Corastone and Zcash’s ZODL show blockchains growing up for real finance

Two new funding rounds for Corastone and Zcash Open Development Lab show blockchain infrastructure maturing for real‑world scale, private markets, and privacy‑first payments.

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 runs a private, permissioned blockchain that acts as “the shared network infrastructure and data standard for private markets workflows,” replacing legacy file‑based processes with straight‑through processing for asset managers, distributors and administrators.

“As access to private markets continues to scale, firms need 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 was built to serve as a common operating layer for the ecosystem,” he added, arguing that the goal is to let “investors of all sizes access private market assets as efficiently and reliably as public markets.” Future Standard’s CTO Hari Moorthy framed the bet in similar terms, saying the firm “saw a need in the marketplace 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 its investment “reflects our confidence in the platform’s long‑term role.”​

On the privacy side, Zcash Open Development Lab (ZODL) disclosed 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 to Zodl, which helped grow Zcash’s Orchard shielded pool from around 1 million ZEC to roughly 4 million ZEC during 2025 by simplifying 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 on the frontier” and aligns with its mission of “advancing technologies that guarantee privacy for all humans on the internet.”

At press time, Zcash traded near $240.98, up about 3.8% over the last 24 hours, with a 24‑hour volume of roughly $346.4 million, as investors digested the new funding and infrastructure roadmap. For more detailed price data, see the crypto.news price page for Zcash (ZCASH).