TransCrypts, a blockchain startup building 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, taking home $10,000 in tokens, a trophy, and ten coaching sessions. Founder and CEO Zain Zaidi said that the win helped the team refine its vision for what he calls “self-sovereign identity”— a way for people to control their data directly, without relying on employers, universities, or government agencies. Bureaucratic mishap Zaidi founded the company after a bureaucratic mishap nearly cost him his spot in grad 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 an earlier interview with CoinDesk. TransCrypts began by digitizing employment verification. Its platform lets users collect, encrypt, and share records directly with employers, background checkers, or others who need them. The system stores encrypted data off-chain, while the hashes live on-chain, so users can prove authenticity without revealing personal details. Now, with HIPAA certification secured, TransCrypts plans to extend the model to health and education credentials. That could allow patients to carry verified medical histories between providers, or graduates to share diplomas and transcripts with potential employers—all without the need for intermediaries. Identity onchain The move comes as fraud risks are on the rise. Americans lost $43 billion to identity theft in 2023, and deepfake scams have surged more than 1,800 percent in a year, according to the company’s release. Zaidi argues that decentralized identity could help counter these trends by allowing people to control what data is shared, when, and with whom. TransCrypts claims to already serve 4 million users and over 450 enterprise clients, including firms in healthcare and staffing. The new capital will fund expansion into these regulated sectors and strengthen tools for verifying credentials in real time. For users, that might mean faster hiring or simplified onboarding for hospitals and schools. For the broader market, it signals growing confidence in blockchain-based identity systems—once a niche idea, now seen as a possible safeguard against the deepfake era.
