OneKey, which claims only its hardware wallet has a certified secure chip and 100% open-source code, raised a ~$20M Series A led by Dragonfly and Ribbit Capital
Yogita Khatri / The Block :
Context & Ripple Effects
OneKey's round lands at the start of a late-2022 funding window for private-key infrastructure: days earlier, MPCH Labs raised $40M to split and store keys across multiple users, marking self-custody as a venture category rather than a hobbyist niche.
The bet has since been validated by distribution at scale: Block opened preorders for its Bitkey hardware wallet in 95+ countries and by early 2024 had begun shipping the $150 device, turning consumer self-custody hardware into a contested market that OneKey now enters with fresh capital.
First-order effects
- OneKey gains roughly $20M from Dragonfly and Ribbit Capital to scale manufacturing and development of a wallet whose pitch rests on two verifiable claims: a certified secure chip and 100% open-source code.
- Ribbit Capital doubles down on consumer crypto rails, backing OneKey while also holding a minority stake in Walmart-backed fintech One — positioning the firm across both crypto self-custody and mainstream fintech.
Second-order effects
- Block's Bitkey — hardware plus mobile app plus recovery tools with Cash App and Coinbase integration — becomes the direct incumbent OneKey must out-differentiate, pushing competition toward auditability and supply-chain trust rather than price alone.
- Adjacent security vendors like Blockaid, which claims to have prevented over 1.3M Web3 attacks, gain a larger installed base of self-custody users whose fraud and phishing exposure grows as hardware wallets go mainstream.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, trust in self-custody hardware shifts from brand reputation to independently checkable properties — open-source firmware and certified silicon — making third-party audits and certification a competitive requirement rather than a marketing line.
- Venture capital consolidating around wallets, key-splitting, and transaction security points toward a layered self-custody stack where no single company owns the whole chain of custody, echoing how custody itself fragmented between hardware, software, and insurance providers.
The trend: Crypto self-custody is maturing into a funded, multi-layer infrastructure market where hardware wallets compete on verifiable security rather than convenience alone.