Pimlico, a UK-based Web3 company, has successfully closed a seed investment round worth $4.2 million, led by the major venture firm Andreessen Horowitz’s crypto arm a16z Crypto. The new funding round comes after a recent pre-seed round and marks a crucial milestone for Pimlico in their journey to redefine smart contracts, according to an announcement from the company.
“We’re proud to be working with a16z — they have established themselves as one of the most long-term oriented investors in the web3 space and we have thoroughly enjoyed working with them both during their Crypto Startup School and after,”
– Kristoff Gazso, Pimlico’s CEO
Advancing Ethereum with the ERC-4337 Standard
Launched earlier this year, Pimlico’s mission is to make the use of Ethereum easier by providing the infrastructure for the next generation of smart accounts. These smart accounts are based on the ERC-4337 standard, which was co-authored by notable figures including Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin, Yoav Weiss, Dror Tirosh, and Pimlico’s CEO. With this standard, smart accounts offer modularity and enhanced features, such as gas sponsorship, gas payments with ERC-20 tokens, account recovery, spending thresholds, and user-centric use-cases like FaceID or passkey verification.
Pimlico has recently introduced permissionless.js, a dedicated library that simplifies the development experience of creating wallets and applications using smart accounts. Developers have shown strong interest in Pimlico’s contributions, with nearly 3 million user operations being conducted using their infrastructure since the beginning of the year, representing over 60% of all indexed user operations.
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Pioneering Projects:
Pimlico’s infrastructure has paved the way for innovative projects like Daimo and Patch Wallet. Daimo leverages smart accounts to facilitate peer-to-peer (P2P) payments, while Patch Wallet allows token transfers via social media handles. These implementations highlight the versatility and potential of smart accounts in various user scenarios.
Enabling Account Abstraction Functionality for Wallet Developers
a16z general partner Sriram Krishnan commented on the significance of Pimlico’s product, stating that it will enable wallet developers to easily embed account abstraction functionality. He explains that in the crypto industry, one of the core promises is self-sovereignty over digital goods and assets. However, developers have often faced a dilemma when building wallets or web3 applications, having to choose between prioritizing user experience (UX) or decentralization.
“Pimlico enables them to achieve both.”
– Sriram Krishnan, a16z general partner
