Web3 wallet Omni raises $11 million in seed funding at a $50 million valuation

Omni, a noncustodial wallet aiming to increase access to web3 technologies, has raised an $11 million round at a $50 million valuation.

The deal closed in May and included investors such as Spartan Group, GSR Ventures, and Eden Block, as well as OP Crypto, Shima Capital, Kosmos Ventures, Daedalus Angels, PrimeBlock Ventures, Figment Capital, Lattice Capital and Chorus One according to a statement. This was an equity deal with a token side letter in case Omni plans to release its own token, founder Serafin Lion Engel said over email.

Founded by Engel, Alex Harley and James Stackhouse, the wallet — previously named Steakwallet — aims to increase accessibility to technologies such as staking and token swaps. 

«The primary hurdle that stands between users gaining access to the future of the internet, is ease of use. That’s why we built Omni: an incredibly easy-to-use Web 3 application that can do it all without sacrificing even a fraction of self-sovereignty,» Engel said in the announcement. «Especially after seeing the CeFi meltdown, we wanted to give users something that was as easy to use as CeFi, but 100% self-custodial and DeFi. And that’s what we’ve done with Omni.» 

Omni says that it has built its own custom smart contract middleware that allows users to stake on more than twenty protocols with liquid staking options built in. Users can also move tokens to different blockchains via bridges and displays NFTs from different blockchains on the mobile app. 

The wallet plans to use the funding to expand its services and integrations. While currently available on all major Ethereum virtual machines and layer two scaling solutions such as Arbitrum, Optimism and Polygon, the company is readying integration with zkSync and Starknet. 

The round follows similar raises by wallets aiming to build a more user-friendly version of MetaMask, the current go-to crypto wallet. In August, DeFi wallet startup Unstoppable Finance raised €12.5 million in a round led by Lightspeed Ventures. Earlier this year, Ethereum wallet Rainbow raised $18 million in a round led by Seven Seven Six, the venture capital fund of Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian.

Fintech firms such as Robinhood and Revolut have also pledged to launch challengers to MetaMask, but have yet to follow through.

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