Financial tech-focused blockchain startup Spring Labs Inc. today said it has raised $14.75 million in seed funding.

The round was led by August Capital and included Victory Park Capital, GreatPoint Ventures, Jump Capital,  Multicoin Capital, Pritzker Group and Wavemaker VC.

Founded last year, Spring Labs is building what it calls a more transparent, efficient and secure ecosystem to exchange credit and identity information using a blockchain. It’s designed to allow lenders, banks and data providers to exchange data with one another more easily and cheaply.

The Spring Network, the company’s blockchain-based network, is described as a “second-generation blockchain” that allows organizations to securely share beliefs about credit and identity data. It incorporates both public and permissioned nodes to facilitate compliance with regulatory requirements and enforce information security through the use of privacy-preserving smart contracts.

The team behind the company all hail from Avant Inc., a Chicago-based financial services and technology company founded in 2012 that grossed $437.9 million in 2016. It’s Spring’s first client.

“In building a number of notable fintech companies like Avant and Future Finance, we’ve seen the issues within the credit and identity ecosystem firsthand,” Spring Labs Chief Executive Officer Adam Jiwan said in a statement. “The 2017 Equifax hack that affected 140 million Americans is a public representation of underlying issues with how data is exchanged and secured among parties in the ecosystem.”

Spring Labs said it would use the funding to “expand the company’s platform significantly in the coming months, to grow its world-class engineering team and to deliver on its vision to decentralize credit and identity services.”

Image: Spring Labs