Crypto might have gone mainstream over the past few years, but it’s still a jargon-heavy industry filled with multi-step processes, clunky interfaces and technical hurdles.
Startup Reown is trying to capitalize on that complexity by helping developers build simplified user interfaces. The company has now raised $13 million in a Series B funding round led by Union Square Ventures and crypto investment firm 1kx. Other investors in the round include Shopify Ventures, Kraken Ventures and Crypto.com Capital.
Formerly known as WalletConnect, Reown was founded in 2018 to allow users to connect their self-custody wallet to a desktop application, which allowed them to buy NFTs, play a game, or engage in a variety of other on-chain activities. Since rebranding last year, Reown remains the core maintainer of the open-source WalletConnect network, which has onboarded over 600 different wallets that participate in 50,000 different crypto projects and applications, according to CEO Jess Houlgrave.
“We’ve continued to build on the network, but also started to address some of these other big user experience challenges,” Houlgrave told Fortune. “That has led to the creation of our two flagship products.”
Those two products are standard developer kits, or SDKs: one for building crypto wallets and one for building on-chain applications. These kits give developers access to the WalletConnect network and provide them with tools to build interfaces that allow users to log into any non-custodial wallet as long as it is in the network. Some participating wallets include MetaMask, Binance Web3 Wallet, Coinbase Wallet, and OKX Wallet.
While these products are currently free, Reown plans to roll out a pricing structure and begin making money in the first quarter of this year. The company will continue to offer free versions of their products, but will sell an enterprise version that companies can license.
Houlgrave said that she plans to use the money raised in this funding round for research and development. The company will also use the funding to expand into new ecosystems, and offer services on more blockchains.
