Big Bain Plays
Market Meditations | October 28, 2022
A group of Stanford undergrads will have more to show for one of their projects than an A+.
- Notebook Labs was the product of a Stanford hackathon called TreeHacks, hosted in February of this year. The startup was founded by a group of undergraduates with the goal of user-privacy preservation in the crypto space.
- A group of students raised $3.3 million in a seed funding round led by Bain Capital Crypto to be used for building the development team, scaling the infrastructure, and funding for security audits for the platform.
- Zero-knowledge proofs are a central part of the approach Notebook is taking to solving the privacy concerns coming to the forefront of the industry.
- Protocols would be able to use Notebook’s login technology to achieve verification requiring personal information without the requirement of taking custody of that information.
- Co-founder of Notebook Labs Solal Afota also took care to mention that “credit scoring systems that offer lower-collateralized loans by allowing DAOs to check the identity of their users in a privacy preserving way” could be an ideal application for the technology the startup is advancing.
The emphasis on crypto education isn’t isolated to university-led hackathons and initiatives either. A recent study revealed that 64% of US blockchain-versed parents want crypto taught in schools.
Furthermore, Coinbase found that 42% of the world’s top 50 universities are now offering a least one course on crypto or blockchain technology.
