Led by Race Capital with Participation from Jump Capital, FTX Ventures, Superscrypt, and Aptos
– Martian is a simple and secure wallet to interact with Aptos blockchain –
SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 27, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Martian, a web3 wallet, today 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 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.
“Move-based blockchains like Aptos will transform web3 innovation because of their higher composability and friendly developer experience,” said Utkarsh, Co-founder of Martian. “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.”
“Security of our users’ funds is our biggest priority,” said Sid, Co-founder of Martian. “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.”
“There are so many steps to take when discovering any new crypto ecosystem,” said Chris McCann, General Partner at Race Capital. “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.”
“We are excited to work with Utkarsh and Sid as we believe Martian will play a key role in onboarding users into the Move ecosystem starting with Aptos,” said Saurabh Sharma, Head of Investments at Jump Crypto.
“Martian offers an intuitive and safe onboarding experience to the Move ecosystem and is complementary to our investments in Aptos and Sui,” said Ramnik Arora, partner at FTX Ventures. “We are thrilled to be working with Utkarsh, Sid and the whole team.”
About Martian
Martian 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. For more information, please visit: https://martianwallet.xyz and follow Martian on Twitter.
About Race Capital
Race Capital is an early-stage venture fund focused on investing in exceptional founders who are building market-transforming companies in the data, enterprise, infrastructure, and fintech sectors. Our team are seed investors in Databricks, Solana, FTX, Agora.io, Zeet, and many other great companies. For more information, visit https://race.capital/.
How Martian Works
