Israeli startup to create blockchain chips with $70M of fresh funds

Published at: Feb. 23, 2023

The adoption of blockchain technology is on the rise, with the majority of enterprises looking into the technology in some capacity. As blockchain becomes more pervasive, all types of users will need the most efficient access to the capabilities of this technology.

One of the responses to this has been the development of blockchain chips as energy-efficient accelerators. On Feb. 23, the Tel Aviv-based blockchain chip startup Chain Reaction announced it raised $70 million to expand its engineering team for developing its next chip.

Alon Webman, the co-founder and CEO of Chain Reaction, said the new chip will be a "fully homomorphic encryption" chip that lets the user work on data while the chip is encrypted.

"Today if you have data (which) is encrypted into the cloud and in order to do any data operation or data analytics, do A.I., you have to decrypt the data.”

He continued to say that major industries which could utilize cloud services, such as defense and governments, currently are restricted from doing so due to security concerns.

“The moment the data is decrypted, it can be attacked by a malicious user to read it, to steal it, or even to change it."

An encrypted chip, which allows access to data under encryption, could help with this. Webman says Chain Reaction aims to launch that chip as early as the end of 2024.

Related: Modular blockchains could be the next hot crypto market trend in 2023

According to Webman, Chain Reaction intends to start mass production of its current blockchain chip Electrum in the first quarter of 2023. The chip is designed to support quick and efficient hashing. It can also be used in mining cryptocurrencies. 

Last year in February 2022, the software developer Intel also launched a blockchain chip designed by Nvidia Corp, to speed up energy-consuming blockchain tasks that require large amounts of computing power.

Nvidia also has a separate chip with a specific purpose of Ethereum mining.

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