Particle Network is a Layer-1 blockchain that supports chain abstraction, seamlessly unifying users and liquidity in Web3. At its core is the universal account, which provides users with a single account and unified balance across all chains. These accounts are coordinated and protected by the Particle Network, ensuring a smooth experience across the entire Web3 ecosystem. By unifying all chains, Particle will enable billions of users to seamlessly join and interact with dApps on each chain, thereby serving as the foundation for mass adoption and playing an integral role in the unified open network.
As one of ArkStream’s strategic investment projects, Particle was first listed on Binance yesterday. Behind this is a story about four strategic upgrades.
2022: MPC WaaS starts
I met Pengyu in Singapore in 2022. At that time, Particle Network was providing Wallet-as-a-Service (WaaS) development tools with MPC and TSS as the core, competing with web3auth led by Multicoin and Magic Link valued at US$500 million.
We were deeply impressed by the team's closed-loop and iterative capabilities, and made a decisive investment at the end of 2022, and reached a consensus: after consolidating the MPC foundation, we must shift from wallets and developer tools to infra or protocols to capture more value.
From the end of 2022 to the middle of 2023, Particle, with its BD capabilities, has connected to hundreds of Dapps, basically covering most of the new-age Dapps in Asia, including GameFi (Era7, Ultiverse, FunPlus), DeFi (DODO, Izumi Finance), and Layer-2 (zkSync Era, Linea, opBNB). It took only half a year to establish the top three in the MPC WaaS field.
2023: Towards Intent-Centric
In 2023, Paradigm was released, emphasizing how Intent-centric can solve problems of user-chain interaction such as fragmentation between chains and complex user experience (UX). Particle Network relies on the accumulated advantages of the "supply side" (MPC/TSS) and launched its V2 product - Intent Fusion Protocol, officially moving into the Intent-Centric field, competing with Anoma, UniswapX and DappOS.
Particle's strategy at the time was to exchange brands and volumes with leading projects, including L2 Linea developed by Metamask and Biconomy, the leader in account abstraction. This year, Particle also began its international expansion. With the talented young man Ethan Francis joining DevRel, Particle gradually emerged in the English-speaking world. In 2023, we made additional investments again, making Particle one of the top three investment targets of ArkStream Fund II.
2024: Chain Abstraction Layer 1
On the eve of EthDenver in the spring of 2024, Pengyu and I made three consecutive phone calls one night to discuss the next round of financing. The two consensuses we reached were - enhancing C-end perception and positioning infrastructure.
A week later, Pengyu sent me a private message saying that we decided to pivot to "Layer 1 of Chain Abstraction". How decisive! When we met in a coffee shop in Denver a week later, the $150 million round of financing under this narrative had received a lot of interest and was quickly closed. Five months later, Binance also participated in the investment.
Chain abstraction means that you don’t need to know the details of operating the chain (such as switching networks, creating wallets for each network, cross-chain, Gas, etc.) to use the blockchain. Through unified accounts, asset management and cross-chain operations, the user experience can easily be comparable to using Binance - even the auntie in the vegetable market can buy any coin on the chain by only knowing the transaction token ticker or CA.
In this field, Particle has unparalleled advantages: not only has 3 years of AA/MPC technology accumulation, but also dozens of chains and hundreds of Dapps have been connected in the past two years. In this way, Particle has built a complete and convincing development path from a development tool to a protocol, and then to building a "full-chain Binance"-style chain abstraction infrastructure.
2025: UniversalX C-end breakthrough
C-end influence and protocol revenue are the last resort. With the rise of the meme craze, on-chain trading tools have ushered in a big explosion, and Particle Network's C-end products have also been released: UniversalX
The demand for on-chain transactions is mainly reflected in three aspects: security (preventing hacker attacks and asset loss), multi-chain transactions, and transaction functions (including speed, K-line, chain scanning monitoring, stop-profit and stop-loss, etc.). Currently, GMGN, Photon, and Banana Gun in the industry have made their own achievements in transaction functions, but the first two are often overlooked.
Unmanaged security
Two months ago, when Pengyu and I were hiking with MacRitchie, he joked, "In this dark forest of blockchain, I just want to do a business that allows me to sleep peacefully." At that time, dexx had just announced its compensation and Bybit had not been stolen, but hacker attacks had become the unspoken sword of Damocles for all exchanges and bots. UniversalX's non-custodial private key custody solution implemented through MPC is similar to multi-signature. Even if Particle or a personal computer is hacked, it will never lead to the loss of private keys.
