SEED: Biconomy - "Stripe for DeFi & Web 3.0"
August 2020 | Middleware
Quick Links
Pitch deck: https://docsend.com/view/nx56uwsec8afdihg
Website: www.biconomy.io
YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0CtA-Dw9yg-ENgav_VYjRw
Twitter: https://twitter.com/biconomy?lang=en
Interested in learning more about Biconomy? Schedule a meeting with the founders.
Project Description
Biconomy offers a — blockchain-agnostic — middleware solution that enables dApp developers to cover gas fees on transactions, aiming to reduce friction and improve user experience. The service aims to eliminate much of the technical knowledge currently needed to interact with dApps, making it far easier for developers to onboard new users in their products.
Biconomy’s SDK and API have also been designed to reduce “stuck” transactions and minimise gas fees through a variety of optimisation techniques — differentiating itself from the competition.
How does it work?
Biconomy accomplishes gasless transactions for users through meta transactions. Meta transactions are nearly identical to regular network transactions, however, gas fee payments are diverted away from the end-user and paid by a third-party. Biconomy implements meta transactions in one of two ways: native meta transactions or proxy contracts. Both are then processed via relayers. With meta transactions, users still use their signature to send and authenticate transactions. The difference is, once this happens, the transaction is now managed by the relayer who pays the gas and sends the transaction to the receiving address.
At its core, Biconomy provides a plug-and-play relayer infrastructure for dApp developers to help facilitate meta transactions at scale. By outsourcing metra transactions to Biconomy, dApp developers are proven to save a considerable amount of development time and costs needed for infrastructure build-out, day-to-day monitoring, and maintenance.
The offering also includes an easy-to-use front-end dashboard for developers to easily manage common administrative, monitoring, and troubleshooting tasks. To learn more about the product, visit here.
Key Metrics
3 founders
5 full-time employees
$210K paid-in capital to date (Angels & VC)
$20K in grant funding from Matic Network
$75K in grant funding from a well-known Layer 1 protocol (to be announced)
~6 months of cash runway available
13 dApps integrating/testing Biconomy
3 Live integrations: Curve.fi, Idle Finance, and DAOStack
50+ dApps in the pipeline (interest garnered through word-of-mouth)
Key Highlights
Curve.Fi — Biconomy’s technology is currently integrated with Curve’s sBTC/renBTC pool ($3.6M in Swaps processed by Biconomy and rising) as well as its native-BTC deposit function ($2M in deposits processed by Biconomy and rising). Curve has expressed deep satisfaction with the service provided by Biconomy and is planning to roll out the tech across all liquidity pools.
Idle Finance — Biconomy supports the entire Idle Finance application today. As an Idle Finance user, you will not need to pay gas fees thanks to Biconomy. A study has shown that following the integration of Biconomy, Idle Finance increased the number of users by 40%. $1.2M in deposits have been processed by Biconomy.
Reddit — Matic Network has proposed a layer-2 scaling solution catered to Reddit’s needs using Biconomy’s technology as a critical piece of infrastructure. Reddit is currently assessing its options. Taking into account Biconomy’s competitive advantage of optimising gas costs for dApp developers, the outcome of the proposal looks promising.
Stage of Maturity
Business Model Validation
A variety of revenue streams and price points have been hypothesised following close engagements with target user groups as well as thorough market research and price comparison of substitute offerings. However, the team is yet to decide on the direction. Three models are currently being explored:
Subscription-based model — $200-$300 per month
% Transaction fee — 0.05%-0.1% per transaction
Token Model — to be clarified
Product Development
The first iteration of the Biconomy API, SDK, and dashboard has been launched and has been proven to support its existing user base with little-to-no scalability or security constraints.
Tech roadmap objectives focus on back-end optimisation, expanding the feature-set available via the dashboard as well as further seeking ways to minimise gas fee costs.
Founding Team & Advisors
Current Presence
Fundraising Objectives
Biconomy is seeking to raise $1,000,000 in seed capital.
Investment already funded for this round: $115,000
Valuation (pre-money): Convertible
Existing VC backers include:
Outlier Ventures ($65K investment) — Outlier Ventures is a London-based start-up accelerator and investor. Biconomy was one of Outlier’s incubees.
MiH Ventures ($50K investment) — MiH is a reputable early-stage backer in India. The fund has built a reputation for investing in the more promising projects coming out of India. MiH will support Biconomy to grow its userbase and developer community in the Asian region (including China and Korea).