Slingshot, a service that allows users to trade directly from their wallets while aggregating liquidity across a range of decentralized exchanges, has raised $15 million in a funding round led by Ribbit Capital.
The Series A also included investors such as K5 Global, Shrug Capital, The Chainsmokers, Jason Derulo, Guillaume Pousaz and Austin Rie. Electric Capital and Framework Ventures returned with follow-on investments. Slingshot raised a $3.1 million seed round in October 2020, bringing its total funding to $18.1 million.
Although it’s a nebulous concept, especially to those who are new to crypto, “Web 3″ will likely shift users further away from centralized exchanges, order books and matching engines.
Instead, firms like Slingshot will favor a kind of on-chain “liquidity search engine” that finds the most efficient path for any trade, resulting in better prices for users, according to the startup’s CEO, Clinton Bembry.
Read more: DEX Aggregator Rebrands to Slingshot After Raising $3.1M From Coinbase Ventures, Others
Calling Slingshot a “Web 3 trading platform” leans on a buzzword, Bembry admits, but it’s also the best way to concisely wrap up what the platform does.
“What it actually means is your crypto wallet is your account – everywhere,” said Bembry in an interview. “We can’t ban the user from our platform and lock them out of their investments, so it ends up being a much more empowering experience for the user. On top of that, you get access to a lot of opportunities that don’t exist on centralized exchanges.”
UX push
With its latest bump in funding, Slingshot aims to reach out to the crypto-curious who may have done some trading on a centralized exchange, Bembry said. An investor like Ribbit Capital has made a name for itself by investing in consumer fintech like Robinhood, Coinbase and Revolut, he added, and really understands how to build a mainstream brand in the finance space.
Of course, this will require the Web 3 user experience to become rather more simple and seamless to the average person.
“We obsess over our product and user interface,” said Bembry. “There’s still a lot of work to be done on user experience because I think a lot of the focus has been on protocols. Using some of the products in this space is still confusing, and even though I’ve been in crypto for five years, sometimes I give up myself.”
