Paradigm and Standard Crypto lead $20 million Series A round for smart contract infrastructure startup Axiom

Crypto infrastructure firm Axiom raised $20 million in Series A funding. 

Crypto-focused venture firms Paradigm and Standard Crypto led the round, which had additional support from Robot Ventures, Ethereal Ventures and others. 

Axiom builds tools for smart contract developers to have better access to authenticated on-chain data. The startup argues that the lack of such access forces developers to spend a lot of time and money reading and writing data.

ZK cryptography

"Axiom introduces a new approach to authenticated data access using ZK cryptography instead of consensus," the firm wrote in a Thursday social media post . "By using ZK, Axiom allows on-chain applications to compute over more data a lower cost, starting with the entire history of Ethereum in Axiom V2."

The result of this infrastructure is that developers can integrate transaction history data in on-chain applications and work with other smart contracts, Axiom noted in a release .