Curv, a New-York-based startup, announced it was able to raise $6.5 million to develop a platform that will tackle the problem of custody in crypto, Fortune on February 26, 2019.
The company was able to gather the investment from Israeli cybersecurity group and crypto giant Digital Currency Group (), to build a cloud-based Crypto storage service.
A New Custodian Model for Digital Assets
Storing, managing, and keeping crypto coins safe has become a significant pain point for many users. That’s why is now turning its attention to digital asset security. As of late, the startup has managed to raise $6.5 million in investment to develop a cloud-based crypto storage service to tackle the nagging custodial problem.
Curv proposes to replace current storage methods and replace them with mathematics and cloud computing. The current storage process involves sharing a digital “” with trusted individuals and becomes an immediate vulnerability as anyone controlling the private key can access the wallet where the coins are stored.
While the current custody model uses a technique where the key is scattered in different places, Curv, on the other hand, uses an alternative mechanism to achieve this.
Curv introduced a novel multi-party computation (MPC) mechanism. MPC allows multiple people to calculate functions without revealing the inputs that are part of them. A good example of this would be discovering the average salary of ten workers from different sectors without revealing the wages of any of them in particular.
Itay Malinger, Curv CEO, Fortune:
“Five years ago it would have taken a long time and lots of network traffic to do this. The breakthrough is that the math can be brought down to a sub-second calculation. That means it’s possible to do something through cloud deployment.”
Moving towards a Future in the Cloud
The company’s approach to storing cryptocurrencies is also a departure from companies like , which safeguards digital assets on physical devices and stores them in vaults which can be cumbersome and not compatible with the real potential of cryptocurrencies. Contrary to this technique, Curv’s MPC model will bring a more natural and efficient way of storing digital assets making them accessible at any given moment.
Institutional money has been slowly moving into the digital asset market in recent months despite the market breakdown. If this goes on, it might arouse banks and hedge funds interest.
Malinger understands that the company is not looking to compete with existing crypto custodians, and instead looks to present itself as a vendor to those companies.
The partnership with Team8 may benefit the company as the Israeli firm already counts several successful incubated startups in its troupe.
The Curv CEO revealed that banks and hedge funds have been trialing the company system for some time now. He specifically disclosed that eToro is also testing Curv’s technology.
Published at Wed, 27 Feb 2019 17:30:41 +0000
