A16z crypto leads $4.2 million seed investment in UK web3 infrastructure firm Pimlico

Quick Take

  • The crypto venture arm of Andreessen Horowitz led a $4.2 million seed round for UK web3 infrastructure firm Pimlico. 
  • Pimlico aims to make Ethereum easier to use by leveraging smart accounts via the ERC-4337 token standard. 

UK web3 infrastructure firm Pimlico raised $4.2 million in a seed financing round led by a16z crypto. The company said it intends to use the funding to expand operations.

Pimlico aims to augment Ethereum through smart accounts via ERC-4337, a token standard that allows for account abstraction, with the ultimate goal of making Ethereum easier to use and add more ways to execute transactions on the network. 

"Smart accounts tackle many limitations the Ethereum protocol has hardcoded, namely that each native account is linked to a single private key. Smart accounts introduce completely customizable logic, unlocking capabilities such as gas sponsorship, gas payments with ERC-20 tokens, better account recovery, spending thresholds, FaceID or passkey verification, among many other use-cases we expect from our accounts," Pimlico CEO Kristoff Gazso said in a statement

Prior funding

Pimlico raised $1.6 million in pre-seed funding led by 1confirmation, with additional participation from Safe, Consensys and over 10 others on Sept. 24. 

THE SCOOP

Keep up with the latest news, trends, charts and views on crypto and DeFi with a new biweekly newsletter from The Block's Frank Chaparro

By signing-up you agree to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy
By signing-up you agree to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy

"We raised this capital because we feel Ethereum is at a pivotal point," Gazso wrote. "Pimlico was founded to make using Ethereum easier by providing the infrastructure for the new generation of smart accounts."


© 2023 The Block. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

About Author

MK Manoylov has been a reporter for The Block since 2020 — joining just before bitcoin surpassed $20,000 for the first time. Since then, MK has written nearly 1,000 articles for the publication, covering any and all crypto news but with a penchant toward NFT, metaverse, web3 gaming, funding, crime, hack and crypto ecosystem stories. MK holds a graduate degree from New York University's Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program (SHERP) and has also covered health topics for WebMD and Insider. You can follow MK on X @MManoylov and on LinkedIn.

Editor

To contact the editor of this story:
Nathan Crooks at
[email protected]