The crypto investment giant Pantera Capital led a funding round that brought $10 million to the crypto wallet Braavos. Road Capital, BH Digital, DCVC, Crypto.com, Matrixport, and Starkware, who made StarkNet, were also investors.
Braavos was started this year by Motty Lavie, Abraham Makovetsky and Yoav Gaziel, and its goal is to make self-custody easier for people to use. The Tel Aviv, Israel-based company built its all-in-one cryptocurrency product on StarkNet, a layer 2 blockchain that fixes the Ethereum blockchain’s scalability problems by using a technology called zero-knowledge rollup to speed up transactions and lower fees.
Braavos blends the usual asset storage and transfer capabilities of a self-custody wallet with an integrated cryptocurrency exchange, access to decentralized applications, and a Transaction Explainer that can assist rookie cryptocurrency traders in understanding and reviewing transactions.
Braavos makes crypto wallets that let the person who owns them access the digital assets they hold. Custodial wallets give the keys, or passwords, to a central company that guarantees security and gives users an easy-to-use interface. Self-custody means that the user keeps the keys, but the process of getting started can be hard for new crypto users.
“Crypto today is still too technical and complex for many users – requiring them to deal with seed phrases and security keys, suffer from low error tolerance, and educate themselves on non-trivial Defi protocols. Our mission is to eliminate these high friction hurdles and provide users with the smooth experience they deserve, while preserving the core crypto values of decentralization and self-custody,” Braavos CEO Motty Lavie said in the press release
