idea of the firm is to use a cryptographic identifier e.g. an NFT asset or Ethereum wallet address to gate access to the information any platform can receive about them. In line with this, the company launched two product lines: SpruceID toolkit for decentralized identity and Kepler for self-sovereign storage. These products help securely shared data, allow DAO-based credentialing and reputation, and grant permissioned access to DeFi through a partnership with the Verite protocol.
Last year, the company won an RFP from the Ethereum Foundation and Ethereum Name Service. The aim is to build a sign-in with an Ethereum feature that’ll allow interoperability between Web2 APIs and Web3. This feature has attracted interest from many web3 projects.
How the Funding Will Be Used by Spruce
According to the firm, the new fund will drive research into the latest privacy and usability technology for identity. Spruce will also continue to seek additional partnerships that align with its interest.
From a team of fifteen, the company also plans to recruit more employees into its product team. However, co-Founder Wayne Chang noted that the company will work to keep its numbers small. This, he said, will allow them to remain nimble and focused on solving user-specific problems.
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