Ethereum Web3 Wallet Rainbow Raises $18 Million From Alexis Ohanian – Rainbow’s team revealed that the project has received $18 million in a Series A fundraising round sponsored by Alexis Ohanian’s venture capital firm Seven Seven Six. Rainbow will be able to focus on “onboarding the next 100 million people to Web3” with the additional funding, which follows the startup’s $1.5 million initial round.
Rainbow, a non-custodial Ethereum (ETH) wallet for iOS and Android, has acquired $18 million in a Series A funding round. The funding was led by Alexis Ohanian’s venture capital firm Seven Seven Six, according to the release. During the previous year, Ohanian’s Seven Seven Six has focused heavily on blockchain and Web3 firms.
Seven Seven Six and Polygon established a $200 million fund dedicated to promoting Web3 social media in mid-December 2021. Alexis Ohanian is a well-known internet entrepreneur who co-founded Reddit, a social media and news aggregation online portal, alongside Steve Huffman and Aaron Swartz.
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Ohanian invested in a non-fungible token (NFT) initiative called Heir Inc., a platform that attempts to connect dedicated fans with prominent athletes, the same month Seven Seven Six and Polygon launched the Web3 social media fund.
Rainbow’s investment comes after a $1.5 million seed round, bringing the wallet’s total fundraising to $19.5 million. Rainbow claims that the company has employed 20 new personnel and that the team is working to increase Web3 usage. The Rainbow wallet allows users to retain and display NFTs and Ethereum-based tokens, whilst still allowing users to connect to decentralized applications (dapps).
In a statement, Alexis Ohanian, the founder of the venture capital firm Seven Seven Six, said, “Many crypto users, myself included, rate Rainbow as the best-designed wallet.” “Their team’s talent, design style, and user advocacy position them as market leaders in the crypto wallet field.” Rainbow design choices are the reason they’ve already developed a cult following and continue to educate and onboard a large number of new users to Web3.”
Rainbow’s fundraising effort comes at a time when the Web3 wallet industry is crowded, with Metamask now leading the pack. Metamask set a new record with 10 million monthly active users in August 2021, and Metamask will eventually partner with the Ethereum-based wallet Mycrypto.
Rainbow is up against wallets including Argent, Trust Wallet, Coinomi, Coinbase Wallet, Guarda Wallet, and Crypto.com Wallet, in addition to Metamask.
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Rainbow intends to launch new features in 2022, including a “Swap Aggregator” application. Rainbow users will also be able to use the Ethereum Name Service (ENS) to create “Ethereum Profiles”. Rainbow’s team also mentioned that it intends to release a toolkit in the future, and that it is currently working on a desktop browser extension.
During the announcement, Christian Baroni, Rainbow’s CEO and co-founder, stated, “There’s still a lot of unneeded complexity in the Web3 user experience.” “Rainbow has been focused on chipping away at that, simplifying where we can and teaching where we can’t,” the co-founder added.