One key multiple chains
At the end of last year, numerous "large MC memecoin" emerged on Solana; at the beginning of this year, BSC led by CZ made rapid progress, Base had frequent opportunities under the leadership of virtuals, and then Sonic led by AC and Bera's Proof of Liquidity also rose quietly. If each chain needs to create an account independently, store assets, and switch networks at any time, it will be like fomo's p-boy, and it is impossible to place a heavy bet. UniversalX's universal account (AA) allows you to open accounts on all chains with one click using Google or email, and its universal liquidity is like a super-intelligent "trading robot", which automatically aggregates the liquidity of each chain and completes cross-chain transactions in the background, usually within 3 seconds.
I first deposited 10,000 US dollars in UniversalX, and first bought 15m of $TST and 200m of $Shell, then went to sonic to buy $shadow, and lost money on the solana chain's $libra in the middle. Recently, I bought 500k of $quq and 3m of $bnbcard.
UniversalX has achieved a trading volume of over 400 million US dollars, a total of 1.5 million transactions, and 30,000 registered users in just over 2 months since its launch. At this rate, it will only take 3 months to catch up with GMGN. In the future, UniversalX will continue to pursue short-board trading functions, including limit orders, stop-profit and stop-loss, monitoring and copying, and trading speed, so as to establish a real technical barrier in the on-chain trading track.
Win in the business closed loop
The core of the success of the Particle team over the past four years lies in their excellent business closed-loop capabilities. As Pengyu summarized, the team takes the core needs of users as the starting point, organically splices technology, products, talents, competitive strategies and business models like building blocks, and creates a self-sufficient and mutually reinforcing ecosystem. Since the launch of Universal, this closed-loop effect has been evident.
Particle's CTO Peter Pan and Pengyu are both Tsinghua alumni. They worked together as co-founders in their previous company and built a gaming platform with tens of millions of users. In addition to his outstanding technical ability, Pantao also has a "court vision" similar to Jokic, and has a keen insight into the industry's cutting-edge and details.
In executing the closed-loop business strategy, the Particle team is not only passionate, but also strives for perfection. Taking the KOL strategy as an example, our post-investment director Chandler told me that Particle is the most rigorous in selecting KOLs among our many portfolios - screening one by one from a list of hundreds of KOLs and accurately matching them.
The first Binance listing is just the beginning
2024 is an important watershed year for crypto. The valuation system of the first cycle of Web3 (attention economy, narrative and expectation management) has come to an end, and the leading companies in the second cycle must be pragmatic and support their valuations with products, revenue and business models.
UniversalX is positioned as "on-chain full-chain Binance", ido, lending, future trading, stable coin interest, all the functions of Binance are redone on-chain full-chain defi version. $Parti, as the Gas+lp token of Layer1, will be able to move out of the token economics of protocol income+utility in the future. The first Binance is just the beginning, and the team's ambition is far more than that: the chain abstraction carries the blue ocean market of daily active users on the chain from 300,000 to 3 million, let party be joined.
The emergence of the HTTP protocol in the 1990s abstracted cumbersome command line operations such as FTP and Telnet into a simple address. You can easily access the Internet by simply entering http://google.com . This innovation greatly lowered the threshold for ordinary users and made the Internet rapidly popular - from only a few million users in the 1990s to billions of users worldwide today.
Quoting CZ's recent tweet, "Ten years of technology trends are easier to predict than tomorrow's prices. Most people can't see the obvious future and lack patience."
ArkStream Capital is a crypto fund founded by native cryptocurrency investors. It includes primary market and liquidity strategies, invests in web3 native and cutting-edge innovations, and is committed to promoting the growth of web3 founders and unicorns. The ArkStream Capital team has entered the cryptocurrency field since 2015 and comes from universities and companies such as MIT, Stanford, UBS, Accenture, Tencent, and Google. The investment portfolio includes more than 100 blockchain companies, including Aave, Sei, Manta, Flow, Fhenix, Merlin, Avail, Space and Time, etc.
Website: https://arkstream.capital/
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