​​​​​​​Lumina DEX Raises Funds to Launch Private and Compliant DeFi Platform on Mina Protocol

Lumina has announced the closing of a strategic investment round from Mina Foundation

Lumina, a new decentralized exchange (DEX) and decentralized finance (DeFi) platform, has announced the closing of a strategic investment round from Mina Foundation, Jump Crypto, Big Brain Holdings, and O(1) Labs. The amount of the funding was not disclosed.

Lumina aims to leverage the funds raised to launch a hybrid permissioned and permissionless DEX on Mina Protocol, the world’s first zero-knowledge (ZK) blockchain. By building on Mina’s layer-1 network, Lumina plans to enable fully private and compliant DeFi services that also preserve user privacy.

Lumina is designed to address the challenges faced by traditional DEXs, such as lack of regulatory compliance, maximal extracted value (MEV) front-running, and limited scalability. Lumina’s objective is to meet the increasing demand from enterprises and financial institutions for private and permissioned DeFi solutions that align with regulatory standards and facilitate an environment of transparency and trust.

Evan Kereiakes, CEO of Lumina, said, "Our objective is to meet the increasing demand from enterprises and financial institutions for private and permissioned DeFi solutions, and the closing of this strategic round puts us in a position to deliver this. We chose to build on Mina Protocol due to the layer-1's unparalleled strengths in zero knowledge technology, developer toolkits, and capabilities for enabling compliance, data privacy, and exponential scalability. We know how important these components are for institutions and look forward to meeting this demand with the launch of our DeFi stack."

Kurt Hemecker, COO of Mina Foundation, shared, "We are thrilled to extend our support to Lumina DEX in this strategic raise, as we firmly believe that Lumina DEX is proactively addressing the concerns that until now have led traditional financial institutions to hesitate in embracing DeFi. Recognizing the significance of compliance in today’s regulatory climate, Lumina DEX is dedicated to providing private DeFi solutions built on the Mina Protocol, which aim to align with regulatory standards and facilitate an environment of compliance and transparency.

Mina Protocol is a minimal "succinct blockchain" that uses ZK proofs to compress its entire blockchain into a constant size of 22 KB. This allows anyone to easily connect peer-to-peer and validate transactions like a full node, ensuring strong censorship-resistance and security for the blockchain. Mina also enables smart contracts powered by ZK proofs, called zkApps, that can privately interact with any website and access verified real world data for use on-chain. Lumina DEX is one of the first projects to build on Mina Protocol and leverage its unique tech stack to offer a ZK-KYC-enabled, enterprise-ready DEX.