Decentralized Identity Startup Spruce Raises $7.5M

Ethereal Ventures and Electric Capital led the round, with Alameda Research, Coinbase Ventures and Protocol Labs joining in.

AccessTimeIconNov 2, 2021 at 12:00 p.m. UTC
Updated May 11, 2023 at 6:25 p.m. UTC
10 Years of Decentralizing the Future
May 29-31, 2024 - Austin, TexasThe biggest and most established global hub for everything crypto, blockchain and Web3.Register Now

Decentralized finance (DeFi) and non-fungible tokens (NFT) have given decentralized identity a solid commercial use case that was previously lacking.

So say the founders of Spruce, an identity startup that just raised $7.5 million in a funding round led by Ethereal Ventures and Electric Capital.

The seed round, announced Tuesday, also included participation by Alameda Research, Coinbase Ventures, BITKRAFT, A. Capital Ventures, Protocol Labs and Gemini Frontier Fund.

The founders of Y Combinator-backed Spruce, Wayne Chang and Gregory Rocco, met at ConsenSys where they were working on economics and decentralized identity, and the team has clearly remained close to the Ethereum design studio.

“In combining identity and storage elegantly, they’re building user-centric, Web 3-style tools for the decentralized future, enabling users to control their own data using permissionless infrastructure,” ConsenSys chief and Ethereal Ventures co-founder Joseph Lubin said in a statement.

Spruce launched just over a year ago with two products: the SpruceID toolkit for decentralized identity and Kepler self-sovereign storage. The two systems work seamlessly together across blockchains to gate access via NFT ownership, for instance, or verify credentials for decentralized autonomous organizations (DAO), said Chang.

“[Users] want liquidity providers and DeFi pools that have a track record of being good liquidity providers,” Chang said. “DAO governance is a really important one, too. You want to know that people have something at stake either reputational or otherwise, so they are going to make the right decisions.”

Disclosure

Please note that our privacy policy, terms of use, cookies, and do not sell my personal information has been updated.

CoinDesk is an award-winning media outlet that covers the cryptocurrency industry. Its journalists abide by a strict set of editorial policies. In November 2023, CoinDesk was acquired by the Bullish group, owner of Bullish, a regulated, digital assets exchange. The Bullish group is majority-owned by Block.one; both companies have interests in a variety of blockchain and digital asset businesses and significant holdings of digital assets, including bitcoin. CoinDesk operates as an independent subsidiary with an editorial committee to protect journalistic independence. CoinDesk employees, including journalists, may receive options in the Bullish group as part of their compensation.

Ian Allison

Ian Allison is an award-winning senior reporter at CoinDesk. He holds ETH.


Learn more about Consensus 2024, CoinDesk's longest-running and most influential event that brings together all sides of crypto, blockchain and Web3. Head to consensus.coindesk.com to register and buy your pass now.