Singapore-based Account Labs bags $7.7m to reduce Ethereum gas fees

Account Labs CEO Lixin Liu / Photo credit: Account Labs

In the past week, Ethereum’s average gas fees –  which refer to the costs users pay when executing transactions or smart contracts on the network – hit an all-time low of 8.8 gwei. This surpasses the prior record of 8.9 gwei from January 2020, according to data from Etherscan.

Singapore-based Web3 platform Account Labs, however, thinks that the number can go even lower. The company has raised US$7.7 million in a bid to reduce gas fees and aid in the mass adoption of crypto.

It also launched its UniPass wallet app on the Polygon network, which lets users create a self-custody Web3 wallet and make gasless transactions through account abstraction.

Funding details

• Funding amount: US$7.7 million
• Lead investors: Amber Group, MixMarvel DAO Ventures, Qiming Ventures
• Stage: Bridge
• Source

Account abstraction allows developers to program more functionality directly into wallets. One of them is to let users pay in stablecoins like USDC or USDT, reducing costs to as low as US$0.1 or US$0.02.

“There are no middlemen taking extra fees or slowing down the process, as you get in Web2 transactions. This significantly improves the ease of executing instant cross-border transactions and offers a major upgrade for gig workers in emerging markets,” Account Labs CEO Lixin Liu said in a statement.

Account Labs was formed in 2023 from the merger of hardware wallet developer Keystone and software wallet maker UniPass.

The fresh funds will be used to drive the platform’s peer-to-peer stablecoin transfers, which is offered by the UniPass wallet app. The funding will also help with the go-to-market plans for the wallet, starting with the Philippines.

See also: How crypto is killing seed phrases to usher in mass adoption

The UniPass wallet doesn’t require 12-word seed phrases that Web3 wallets often require for log-in. Instead, users can use just their Google account.

Additionally, users can top up their UniPass wallet with Mastercard or Visa cards as well as Apple Pay. They can then send stablecoins directly to other Web3 wallets.

More details