Ex-Revolut Employees Raise $2.3 Million For A New ‘Blockchain Bank’
Two ex-Revolut employees have raised $2.3 million in pre-seed funding, led by Consensys founder Joe Lubin’s Ethereal Ventures to build Bleap, a bank account on the blockchain.
Joao Alves and Guilherme Gomes led the funding round, which also included investments from Maven11, Alliance DAO, Robot Ventures, and Credibly Neutral.
A number of angel investors also participated in the pre-seed funding round. These included key executives from Revolut, Phantom Wallet, OKX, EigenLayer and Consensys. The capital raised brings the company to a $10 million post-raise valuation.
🔥 @BleapApp raises $2.3M in a Pre-Seed funding round
#Bleap secures $2.3M in a Pre-Seed funding round led by @etherealvc, with participation from @Maven11Capital, @AllianceDAO, @RobotVentures and @CrediblyNeutral. Bleap will utilize secured funds to help develop the… pic.twitter.com/qFhd9yHSyv— PHOENIX – Crypto News & Analytics (@pnxgrp) November 28, 2024
Bleap Will Offer A Mastercard Debit Card, Allowing Spending Of Crypto In The Real World
Alves and Gomes have stated that the funding will be put toward the development of their self-custodial payments app. The app will enable customers to spend stablecoins in the real world via a linked Mastercard debit card. The duo have promised no conversion or exchange fees and up to 2% cashback on purchases.
The former Revolut employees are firm believers that blockchain technology is the backbone for the future of finance. The pair begn dreaming up Bleap over a year ago, in July 2023. “We wanted an app that combines blockchain’s power with the best of banking,” Alves, previously in charge of Revolut’s card program, said. “A banking app that would be radically better than anything else available today.”
Gomes, who led numerous product teams while at Revolut added to Alves’ comments, stating: “Blockchain technology lets us build experiences that traditional finance rails simply can’t.”
The blockchain bank also supports multi-currency accounts with savings rates of five times that of traditional banks, the team claimed, enabled by stablecoins and decentralized finance. Users will be able to transfer funds globally, instantly and minus fees.
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How Does The ‘Blockchain Bank’ Work?
Thrilled to be working with the stellar team at @BleapApp!
Bleap enables you to connect your Web3 wallet to their pre-paid debit card with a seamless mobile-first neobank experience. Check out 24/7 access to:
– Spending stablecoins with cashback
– On and off ramping easily… https://t.co/A1Je62quQD— Min Teo (@_MinTeo) November 28, 2024
Bleap is built on the Ethereum Layer-2 network Arbitrum, enabling fast and gasless transactions. The app replaces traditional seed phrases with cloud storage and social logins via PortalHQ’s Multi-Party Computation technology.
Alves says that when a user signs a transaction, their device uses their key share while the app fetches a backup share from PortalHQ. To securely back up the user’s key share, the app generates and encrypts it with a password derived using AES and SHA256. It then stores the share on Bleap’s server while emailing the password to the user and saving it in their cloud.
This eliminates the need for a seed phrase, as only the user has access to the password. By doing so, it keeps the seed encrypted and secure. If the user loses their phone, they can recover their account by authenticating with 2FA and decrypting their share using the backed-up password, though they can export their full key at any time for offline storage.
Bleap’s smart wallet supports the USDC, USDT, USDA and EURA stablecoins. It is only deployed on Arbitrum, with no plans to deploy on other networks at present, Alves confirmed.
However, Bleap’s on and off-ramp and bridging services currently support Arbitrum, Ethereum, Polygon, BNB, Solana and Bitcoin, he said. This also enables users to buy various cryptocurrencies on the supported networks and receive them directly into their own external non-custodial wallet, according to the Bleap website.
BONUS: Viral Meme Coin Cat Slap (SLAP) Just Burned 10 Million Tokens While Teasing HUGE Announcements
I’m gunning for the crown. $SLAP to a billy 😺 pic.twitter.com/n7yQYRZGH9
— CatSlap (@CatSlapToken) November 27, 2024
SLAP launched on the Ethereum network less than a week ago, stealth-launching and quickly going viral. It spiked from a launch market cap of under $1 million to $56 million in less than 48 hours.
In its short life span, Cat Slap has amassed a large and cultish community of over 7,500 holders. This insane growth can be attributed to its catchy meme and the token’s fair launch.
Investors predictably began taking profits at the top, which has seen SLAP retrace just below $20 million market cap level. However, as whales began profiting, smaller investors waiting for the perfect entry began buying. This distribution level from a small number of whales into many lower net-worth investors is extremely bullish in the early stages of new projects.
The team behind Cat Slap just burned 10 million SLAP tokens after a tap-to-earn slapping cat game reached 10 million taps. Now, the team is teasing a huge upcoming announcement that many believe will be related to GameFi.
As the market continues to heat up, a bullish announcement from the team could easily lead to a 10x for SLAP in the short term, with the ultimate potential to become the next billion-dollar meme coin!
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