Investing in Privy — the easiest way to onboard users to web3

Viktor Bunin and I are proud to announce our investment into Privy’s Series A via Credibly Neutral, our early-stage venture fund investing in protocols, infrastructure, and crypto SaaS. We’re excited to work alongside the Privy team and an incredible syndicate including Paradigm, Sequoia, Blueyard, Archetype, and others.

Getting started in crypto is confusing. Users must learn a whole new language — wallets, bridges, assets, and addresses that start with 0x — before onboarding to their first application. For crypto application developers, each step in onboarding disrupts the user experience. New users must download another application (a wallet), load it with funds using another application (a fiat on-ramp), and track their funds using yet another application (a block explorer) — none of which are controlled by the application developer. This split is important to ensuring systems are run transparently, but it disrupts developers’ ability to craft good product experiences.

Privy is offering the easiest way to onboard users to web3. Privy empowers developers by giving them more control over their UX and reducing friction in the onboarding flow. With Privy, developers can offer users the option to use external wallets or embedded wallets or both. Embedded wallets are self-custodial wallets that are embedded in the application. This means that users can create the wallet and take actions with their wallet — all without leaving the context that prompted their action. The wallet can also be customized to match the look and feel of the application — providing a streamlined and cohesive user experience. Privy’s offering — making onboarding faster and easier by reducing unnecessary steps — is a no-brainer for developers looking to improve their conversion rate in onboarding.

Importantly, Privy stays true to the crypto values by building the embedded wallet to be a fully self-custodial wallet — meaning neither Privy nor the application developer can access the user’s keys. At the same time, Privy has included functionality that new crypto users expect based on their experiences with web2 applications. For example, users can login using their email, SMS, or other accounts including Google, Twitter, Discord, Github, or Apple. Users can also recover their wallet across devices.

We’ve been impressed by how the Privy team has balanced these imperatives, crafting onchain tooling fit for any audience. This is a hard balance to find, and we believe getting it right will unlock massive value for our market and the Internet beyond it. Today, we’re excited to partner with the Privy team to drive this work forward.

Privy was founded by our good friends Henri Stern and Asta Li, who are empathetic leaders that are aligned in building a transformative company. They are both deep thinkers — and we always gain a new perspective or learn something new when speaking with them. They are also incredibly adaptable and user-focused, which comes through in Privy’s interactive website, easy-to-follow docs, and streamlined integration process — making it possible to integrate Privy in 9 minutes.

The Privy team has put a tremendous amount of effort into ensuring its infrastructure can scale. This reliability is essential as applications using Privy scale to hundreds of thousands, and eventually, millions of daily active users. As more crypto applications emerge and existing applications scale, developers will rely on Privy’s battle tested infrastructure to support their growth. In fact, it’s already begun.

Privy is trusted by many of the most exciting consumer crypto applications including Friend.tech, Blackbird, and Mad Realities. These applications offer innovative experiences built on top of crypto rails — and they are aiming to onboard crypto veterans and users who have never used crypto. Having a crypto wallet should not be a prerequisite for a restaurant loyalty and membership platform (Blackbird) nor should it be for an audience-owned TV platform (Mad Realities). With Privy, crypto natives and crypto newbies can onboard easily and safely.

Wallets are the foundation for a user’s journey through web3. There is tremendous opportunity for innovation in the products and services built upon this stack, including identity, marketing, 3rd party integrations, and much more. We’re thrilled to join the Privy team on the journey of discovering and building this future.

To learn more about Privy, visit their website and follow them on Twitter.