Ruby, a privacy-first layer 1 blockchain, today announced the close of a $7.3 million round of funding with participation from venture capital funds Digital Strategies, DFG Group, SigNum Capital, D1 Ventures, Global Coin Research, Ocean Foundation, DWeb3 Capital, Maverick Global Ventures, and more, while adding Bruce Pon (Ocean Protocol), Yoon Kim (TRGC), and Charles Read (Rarestone Capital) as angel investors.

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While the future of Web3 is centered on decentralization, users also need ways to control, protect, and own their data for a variety of purposes. To ensure users have granular control over their on-chain information as Web3 evolves, Ruby has designed a layer 1 smart contract platform that will enable individuals to gain more ownership of their private data and control how it is used.

While there are other projects addressing privacy, Ruby is taking a multipronged approach to this issue through the use of cryptography as the foundation of its platform. The core cryptographic technology Ruby adopts is attribute-based Functional Encryption (FE), which is specifically designed to grant users a granular access control policy, giving the ability to pick and choose what data is shared publicly or privately, depending on the use case. In the future, decentralized application users will have full ownership and control over their data in decentralized environments.

Founded by blockchain industry veterans Suhas Hegde and Beni Issembert, and Y-Combinator alumnus Tyler Gellatly in 2021, Ruby’s system architecture for on-chain transactions employs  zero knowledge proof micropayment schemes, making it possible to anonymize on-chain transactions. This supports multiple use cases across the Web3 space, including DeFi, NFTs, Social dApps, and GameFi.

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“As Web3 adoption grows, there’s a massive opportunity for users to not only gain more ownership of their data, but to improve some of the current challenges we’re seeing,” said Suhas Hedge, Co-founder at Ruby Labs. “Ruby will provide a gateway for people to experience the benefits of a decentralized ecosystem while also protecting themselves from many of the issues that arose from Web2. We collectively believe that this will be a fundamental piece of the puzzle as individuals and institutions alike embrace Web3.”

With the seed funding, Ruby will accelerate core development of its privacy-focused layer-1 blockchain, while expanding research into new decentralized applications, expanded use cases, and team expansion across development and ecosystem growth. $RUBY, the native utility token of Ruby Protocol is set for release in the latter half of 2022, and will be used for staking and deposits in order to run nodes on the network, as well as protocol governance, and as the method of payment for transactions across the network.

“Ownership and privacy is a central piece in the ongoing transition from Web2 to Web3, as users seek more ownership over their data. Through Ruby’s data ownership framework, we aim to give people granular access control over their data and the power to choose what they share with third parties,” said Tyler Gellatly, Co-founder at Ruby Protocol. “With our novel Functional Encryption cryptography,, we’re excited to meet the privacy needs of users across transactions, smart contracts, and the broader Web3 space in a single protocol.”

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