Formatic – a rising smart wallet – has just announced a rebrand to Magic in tandem with the closing of a $4M seed round.
We are thrilled to announce our rebranding to Magic ???>? (@magic_labs) and our 4m Series Seed funding!
Time to end the era of passwords and unlock a more secure and authentic Internet ??
Read more ??https://t.co/LIzhknsjFV
— Fortmatic (@fortmatic) May 29, 2020
With a strong focus on user onboarding and technical abstraction, the new rebrand comes with a sleek user experience using password logins and email authentication to lower the barriers to entry for crypto-wallets.
Magic also announced a $4M seed round from leading funds like Placeholder, Lightspeed, and Naval Ravikant to “end the era of passwords and take down the identity silos owned and exploited by tech oligarchs.”
In the blog post, Magic runs through the history of data silos and potential for cryptonetworks, painting a picture of Open Platforms and how Magic is aiding in making Public Key Infrastructure more digestible.
What’s to Know?
Using the Magic SDK, developers can integrate a simple email-based login and password experience customary to legacy solutions like Instagram, Amazon and Spotify.
“Developers and end-users can gain all of the benefits of PKI without any of the risks or pains associated with key management. Magic handles all of that through a combination of security from the next paradigm and the simplest, most familiar authentication experience possible.”
However, unlike the logins of the past, identities are not stored by Magic. This is accomplished by private keys being managed but never exposed to Magic or developers’ applications, significantly reducing the risk of compromise as we recently saw with the BlockFi data breach.
“Magic Authentication” https://t.co/tK7qZPiLCX by @jmonegro pic.twitter.com/ybKFnaTBdD
— Placeholder (@placeholdervc) May 29, 2020
To help make Magic as widely as accessible as possible, the company is partnering with a number of novel programs including Dapper Labs – the company behind CryptoKitties to integrate the Magic flow into sectors like gaming.
More recently, Magic was showcased during the Zora $TAPE drop, with users utilizing the onboarding flow to login and manage their purchase directly through a Magic-powered dashboard.
Smart Wallet Movement
With Magic coming out of stealth mode, we’re seeing strong signals that that race for consumer adoption is getting ever more competitive as it relates to wallets.
Best exemplified by Argent and their recent V1 upgrade, mobile and dashboard wallets alike are seeing significant overhauls to aide in usability for nontechnical users.
To this end, Magic is fighting hard for partnerships, listing a suite of notable DeFi projects like Uniswap, Set Protocol, Aave and PoolTogether which have all integrated supported for the new smart wallet to date.
In the meantime, we’ll be keeping a close eye on whether or not DeFi power users actually prefer something like Magic to sector-leaders like MetaMask.
To stay up with Magic and their new smart wallet movement, follow them on Twitter.
Cooper is the Editor of DeFi Rate. He is an ambassador of Set Protocol and an active contributor to MetaCartel where he seeks to find emerging consumer-facing applications that propel the Ethereum ecosystem. He often works with projects as the Director of Fitzner Blockchain Consulting where he coauthors the weekly publication Token Tuesdays.
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