We all have troves of valuable data buried in the walled gardens of the web2 apps we’ve been using for years. 

Unfairly locking in users by gatekeeping their data is an issue that crypto has long been touted as a solution to. But so far, crypto’s native interoperability and data portability have only applied to the data and apps that live onchain. Bringing this same functionality to our existing web2 data has remained one of the largest categories yet to be solved within the industry.

Today, that changes with Opacity.

We are thrilled to share that we’ve led the $12M Seed round for Opacity alongside Breyer Capital, with participation from a16z CSX, Finality, Bodhi Capital, and EV3 to bring confidential data into the composable future.

The Opacity team have been our thought partners in identity and the importance of a verifiable data layer for the better part of 2024. We finally got to share our excitement around what they were working on with the rest of the ecosystem during an Archetype research day back in May. Opacity’s relentless founder, Hersh Patel, gave a colorful and thought-provoking presentation on how he came upon the idea for Opacity while trying to solve one of the web’s deepest seeded issues: its poverty of verifiability. The TLDR is that centralized platforms will remain in the driver’s seat as long as we are reliant on them to gather, store, and verify our personal data. 

But thanks to a research-oriented approach, some zkTLS, and a unique approach to solving the collusion issues around MPC-TLS, Hersh pulled together an elegant solution that brings web2 data onchain in a composable, verifiable, and still confidential way. Opacity refers to this solution as the Verifiable Data Network (VDN).

The VDN is complex under the hood, but immediately recognizable as a powerful new protocol that will broaden the possibilities of onchain commerce and interaction. By leveraging Opacity’s VDN, apps can enable their users to confidentially bridge their data, profiles, and reputation info from existing web2 applications into their onchain accounts. And we’re already seeing this in action.

Nosh is using Opacity to bootstrap an alternative food delivery network with better rates for restaurants and drivers. They’re skipping right over the cold start problem by allowing drivers to import their existing Doordash data like ratings, reviews, and total deliveries. To date, Nosh has landed over 130K unique users and fulfilled 900K orders, while achieving $10M ARR in 2023.

By utilizing Opacity’s VDN, Nosh has successfully enabled drivers to make the switch without leaving behind the critical reputations they’ve built up over years of work. As the existing giants lose their data edge, they’ll be forced to compete with Nosh based on the quality of their product. The playing field is being leveled.

This is just a glimpse of the future we are betting Opacity will incite. One where companies cater to users, where moving between apps is seamless, and where users control their private data in a way that finally matters.

We are proud to be working alongside Hersh, Aaron, David, and the rest of the Opacity team as they accelerate the internet towards what it should have always been—user-owned, verifiable, and truly composable.

Opacity’s developer platform is already live, providing tools for developers to incorporate the VDN into their applications. Teams can sign up by visiting https://opacity.network and begin integrating user data from popular social networks, delivery/transportation platforms, and more. 

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