Crypto-focused Biometric Encryption Startup Raises $2.2M in Seed Funding

Biometric cybersecurity startup Keyless has raised $2.2 million in its latest round of seed funding to expand on a product that uses biometrics to unlock users’ private keys.

Keyless uses multi-party computation (MPC) at the heart of its service, a process where the users’ security key itself is split into multiple encrypted parts and then regenerated. Though it is still experimenting with the technology, the company’s management anticipate each user to have five separate nodes associated with their biometric data. Three out of the five nodes would have to reach a consensus in order for their data to be encrypted. Keyless claims to be the first firm in the world to use MPC to secure biometric data.

“We don’t want the network to spy on user biometrics,” said Paolo Gasti, Keyless co-founder and Chief Technology Officer. “This way the authentication happens right there and wasn’t just a session replay of a previous authentication.”

Investors for this round of funding include Gumi Cryptos Capitol, Ripple’s Xpring, Blockchain Valley Ventures and LuneX.

Xpring Senior VP Ethan Beard explained, “During our technical review, we found Keyless’ solution to be clever and well thought out. We believe Keyless’ solution will be particularly welcomed by wallet providers and exchanges to accelerate the verification process for crypto holders.”

Keyless is also pointing to the product’s speed of authentication, with Gasti saying they have been able to get the computation process down to less than 100 milliseconds from the 20 to 30 seconds it had taken scientists in earlier tests.

“We’ve known since the 1980s that this was possible… and we’ve been working on this for ten years,” Gasti said, adding, “The product allows low-latency execution without having any effect on security.”

Keless’ first product, the Keyless Authenticator, has already wrapped up beta testing with two crypto wallet clients, and the technology is said to secure users’ personal biometric data across cloud, mobile and internet-of-things technologies. They plan to add two more firms to Keyless Authenticator before launching publicly by the end of the year.

Sources: Coindesk, AMB Crypto

–

October 31, 2019 – By Tony Bitzionis