Payy Cloaks Stablecoins in Zero‑Knowledge, Nets $6M Seed to Hide Your Moves

Stablecoin startup Payy just sealed a $6 million seed round, swelling its war chest to $8 million after a $2 million pre‑seed raised when it was still called Polybase—proof that even crypto projects can graduate from “seedling” to “full‑blown hedge‑fund‑wannabe” without a single rug pull.

Originally launched as Polybase—a web‑3 database experiment—the crew flipped the script in 2023, repurposing the zero‑knowledge tech they built for data storage into a privacy‑first stablecoin payment engine. Founder Gandhi jokes the switch attacks what he dubs the biggest flaw in stablecoins: “sending a stablecoin payment is like posting your bank statement on a public website,” except with fewer memes and more on‑chain snooping.

The Payy wallet hit the streets in January 2024, and a Visa‑linked card followed in August 2025, giving users a way to spend crypto without looking like a walking QR code. Last month the firm rolled out the Payy Network, promising a testnet next month and a mainnet slated for this summer