NextBlock has invested $3 million in the seed round of Soda Labs, funding the entire closed offering as Soda Labs expands its programmable privacy infrastructure for financial activity on public blockchains. The company said the capital will support scaling commercial adoption over the next 12 to 18 months and broaden blockchain coverage for its privacy technology.
Key takeaways
- Funding: NextBlock put $3 million into Soda Labs’ seed round, completing the full closed round.
- Catalyst: Soda Labs’ privacy engine based on garbled circuits and multiparty computation, designed to run on standard cloud CPUs.
- Use cases already in motion: Soda Labs said its technology has processed more than 100 million transactions on the COTI network, supporting applications including tokenization platform Zoniqx and perpetuals exchange PriveX.
- Implication for builders: The firm is moving from pilots toward production, extending its approach from an Ethereum Layer 2 privacy layer to a chain-agnostic coprocessor.
What NextBlock’s investment is funding
Soda Labs said it has spent the past two and a half years building a cryptographic privacy solution that combines garbled circuits with multiparty computation, or GC-MPC. The firm described the technology as using established cryptographic standards including AES and SHA-256, with an architecture intended to run on standard cloud CPUs without specialized hardware.
According to Soda Labs, the “privacy engine” enables applications to perform private computations while remaining connected to existing public blockchain infrastructure. The company said the investment gives it room to focus on scaling commercial adoption and execution during the next 12 to 18 months.
How Soda Labs’ privacy stack works
Soda Labs is expanding from gcEVM, its Ethereum Layer 2 privacy layer that remains live on COTI, to Soda Bubble, a chain-agnostic coprocessor designed for programmable privacy. The company said Bubble can process developer-defined workloads originating from different blockchains without exposing underlying private data publicly or to Soda Labs itself.
The firm also highlighted its Bubble Validator Network, saying participants can mathematically verify that computations involving private data have been performed correctly. Soda Labs framed this as a way to bring privacy capabilities to environments where liquidity, users, and financial applications already exist—but where private, regulated money movement typically requires selective disclosure rather than full transparency.
Market adoption signals and network performance claims
According to Soda Labs, its technology has handled more than 100 million transactions on the COTI network. The company said the setup supports applications including tokenization platform Zoniqx and perpetuals exchange PriveX. Soda Labs added that PriveX has processed more than $20 billion in trading volume, while Zoniqx is onboarding issuers across multiple asset classes and jurisdictions.
In addition to deployment activity, Soda Labs said it expects to publish updated performance benchmarks in the coming weeks. The company stated its latest testing was conducted on Arbitrum and measured the full transaction lifecycle on the live network—including encryption, multiparty computation, consensus, and settlement—rather than evaluating the cryptographic operation in isolation.
Soda Labs reported that results showed a five- to 10-fold improvement over its previously published benchmark. The firm also said its garbled-circuit MPC architecture can deliver approximately 10 to 100 times greater throughput and 100 to 1,000 times lower transaction costs than alternatives available today, while running on standard cloud CPUs. Soda Labs noted that the latest benchmark results have not yet been publicly released.
Expanding beyond pilots across EVM ecosystems
The company said the funding supports go-to-market efforts, expansion of its validator network and blockchain coverage, team growth, and integrations with banks, payment companies, tokenization platforms, and other financial infrastructure providers. Soda Labs added that it is working with financial and infrastructure organizations on several undisclosed pilots, with the goal of converting them into production deployments.
On blockchain support, Soda Labs said Bubble is rolling out across EVM ecosystems including Ethereum, Polygon, Arbitrum, and Base. The firm also said it is working on expansion to non-EVM networks, including Solana.
What founders said about the rationale
NextBlock founder and general partner Pieter van Poecke said the investment was driven by both Soda’s cryptography and what he described as the technology’s practicality for financial workloads expected to matter most on-chain. He also said Soda had a working product, paying customers, and that its technical IP, founding team, and commercial approach provide a foundation for its next phase.
Soda Labs co-founder and CEO Avishay Yanai said public blockchains already have liquidity and financial applications, but lack a way for regulated money to move without exposing information to everyone. He said Bubble gives banks, payment companies, and tokenization platforms privacy with controlled disclosure in the networks they already use, and that the round is intended to move from pilots to production.
Investors and industry participants will be watching for Soda Labs’ upcoming performance benchmark publication and the pace at which its privacy coprocessor rolls out from EVM ecosystems to additional networks. Key milestones in the near term include scaling the validator network, completing integrations with financial and infrastructure partners, and converting currently undisclosed pilots into production deployments.
