Manta Network, a security layer project for the Polkadot ecosystem, has completed a new round of funding to further expand decentralized finance (DeFi) use cases by enhancing blockchain privacy.

Manta Network’s latest $ 5.5 million financing round, announced on Tuesday, includes participation from more than 30 venture funds, including crypto hedge fund Coinfund and alternative investment firm Parafi Capital.

Other investors, including the Web-3 mutual fund, include LongHash Ventures, CMS Holdings, Divergence, Spartan Group, Global Coin Ventures, SkyVision Capital, Zee Prime, and SNZ.

This funding also includes some well-known individual industry investors from large crypto companies such as Digital Currency Group, Consensys, and Bitcoin.com. According to the announcement, angel investors include key semi-anonymous contributor 0xMaki from SushiSwap, Kevin Hu from Dragonfly Capital, ParaFi general partner Santiago Santos, and others.

Founded in 2020, Manta Network is focused on building a privacy-focused and interoperable blockchain protocol specifically designed for DeFi applications and aimed at making DeFi truly private. The protocol uses zk-SNARKs with Groth16 proofs, the same cryptographic technology implemented in the privacy-focused Zcash (ZEC) cryptocurrency.

According to Austin Barack, director of CoinFund, Manta is built on “one of the fundamental principles of protecting privacy in DeFi”.

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“Building on substrates that enable specially developed Layer 1 networks, Manta can build ZKSnark’s data protection architecture directly into the base layer and solve some of the current problems users are faced with today, such as making transfers or managing portfolios”, he said.

Earlier this year, Manta Network closed a $ 1.1 million funding round led by Polychain Capital and involving key industry players such as Alameda Research and Defiance Capital.