Binance-backed team pockets funding to get people into DApps

A pair of Singaporean crypto boffins has just pocketed US$1.5 million in seed funding for their new startup, Torus. That’s on top of a previously secret US$500,000 pre-seed investment, the founders tell Tech in Asia.

What Yong Zhen Yu and Leonard Tan – who collectively have eights years experience in the blockchain realm – have come up with is an easy login system for decentralized apps, also known as DApps. It allows people to sign up for these blockchain-based apps (which you won’t find in Apple’s or Google’s app stores) with their Facebook or Google logins, thereby simplifying what is currently a lengthy and cumbersome process.

L-R: Yong Zhen Yu and Leonard Tan / Photo credit: Binance Blockchain Week

Yong shows me an example on his laptop. He signs up for a decentralized game called Etheremon, which involves installing a Chrome extension. “It takes five to 12 minutes for a new user,” he says, as he clicks through a whole bunch of stuff.

The complexity stems from how these blockchain-based apps rely on users having a unique cryptographic key, which needs to be governed by one of many key management tools.

“It’s tedious,” he adds.

It’s a big part of the reason why everyone still talks about apps, apps, apps, while the whole concept of DApps remains shadowy and confusing.

Yong then demonstrates a mockup of the Etheremon site equipped with the Torus login system, and uses his Google ID to sign up for the game in less than a minute with just a few clicks. A Facebook ID could also be used.

In a blog post, Torus explains that it opted to tap into Facebook and Google’s third-party login system for its front end “because it is already widely used by many users.”

Simpler way

At present, people can only log into a DApp if they download and use a tool called MetaMask, according to Yong. “At this point, users might be confused about why they have to download this Chrome extension to interact with this site. Then, they have to get set up a new [MetaMask crypto] wallet. And then the password.”

By shortening and simplifying all this, Yong, 26, and the Torus team hope it can kickstart what might prove to be a DApps revolution.

Just as a DApp has a blockchain back end rather than the traditional database seen in conventional apps and websites, the Torus login system uses the blockchain ledger tech to share a user’s login key securely across a network. Neither the startup nor Facebook or Google have access to this crypto key.

“We need people to start using us as a login,” notes Yong. And by “people,” he means DApp developers.

He likens his login system to Stripe, the payment system that’s turned into a US$23 billion business. Stripe can only take off when sites actually implement it as an option, and only then can it gain traction as folks will use it as their preferred payment method.

Small start

Binance-backed