Web3Auth raises $13 million to drive mass adoption of Web3 apps and wallets through non-custodial authentication infrastructure

SINGAPORE, JANUARY 12, 2022 —  Web3Auth, the simplest auth infrastructure solution for Web3 apps and wallets, announces today a $13 million Series A round led by Sequoia Capital India. Formerly known as Torus, the company plans to accelerate expansion into decentralized gaming, NFTs, and social applications. The new infusion will also advance the company’s vision of making blockchains universally accessible. The round follows a $2 million seed round, bringing the company’s total financing to date to $15 million. 

The Series A round was raised with additional participation from Union Square Ventures, Multicoin Capital, FTX, Bitcoin.com, DARMA Capital, Terabyte Capital, Hash, KOSMOS Capital, Kyros Ventures, LD Capital, Minted Labs, P2P Capital, Phoenix VC, Staking Facilities, YBB Capital, Moonwhale Ventures, and Decentralab.

Engineered specifically for Web3 applications and wallets, Web3Auth’s authentication infrastructure is designed to make it easy for developers to build familiar login flows, such as single sign-on with Google and Twitter, eliminating the need for users to directly interface with vulnerable public-private key pairs. It is also designed to give more advanced users the ability to connect the wallet or key management system of their choice.

“We designed Web3Auth to bypass the UX obstacles holding back mainstream crypto adoption. True to our focus on accessibility, we wanted Web3Auth to meet users wherever they are. Intuitive and familiar login flows are needed if we want to onboard the next wave of mainstream users into crypto,” said Zhen Yu Yong, Co-Founder and CEO of Web3Auth. “We’re encouraged that some of the best investors in the world care deeply about usability and accessibility in crypto. We’re extremely grateful for their support, and we’re going to use it to catapult Web3 into the future.”

The current state of crypto onboarding is unwieldy and unnecessarily prolonged, with a single point of failure: the seed phrase. On a technical level, seed phrases are easily compromised and have contributed to the loss of nearly 20% of all bitcoin in circulation – roughly equivalent to the GDP of Hungary. This presents a significant barrier to entry that deters non-technical users from exploring new Web3 applications and services.

Web3Auth solves these problems by leveraging social accounts and devices that mainstream users already own to enable the user to intuitively manage their keys. Under the hood, Web3Auth is powered by the Torus Network, an open source, non-custodial, distributed key management network. Web3Auth builds on this infrastructure to make Web3 authentication—including passwordless auth, SMS auth, or other OAuth methods (Google, Twitter, Discord, and Reddit)—in apps and wallets simple and intuitive to use.

“We think that the non-custodial nature of Web3, which allows users to control their own data and destiny, is a huge step forward in bringing power back to the users. This makes the data more portable and safer while continuing to enable existing login product features, giving users the best of both worlds. Sequoia Capital India is excited to partner with a team and a product that is concentrating on making crypto more accessible not by adding more bells and whistles but by addressing a long-standing problem at its most fundamental level. Accelerating crypto’s mainstream adoption won’t happen as easily without straightforward solutions like Web3Auth,” says Anandamoy Roychowdhary, Principal, Sequoia India.

This funding round follows demonstrable adoption successes. Web3Auth recently partnered with Kukai to power Ubisoft’s NFT initiative. In the last year alone, more than 300 applications and wallets selected Web3Auth to secure over four million users’ private keys. Leading wallets and applications like Binance Extension Wallet, Keplr, and Skyweaver use Web3Auth in their core flows to boost conversion rates, reduce loss, and support tickets.