Silence laboratories

High-Level Overview

Silence Laboratories is a cybersecurity startup specializing in decentralized authentication and privacy-preserving computations using multi-party computation (MPC) and threshold signature schemes (TSS). Founded around 2019-2020 and headquartered in Singapore with operations in Bengaluru, it develops libraries like Silent Shard for MPC-TSS and Silent Auth for proofs-based multi-factor authentication (MFA), serving enterprises in finance, cloud services, RegTech, and Web3.[1][2][3][4][5] These solutions replace traditional OTPs with proximity proofs, user signals, and distributed key shares, enabling secure, frictionless access without exposing secrets to single points of failure, while ensuring compliance with data protection standards like GDPR.[1][4][5] The company has raised $5.8M total funding, including a $1.7M seed round in 2022, and powers fast, scalable applications such as under-1-second offline tap-to-pay for bus ticketing in India.[3][4][6]

Origin Story

Silence Laboratories emerged from discussions among founders with elite technical pedigrees, including PhDs and researchers from Singapore University of Technology & Design (SUTD), National University of Singapore (NUS), University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), MIT's CSAIL, top Capture The Flag (CTF) teams, and leading tech firms.[2][5] CEO and co-founder Jay Prakash, after initial customer talks in Singapore and the US, pivoted from an original idea to MPC-based decentralized authentication upon identifying private key exposure risks in crypto wallets.[5] Founded in 2019 (with some sources noting 2020 or 2022 refinements), the company quickly gained traction by building the fastest production MPC signing libraries (5-10x faster than competitors) and organizing Decompute, a conference on decentralized security.[2][3][4][5] Early milestones include seed funding in 2022 and partnerships for real-world deployments like BLE-based P2P payments.[3][4]

Core Differentiators

• Fusion of Cryptography, Sensing, and Signals: Combines peer-reviewed MPC protocols (e.g., DKLs series) with signal processing for proofs of proximity and liveness, enabling decentralized MFA without OTPs or centralized trust—Silent Auth delivers seamless UX for B2B like finance and enterprise IT.[1][2][4][5]
• Speed and Scalability: Benchmarks as the world's fastest MPC-TSS library, with distributed key generation and signing that avoids single points of failure; Silent Shard supports composable {t,n}-TSS for custom key management and secure inference on secret data.[4][5]
• Developer-Friendly Stack: Open, battle-tested libraries for threshold signatures, privacy-preserving compute, and DSaaS (Decentralized Security-as-a-Service), proven in production for AML compliance, digital asset management, and offline transactions.[3][4][5]
• Privacy-First Compliance: Enables RegTech collaborations (e.g., telco-bank data sharing) under GDPR without exposing raw data, positioning it ahead in trust-minimized ecosystems.[1][5]

Role in the Broader Tech Landscape

Silence Laboratories rides the wave of decentralized identity and zero-trust security, fueled by Web3 growth, rising cyber threats, and regulations like GDPR demanding privacy-by-design.[1][3][5] Timing is ideal amid MPC adoption in blockchain wallets, DeFi, and enterprise auth, where traditional MFA fails on usability and key exposure—market forces like quantum risks and data silos amplify demand for distributed compute.[2][4][5] It influences the ecosystem by lowering barriers for devs via fast, integrable libraries, powering innovations in distributed storage, RegTech AML, and contactless payments, while events like Decompute foster MPC standards.[4][5]

Quick Take & Future Outlook

Silence Laboratories is primed to dominate MPC-TSS for enterprise Web3 and beyond, with libraries enabling mass adoption of trustless auth in AI-driven compute and tokenized assets. Trends like edge AI privacy, quantum-resistant crypto, and global RegTech mandates will accelerate growth, potentially through major partnerships or Series A. Its influence could evolve from toolkit provider to ecosystem orchestrator, tying back to its core mission: making secrets computable without compromise.[4][5]