UK Web3 Firm Pimlico Secures $4.2M Seed Investment Led by a16z Crypto

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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,” an announcement from the company said.

“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, said in the announcement.

We're excited to announce that Pimlico has raised a $4.2 million seed round led by @a16zcrypto to power Ethereum's transition to smart accounts.

Read more in our announcement below:https://t.co/XtCcvJYisIpic.twitter.com/13xWDvs59C

— pimlico.eth (@pimlicoHQ) November 7, 2023

Smart accounts based on ERC-4337

Launched earlier this year, Pimlico’s stated mission is to make the use of Ethereum easier by providing the infrastructure for the next generation of smart accounts based on the ERC-4337 standard, co-authored by notable figures including Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin, Yoav Weiss, Dror Tirosh, and Pimlico’s CEO.

Smart accounts, empowered by this standard, offer modularity and enhanced features, such as gas sponsorship, gas payments with ERC-20 tokens, better account recovery, spending thresholds, FaceID or passkey verification, among other user-centric use-cases.

The company has recently introduced permissionless.js, a dedicated library designed to simplify the development experience of creating wallets and applications using smart accounts.

So far, Pimlico’s contributions have been well-received, with developers conducting nearly 3 million user operations, representing over 60% of all indexed user operations since the beginning of the year, according to the firm.

Among other things, Pimlico’s infrastructure has paved the way for projects like Daimo and Patch Wallet, which leverage smart accounts to offer use cases such as peer-to-peer (P2P) payments and token transfers via social media handles, respectively.

Pimlico prioritizing decentralization and user experience

In a comment posted on X, a16z general partner Sriram Krishnan said Pimlico’s product will “enable wallet developers to easily embed account abstraction functionality.”

“One of crypto’s core promises is self-sovereignty over digital goods and assets. Developers building wallets or web3 applications have long been faced with a dilemma – deciding whether to prioritize UX or decentralization,” Krishnan said, while adding:

“Pimlico enables them to achieve both.”

ANN: Investing in Pimlico

I’m super thrilled to announce that @a16zcrypto is leading a round of financing in @pimlicoHQ (based right here in London).

Pimlico is building a product suite to enable wallet developers to easily embed account abstraction functionality.

One of… pic.twitter.com/wUN2kebRoX

— Sriram Krishnan – sriramk.eth (@sriramk) November 7, 2023

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