Pimlico Powers Smart Accounts with a16z Crypto's $4.2 Million Seed Round

In a significant step forward for the Ethereum ecosystem, Pimlico has secured $4.20 million in a seed round led by a16z crypto. Pimlico is pioneering the development of smart accounts, harnessing the ERC-4337 standard co-authored by notable figures like Vitalik Buterin and Yoav Weiss. This standard introduces unprecedented modularity, facilitating a surge in innovative wallets and accounts. Pimlico has played a pivotal role in driving this innovation behind the scenes.

Smart accounts address critical limitations hardcoded into the Ethereum protocol, such as the linkage of native accounts to a single private key. By offering customizable logic, these smart accounts unlock a host of capabilities, including gas sponsorship, gas payments using ERC-20 tokens, enhanced account recovery, spending thresholds, FaceID or passkey verification, and many more features.

To simplify the developer experience of creating wallets and applications using smart accounts, Pimlico has introduced permissionless.js, a dedicated library. Their goal is to make web3 accounts as user-friendly as the familiar web2 accounts.

Since the beginning of the year, Pimlico has seen impressive developer adoption, with nearly 3 million user operations bundled and sponsored, accounting for over 60% of all indexed user operations.

What's even more exciting for Pimlico is the remarkable projects emerging on this foundation of smart accounts. Two standouts are Daimo and Patch Wallet. Daimo focuses on P2P payments, using smart accounts for seamless gas abstraction and FaceID signature verification. The result is a payments app that rivals traditional web2 apps in terms of speed and simplicity.

Patch Wallet introduces a groundbreaking concept: sending tokens via social handles, eliminating the need for users to create wallets in advance. This approach opens up new possibilities, such as conducting social airdrops directly to Twitter followers or email newsletter readers. It's a user-friendly way to onboard a large number of new users to the world of crypto.

The $4.2 million seed round led by a16z crypto will power Pimlico's mission to redefine smart accounts and transform on-chain transactions. Working closely with a16z crypto, known for its long-term commitment to the web3 space, Pimlico aims to assemble a world-class team dedicated to making web3 more user-friendly.

Pimlico's journey is one to watch, as it continues to shape the future of smart accounts and drive innovation within the Ethereum ecosystem.