Nestcoin, a development company housing modern finance project Onboard, has secured $1.9 million in a strategic funding round. Hashed Emergent, a Web2.5 fund for builders from emerging markets, led the round. Alter Global, Magic Fund, CMT Digital, and 4DX Ventures are among the existing investors that took part. Adaverse and Base Ecosystem Fund, two new investors, also participated.
It’s been almost a year since the implosion of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX caused Nestcoin, which raised $6.45 million in early 2022, to lose millions in assets (cash and stablecoins). Concurrently, Nestcoin slashed its headcount. The company had planned to create, invest in, and operate web3 products for customers in frontier markets across decentralized finance (DeFi), media, digital art, and gaming.
These unexpected events have required Nestcoin to reevaluate its objectives, CEO Yele Bademosi told TechCrunch. The two-year-old startup once served as a testing ground for new web/crypto products. Breach, a media platform; Brunch, a cryptocurrency-based group messaging tool; and Metaverse Magma (MVM), a gaming DAO that raised $3.2 million last September, all called the upstart home. But now Nestcoin is portraying itself as a development firm for Onboard. Meanwhile, MVM operates independently after being spun off.“During this transition period, we were trying to make the best decision when there were no good decisions,” Bademosi recounts. “It helped that we were open and transparent with our investors and community. We had to make tough decisions regarding cutting product lines. We had to transition from a venture studio and investment holding company to a single-product company.”Nestcoin plans to use the money to not only shore up its finances, but also to continue with its mission to provide individuals in frontier markets with equitable access to economic possibilities through the development of Onboard. The firm claims that Onboard would help Africans unable to access financial services and possibilities to grow their wealth owing to location constraints or a lack of faith in the continent’s financial systems.
In a nutshell, Onboard is a noncustodial wallet. It competes with global services like MetaMask and Trust Wallet and domestic services like Ejara. These self-custody wallets let users securely store and protect cryptocurrencies, digital assets, and tokens. In contrast, Binance and Coinbase are centralized exchanges that entrust asset safekeeping to a third party.
“We believe this is the future of modern finance. People will shift to not trusting some third party or middleman to hold their assets,” Bademosi said on the call. “We also have many innovative features in the coming weeks. Rewards, credit and being able to pay or receive payments quickly are a few as we use underlying blockchain technology.”
