Web3 Infrastructure Startup Portal Raises $5.3M

Portal, a Web3 wallet infrastructure startup, has raised $5.3 million in a funding round that included Slow Ventures and Haun Ventures, the venture capital firm founded by Andreessen Horowitz alum Kaite Haun, according to a press release provided to CoinDesk.

The funding round comes during a particularly harsh crypto winter landscape that has taken a toll on venture capital and other investments into the industry, which were down 91% year over year in January. Infrastructure projects emerged as one of the strongest sectors during the month.

San Francisco-based Portal offers wallet infrastructure and a decentralized application (dapp) store that enables projects to become a Web3-enabled app. The developer kit helps Portal partners easily connect to protocols and dapps either directly or from a mobile or desktop browser. Portal’s embedded wallet uses multi-party computation (MPC), a type of cryptography that removes the need for complicated seed phrases – a hurdle for non-crypto native users – without compromising security.

«Web3 is fundamentally transforming every part of our lives — from how we make payments and access financial services to how we manage our data and assets in an increasingly connected world,» said Slow Ventures partner Will Quist in the press release. «However, the barriers to access this emerging ecosystem are high — for both enterprises and consumers alike. Portal has built transformative infrastructure to onboard the next wave of users into web3.»

Other backers in the round were Acrew Capital, Chapter One and a number of angel investors, including William Hockey (co-founder of fintech company Plaid), Henrique Dubagras (co-founder of corporate credit firm Brex), and Diogo Monica, founder of institutional crypto platform Anchorage Digital.

Portal was co-founded by CEO Raj Parekh, who previously directed Visa’s global crypto product division. The other founders bring a range of security engineering experience with Chief Technology Officer David Scrobonia having worked at Web2 consumer data platform Segment, Brex alum Parsa Attari and Rami Shahtit, who previously worked at fintech Blend.

Read more: What Are VCs Funding After FTX? More Decentralized Infrastructure

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