In recent days, the market has seen a resurgence, with investors eager and sensing the aroma of a new round of wealth opportunities.
According to BlockBeats, on April 25, the Web3 privacy protocol Inco completed a $5 million strategic financing round, led by a16z crypto CSX, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, 1kx, Orange DAO, South Park Commons, and Script Capital, aimed at addressing blockchain privacy issues.
Privacy technology is supporting the "underlying necessity" of Web3
The privacy sector that Inco operates in encompasses various privacy computing technologies, from zero-knowledge proofs (ZKP) and secure multi-party computation (SMPC) to fully homomorphic encryption (FHE), each with its own advantages. For instance, Aztec emphasizes privacy scaling based on ZKP, Zcash focuses on anonymous transactions at the cryptocurrency level, and Secret Network specializes in on-chain confidential contracts.
According to a report by DataIntelo, the global blockchain privacy computing market reached $1.25 billion in 2023 and is expected to grow to $13.75 billion by 2032, with a compound annual growth rate of 30%. This growth trend reflects an increasing focus on data privacy and security across various industries—whether it’s the demand for transaction privacy in DeFi, confidential voting in on-chain governance, or the rigid need for secure sharing of sensitive data in healthcare and finance, all highlight the practical necessity of "collaboration without data disclosure."
In this context, privacy computing has gradually become an indispensable infrastructure within the Web3 ecosystem. Research from institutions like Messari and Delphi shows that financing for privacy-related projects has continued to grow over the past two years, involving various technological routes such as FHE, ZKP, and MPC, with the technological evolution and ecological layout of the entire sector accelerating.
Inco offers not just privacy, but possibilities
Privacy has never been a simple feature; it is an infrastructure.
Inco is a Web3 protocol focused on privacy protection, compatible with EVM, and built on a Layer-1 blockchain that utilizes fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) technology to provide genuinely usable privacy computing capabilities. Compared to solutions that rely on specific proof systems, FHE inherently possesses stronger "confidentiality nativeness."
For developers, this means they can easily write confidential smart contracts and build dApps with privacy-native attributes within the Ethereum ecosystem, such as private transactions, anonymous identity verification, and confidential governance scenarios, all while ensuring data is encrypted throughout the process.
Capital acceleration and technological implementation
Founded in 2023, Inco was initially positioned as a universal privacy solution for Ethereum and other networks, creating a confidential layer based on FHE technology. In February 2024, Inco completed a $4.5 million seed round led by 1kx, with funds primarily used to develop a modular privacy computing Layer-1 blockchain.
Subsequently, in April 2025, Inco completed another $5 million strategic financing round, with well-known institutions like a16z crypto CSX and Coinbase Ventures participating, bringing the total financing amount to $9.5 million. The investors include top VCs like a16z and Coinbase, as well as community and technology-oriented forces like Orange DAO and SPC.
In April of the same year, Inco launched two technologies, Inco Lightning and Inco Atlas.
Inco Lightning utilizes trusted execution environments (TEE) to provide ultra-low latency confidential computing, which has already been tested on the Base Sepolia testnet, making it very suitable for real-time DeFi trading and on-chain gaming scenarios where speed is crucial.
In contrast, Inco Atlas places greater emphasis on privacy, combining fully homomorphic encryption and multi-party computation, specifically designed for industries with extremely high privacy demands, such as finance and healthcare, and is still under continuous development. In short, Lightning and Atlas represent "speed" and "stability," respectively.
Looking at the founding team of Inco, there is limited information available on the official website. Yakov Shalev is the co-founder and core leader of Inco, previously a co-founder of the decentralized cloud computing platform Edge (formerly Edge Network).
Although there is not much information about the Inco team members, the team's ability to launch the mainnet and successfully operate fhEVM in a short time demonstrates their strong engineering execution capability.
Product usability and user experience
Inco has not only successfully launched the mainnet with the fhEVM (FHE + EVM) framework but has also introduced its confidential token standard, supporting the creation of privacy tokens. Additionally, Inco provides developer tools and documentation to support the building of dApps within the Ethereum ecosystem.
Developers can access fhEVM through Inco's SDK or API to write smart contracts that support encrypted data computation. The specific steps include:
Deploying smart contracts on the Inco mainnet using EVM-compatible tools (such as Hardhat or Remix).
Utilizing Inco's FHE library to implement data encryption and privacy computing.
Creating privacy tokens through Inco's confidential token standard and integrating them into dApps.
End users (such as participants in DeFi or voting applications) experience Inco's privacy features indirectly through dApps that support Inco, without needing to interact directly with the underlying technology.
Specific user data (such as the number of dApps or user scale) has not yet been made public. Regarding user experience, based on Inco's EVM compatibility, developers can experience a development process similar to that of Ethereum, making it easy to get started. Although the computational complexity of FHE may introduce some latency, Inco's optimized design aims to minimize this impact.
For end users, Inco's privacy features can provide smooth private transactions and data interactions, with the specific experience varying based on the front-end design of the dApp. Overall, community activities are also quite frequent, and their contributions make everything run more smoothly.
As Inco is still in its early stages, user feedback mainly comes from the testnet and some initial dApps, and comprehensive user experience data is like "unbaked bread," needing time to ferment.
However, based on existing feedback, Inco's privacy protection features have already shown significant potential, and developer reviews are quite positive. As more dApps go live, the user experience will become increasingly smooth. With the growing demand for privacy protection, Inco's positioning in the Web3 privacy sector is becoming more prominent and is worth continued attention.
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