Zama's homomorphic encryption tech lands it $73M on a valuation of nearly $400M • Hacker News Board

Re: Zama's homomorphic encryption tech lands it $73M on a valuation of nearly $400M

#11

Post by treyd » Mon, Mar 11, 2024, 6:34 PM UTC

monero-xmr wrote: post #7

hobs wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think we do, its just that just like I don't want to work for big oil, defense, or tobacco companies, I have no interest in working on cryptocurrencies when their biggest contribution I see is rug pulls and proof-of-waste algorithms.

I don't think companies like Coinbase, Circle, or Kraken are rug pulls. USDC is a very interesting concept. Ethereum uses Proof of Work (which is an interesting game theory problem to solve itself), which does not energy consumption to secure their network.

It's still undeniable that most crypto projects exist primarily to get retail investors to buy in to allow VCs and other insiders to cash out on them. Not directly as a simple rugpull but a longer term slow bleed, using the leverage they hold in an ecosystem in the near term to manipulate it in a direction that's useful to them in the long term. a16z is massively guilty of this.

Re: Zama's homomorphic encryption tech lands it $73M on a valuation of nearly $400M

#12

Post by Nouser76 » Mon, Mar 11, 2024, 6:34 PM UTC

monero-xmr wrote: post #7

hobs wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think we do, its just that just like I don't want to work for big oil, defense, or tobacco companies, I have no interest in working on cryptocurrencies when their biggest contribution I see is rug pulls and proof-of-waste algorithms.

I don't think companies like Coinbase, Circle, or Kraken are rug pulls. USDC is a very interesting concept. Ethereum uses Proof of Work (which is an interesting game theory problem to solve itself), which does not energy consumption to secure their network.

Just a note, Ethereum uses Proof of Stake now instead of Proof of Work, which is what drives the reduction in energy consumption.

Re: Zama's homomorphic encryption tech lands it $73M on a valuation of nearly $400M

#13

Post by acchow » Mon, Mar 11, 2024, 6:35 PM UTC

vlovich123 wrote: post #2

It’s unfortunate that all the applications right now feel very hand-wavy. Still, $50M in projected contract value is a nice sounding number which probably was used to land the $73M investment. It’ll be interesting to see if they can break out of niches because it’s highly likely that FHE will remain at least an order of magnitude more expensive than normal computers even with HW acceleration.

HW acceleration isn’t going to help much here because it’s really the exploding space complexity that needs to be addressed.

Re: Zama's homomorphic encryption tech lands it $73M on a valuation of nearly $400M

#14

Post by vlovich123 » Mon, Mar 11, 2024, 6:37 PM UTC

acchow wrote: post #13

vlovich123 wrote: post #2

It’s unfortunate that all the applications right now feel very hand-wavy. Still, $50M in projected contract value is a nice sounding number which probably was used to land the $73M investment. It’ll be interesting to see if they can break out of niches because it’s highly likely that FHE will remain at least an order of magnitude more expensive than normal computers even with HW acceleration.

HW acceleration isn’t going to help much here because it’s really the exploding space complexity that needs to be addressed.

I didn’t explain why I thought HW wouldn’t help as much but yes, the exploding space complexity is definitely a big problem.