Two new funding rounds for Corastone and Zcash Open Development Lab demonstrate that blockchain infrastructure is maturing for real-world scale, private markets, and privacy-first payments.
Summary
- Corastone received support from Fidelity, Hamilton Lane and others to run a private, permissioned blockchain as a shared infrastructure for private market workflows.
- Zcash Open Development Lab has raised more than $25 million from Paradigm, a16z crypto, Winklevoss Capital and others to scale Zcash’s privacy ecosystem.
- ZODL’s wallet, renamed from Zashi, helped expand Zcash’s Orchard-protected pool $ZEC was trading around $240.98 as investors assessed the new roadmap.
Two very different rounds announced this week point in the same direction: blockchain infrastructure is being rebuilt for scale, not hype. In New York, Corastone, a self-described “hyperscaler for private market investing,” said Fidelity Investments, Future Standard and Hamilton Lane have joined Apollo, Franklin Templeton, KKR and Morgan Stanley as investors in its operating platform. The company operates a private, permissioned blockchain that serves as “the shared network infrastructure and data standard for private market workflows,” replacing legacy file-based processes with straight-through processing for asset managers, distributors and administrators.
“As access to private markets continues to expand, companies need a standardized, digital infrastructure that supports higher volumes and more complex structures without adding operational burden,” said Hamid Gayibov, co-founder and president of Corastone. “Corastone is built to serve as a common operating layer for the ecosystem,” he added, arguing that the goal is to “give investors of all sizes access to private market assets as efficiently and reliably as public markets.” Future Standard CTO Hari Moorthy put the bet in similar terms, saying the company “saw a need in the market for an infrastructure technology that connects the various point-to-point systems used by investors and enables true straight-through processing of transactions,” adding that the investment “reflects our confidence in the role of the platform in the long term.”
On the privacy front, Zcash Open Development Lab (ZODL) announced that it has raised more than $25 million in seed funding from Paradigm, a16z crypto, Winklevoss Capital, Coinbase Ventures and others to build out the Zcash ecosystem. Founded by former Electric Coin Company CEO Josh Swihart, ZODL now houses the technology behind the Zashi wallet, rebranded Zodl, which has helped grow Zcash’s Orchard shielded pool of approximately 1 million $ZEC to about 4 million $ZEC in 2025 by simplifying the privacy UX. Cypherpunk Technologies, which also invested $5 million in the round, said the deal “gives its shareholders exposure to a private company building critical privacy infrastructure at the border” and aligns with its mission to “advance technologies that ensure privacy for all people on the internet.”
At the time of writing, Zcash was trading around $240.98, up about 3.8% from its last 24 hours, with 24-hour volume of roughly $346.4 million, as investors digested the new financing and infrastructure roadmap. For more detailed price data, see the crypto.news price page for Zcash (ZCASH).
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