On June 11, 2025, OneBalance, a developer platform co-founded by veterans from Flashbots and Coinbase, closed a $20 million Series A funding round. The round was led by cyber•Fund and Blockchain Capital, with participation from Bybit’s Mirana Ventures and L2IV.
The new financing follows a $5 million angel and community round in June 2024, bringing total funds raised to $25 million so far. OneBalance declined to disclose company valuation, describing the fund-raise as a marker of investor confidence in its mission to solve crypto’s fragmented user experience through its novel Resource Locks technology.
Founders and genesis: From MEV transparency to chain abstraction
OneBalance’s founding team brings together deep expertise in blockchain infrastructure:
Stephane Gosselin (CEO): Former Flashbots co-founder and architect, and Frontier Research lead. OneBalance chooses him to spearhead their innovation in chain abstraction, interoperability, and Resource Locks.
Daniel Worsley (COO): Previously Flashbots’ operations lead co-founder. Focused on combining technical architecture with economic models for cross-chain flows.
Ankit Chiplunkar (CTO): Former Coinbase smart contract engineer and PhD in Aerospace Engineering. He leads the technical vision, bridging complex blockchain mechanisms with user-friendly tools.
In our email interview, the team revealed that their motivation stems from first‑hand challenges during MEV infrastructure development: “gas fees, bridging delays, and chain fragmentation” routinely caused user dropoffs in transactions. Their experience at Flashbots provided insight into solvers, the protocol-level actors now harnessed through OneBalance’s Resource Locks to facilitate seamless cross-chain experiences.
What are resource locks? Streamlining UX with parallel execution
Traditional cross-chain transactions often require sequential steps: bridging, waiting for confirmations, obtaining gas tokens, and tracking multiple network states. This cumbersome flow leads to slow performance, increased failure rates, and frustrated users.
OneBalance’s Resource Locks, a patented coordination mechanism, streamlines this process:
Intent initiation – Users indicate their desired action (e.g., swapping USDC on Base to Bitcoin).
Solver auction – Solvers bid to execute this transaction.
Asset locking – User’s asset is locked via a cryptographic Credible Commitment.
Parallel execution – Solver executes the destination chain transaction promptly.
Verification – A receipt arrives via a decentralized verification network like SEDA.
Final unlocking – Upon satisfactory confirmation, locked funds are released or forwarded.
This design bypasses traditional on‑chain confirmation bottlenecks, improving speed by approximately 40%, reducing gas costs, and increasing success rates. Furthermore, verifiable commitments and open timeout policies protect users from double-spend and chain reorganizations. By enabling these actions via a single API for any token and any chain, OneBalance positions itself to simplify wallet and app development significantly.
The OneBalance toolkit: Developer-first and chain-agnostic
OneBalance’s product roll-out centers on its Toolkit, currently in closed beta and available to fintech firms, wallets, and DeFi platforms. A major highlight: native, instant BTC-to-EVM swaps, with Solana and other networks launching imminently. Partners like DSX, Vooi, Spritz Finance, Nuvolari, Privy, Turnkey, and Kii are integrating the Toolkit, some already live.
This strategy places OneBalance as a middleware layer, enabling developers to abstract away cross-chain complexity while maintaining speed, security, and reliability.
Funding journey and investor perspective
The Series A was co-led by:
Cyber fund, whose co-founder Vasiliy Shapovalov emphasized that Fragmented UX and liquidity across chains pose a major obstacle for crypto adoption. He stated: “OneBalance makes wallets and apps ‘just work’—exactly what mainstream users expect and are ready to use.”
Blockchain Capital, where Spencer Bogart described OneBalance as uniquely capable of closing the infrastructure gap between current systems and future, user-friendly onchain experiences.
The round also included Bybit’s Mirana and L2IV, and follows the 2024 angel round, which featured the likes of Consensys, Wintermute, cobie, WalletConnect, Lido, Revolut, and more. These early backers illustrated the foundational support for chain abstraction technologies.
Competitive landscape: Where OneBalance stands
OneBalance operates in a growing market of cross-chain solutions, amid competitors such as Particle, Socket, and Rhinestone. Rather than bridges or relayers, OneBalance claims a distinct technical edge thanks to Resource Locks:
Parallel execution and asset locking reduce latency and cancellation issues.
Verification layers add robust safety.
Simple integration: One API provides comprehensive cross-chain access.
That said, other players may offer similar features in various capacities, and challenges could arise in scaling, governance complexity, or market adoption as interoperability technologies align.
Roadmap and vision: Building for scale and user-friendly blockchain
In the next 3–5 years, OneBalance aims to:
Expand chain coverage, with Solana launching in Q3 2025 and more soon after.
Grow developer base, via SDK releases and integrations with wallet-as-a-service firms like Privy and Turnkey.
Enter mainstream fintech, making cross-chain operations invisible to end-users and enabling crypto utility in traditional financial services.
The founders framed their vision as a step toward mainstream adoption, where users expect Web2 levels of UX—without needing to understand blockchain mechanics.
Humanizing the technology: Benefits and remaining questions
The OneBalance team emphasizes that solving cross‑chain UX is about humans, not just ledgers. Developers and users often give up when faced with loading bridges, switching networks, or handling gas tokens. By abstracting away these complexities, OneBalance is hoping to reduce abandonment and friction.
Yet some questions remain:
Governance and decentralization: Who controls Solver networks? What stops manipulation or centralization?
Security assumptions: Reliance on third-party verifiers like SEDA introduces new layers of trust and potential vulnerabilities.
Economic model: How are Solver fees decided, and what is the effect on user costs at scale?
In our interview, Stephane confirmed internal testing has achieved “100% completion rates” in simulations, but broader, real-world audits and stress testing will further determine resilience.
Critical analysis: Strengths vs. risks
Strengths
Technical credibility: Founders’ past with Flashbots and Coinbase gives deep on-chain experience.
Innovation: Resource Locks represent a technically unique approach to UX challenges.
Strategic partners: Backing from high-profile VC and industry players lends credibility to execution and ecosystem adoption.
Risks
Technical complexity: Coordination between lock, solve, verify, and release must be flawless to maintain trust.
Adoption hurdle: Convincing developers and institutions to integrate may require evangelism and real-world performance verification.
Regulatory uncertainty: As cross-chain financial operations scale, regulators may impose new compliance standards or limits.
Are they creating valuable innovation with real-world work ahead
OneBalance’s $20 million Series A reflects strong investor belief in its chain-abstraction vision, bolstered by proven founders and a functioning beta with live users. Its Resource Locks model marks an inventive leap in crypto UX, potentially transforming cross-chain interaction.
However, the platform’s ultimate impact hinges on real-world execution—network robustness, economic viability, decentralization, and mainstream uptake. The technology must operate seamlessly to win developer and user trust. And regulatory frameworks may yet shape its future.
In summary, OneBalance has delivered a compelling technical foundation and convincing early signals. The next phases—expanding chain support, solidifying developer integrations, and proving resilience at scale—will determine if it bridges the UX gap for crypto or remains an innovative but niche infrastructure player.
