TransCrypts, a blockchain startup creating tools for people to own and share verified credentials, has raised a $15 million seed round led by Pantera Capital.
The round included Lightspeed Faction, Alpha Edison, Motley Fool Ventures and a mix of returning investors such as Mark Cuban and Protocol Labs.
The funding follows a strong summer for the San Francisco-based company. In September, TransCrypts won CoinDesk’s Pitchfest at Consensus Hong Kong, winning $10,000 in tokens, a trophy, and ten coaching sessions.
Founder and CEO Zain Zaidi said the win helped the team refine its vision of what he calls “self-sovereign identity”: a way for individuals to control their data directly, without relying on employers, universities or government agencies.
Bureaucratic accident
Zaidi founded the company after a bureaucratic mishap nearly cost him his place in graduate school when his transcripts were misplaced. “If we can’t prove who we are or what we’ve done, we lose something essential,” he said in a previous interview with CoinDesk.
TransCrypts started by digitizing employment verification. Its platform allows users to collect, encrypt and share records directly with employers, background checkers or anyone else who needs them. The system stores encrypted data off-chain, while the hashes live on-chain, so users can prove their authenticity without revealing personal details.
Now, with HIPAA certification achieved, TransCrypts plans to expand the model to healthcare and education degrees. This could allow patients to share verified medical histories between providers, or graduates to share their degrees and transcripts with potential employers, all without relying on intermediaries.
On-chain identity
This decision comes as the risks of fraud increase. Americans lost $43 billion to identity theft in 2023, and deepfake scams increased more than 1,800% in one year, according to the company’s release. Zaidi argues that decentralized identity could help counter these trends by allowing users to control what data is shared, when and with whom.
TransCrypts already claims to serve 4 million users and over 450 enterprise customers, including healthcare and personnel companies. The new capital will fund expansion into these regulated sectors and strengthen real-time credential verification tools.
For users, this can mean faster recruitment or easier onboarding at hospitals and schools. For the broader market, this signals growing confidence in blockchain-based identity systems – once a niche idea, now seen as a possible hedge against the age of deepfakes.
