The team behind the Ethereum wallet Rainbow announced the project has raised $18 million in a Series A funding round led by Alexis Ohanian’s venture capital firm Seven Seven Six. The new financing that follows the startup’s $1.5 million seed round will allow Rainbow to focus on “onboarding the next 100 million users to Web3.”
Ethereum-Based Rainbow Wallet Raises $18 Million
Rainbow, a non-custodial Ethereum (ETH) wallet that’s available for iOS and Android devices has announced the team has raised $18 million in a Series A investment round. The announcement notes that the financing was led by Alexis Ohanian’s venture capital firm Seven Seven Six. Ohanian’s Seven Seven Six has been giving a lot of attention to blockchain and Web3 startups during the last year.
In mid-December 2021, Seven Seven Six and Polygon announced a $200 million fund dedicated to advancing Web3 social media. The tech entrepreneur Alexis Ohanian is well known for co-founding the social media and news aggregation web portal Reddit with Steve Huffman and Aaron Swartz. The same month Seven Seven Six and Polygon started the Web3 social media fund, Ohanian invested in a non-fungible token (NFT) project called Heir Inc., a platform that aims to connect loyal fans with popular athletes.
The investment into the Ethereum-based wallet Rainbow follows the wallet project’s $1.5 million seed round, which brings Rainbow’s total fundraising to $19.5 million. According to Rainbow, the startup has hired 20 new employees and the team is focused on bolstering Web3 adoption. The Rainbow wallet allows users to hold and display NFTs and Ethereum-based tokens, while also allowing users to connect to decentralized applications (dapps).
“Many crypto users, myself included, regard Rainbow as the best-designed wallet,” Alexis Ohanian, the founder of the venture capital firm Seven Seven Six said in a statement sent to Bitcoin.com News. “The talent of their team, their approach to design, and the advocacy of their users position them as leaders in the crypto wallet space. User experience matters so much — Rainbow design choices are the reason they’ve already built a cult following and continue to educate and onboard scores of new users to Web3.”
A Slew of Web3 Wallet Competitors in 2022, Rainbow Wallet Team Plans to Launch Swap Aggregator, Desktop Browser Extension
Rainbow’s fundraise comes at a time when there is loads of competition in the Web3 wallet space, and Metamask currently leads the pack. In August 2021, Metamask broke records with 10 million monthly active users and in time Metamask will collaborate with the Ethereum-based wallet Mycrypto. In addition to Metamask, Rainbow faces competition from wallets like Trust Wallet, Argent, Coinbase Wallet, Coinomi, Guarda Wallet, and Crypto.com Wallet.
In 2022, Rainbow plans to introduce new features which include a “Swap Aggregator” application. Furthermore, Rainbow users will be able to leverage “Ethereum Profiles” by utilizing the Ethereum Name Service (ENS). Rainbow’s team also noted that it plans to launch a tool kit in the future and the team is in the midst of crafting a desktop browser extension.
”There’s still a lot of unnecessary complexity in the Web3 user experience,” Christian Baroni, Rainbow’s CEO and co-founder remarked during the announcement. “Rainbow’s been focused on chipping away at that, simplifying where it’s possible to and educating where it’s not,” the co-founder added.
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Jamie Redman
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