Martian, a web3 wallet, announced it has closed on a $3 million pre-seed funding round “led by Race Capital, with participation from FTX Ventures, Superscrypt, Jump Capital and Aptos.”
Martian intends to use the proceeds “to accelerate its hiring process and develop new wallet features to onboard the next billion crypto users.”
With the plethora of new applications on various blockchains, Martian aims “to help users cut through the noise with its simple web3 wallet.”
In just a few steps, Martian users can “start interacting with decentralized applications on Aptos, to buy, swap tokens or collect different non-fungible tokens (NFTs).”
Since its launch in June, Martian claims it “has become the most used wallet on Aptos and the Move ecosystem, with close to 1 million total installs and 600K+ users on the Chrome extension according to Chrome Webstore data.”
Martian had 650K+ total installs “in seven days post Aptos mainnet launch on October 18. More than 2 million transactions were successfully approved on mainnet through Martian Wallet within the first three days of the Aptos mainnet launch.”
The firm has also “secured a grant from Aptos.” Furthermore, it “supports and has partnerships with multiple decentralized applications including Tortuga, Aptos Name Service, Topaz, Souffl3 and more, as well as with Wormhole and LayerZero on its cross-chain efforts.”
Utkarsh Sinha and Siddharth Jain, Martian’s two founders, “were childhood best friends and computer science classmates at IIT Kharagpur and Columbia University.”
They started “working on Martian at the first Aptos Hackathon and it has since grown into the most popular wallet on Aptos and the Move ecosystem.”
Utkarsh, Co-founder of Martian, said:
“Move-based blockchains like Aptos will transform web3 innovation because of their higher composability and friendly developer experience. We created Martian to make it easy for users exploring Aptos. With this funding, we will continue to scale out our engineering team and achieve our ambitious product roadmaps for users.”
Sid, Co-founder of Martian, remarked:
“Security of our users’ funds is our biggest priority. Leveraging the key pair rotation in the Aptos system design, in the event of exposed private keys or key theft, our users can very soon obtain a new pair of keys to re-secure their wallets. Our wallet and smart contracts are also audited by Ottersec, a leading blockchain audit firm that has previously worked with Solana, LayerZero and Serum.”
Chris McCann, General Partner at Race Capital, commented:
“There are so many steps to take when discovering any new crypto ecosystem. What Utkarsh and Sid are building with Martian is the answer for Aptos and other Move-based chains. They act as the main gateway and provide the best user experience possible for anyone who wants to store, buy or sell their crypto assets or just collect different NFTs. Anyone exploring the Move ecosystem will need Martian, which is one of the many reasons we found this to be a critical investment. I am excited to partner with Utkarsh, Sid and the rest of the Martian team.”
As noted in the updat, Martian claims it is “the most popular wallet on Aptos and the Move ecosystem with close to 1 million installs to date.”
Martian is “designed with a focus on simplicity and security, allowing users to interact with decentralized applications (dApps) to buy, store, swap tokens and collect NFTs.”
Martian also “supports web3 native notifications which will significantly improve wallet user experience.”