Networks and the ability to cooperate in highly complex patterns brought human civilization to the incredible accomplishments we are lucky to be witnessing. Cooperation requires trust. Over millennia, the model of trust in society has undergone several stages of evolution. Originating as trust in personal relationships, it has progressed towards trust in authorities and institutions. Today, the third wave of this evolution is surging. Recent breakthroughs in science and technology have made it possible to conduct direct interactions between large groups of people reliably via electronic communication and sophisticated cryptographic protocols. Public permissionless blockchains are the culmination of this development. Unstoppable, censorship-resistant, borderless, programmable money offer unprecedented opportunities. So, why is then blockchain adoption so visibly slow? We believe, two large gaps must be closed before distributed ledgers will be embraced ubiquitously: scalability and privacy. On the one hand, existing technologies simply cannot keep their promises of security and decentralization at the scale of industrial applications. On the other hand, few businesses and individuals will tolerate making each and every one of their transactions public to the entire world. Matter Labs is committed to remove these obstacles. We’re building secure, scalable, programmable, privacy-preserving blockchain technology.