Solvo moves from crypto investment app to Web3 gaming wallet

London-based custody crypto investment app Solvo announced that it is moving to Qubit, a new company aiming to make Web3 more accessible for gamers.

Qubit’s first product, the Qubit Wallet, is a smart contract wallet that allows gamers to seamlessly play Web3 games, self-manage their digital assets, and make in-game purchases. Qubit’s founders believe that the Qubit wallet is the missing piece to bring new gamers and game studios to Web3.

The player-friendly wallet comes with gaming and security-focused features, including an onboarding process, an “intuitive interface,” and the ability to sign up and recover your account via phone or email. It offers social login, account recovery, and easy self-management to make onboarding easier for Web3 games users. Users can request an invitation here.

The company’s founders, Ayelen Denovitzer and Shailendra Sason, both former executives at Revolut, founded Solvo to address the lack of a user-friendly, trusted investment platform.

They recognized that newcomers to Web3 and “OG” crypto gamers face complicated technical requirements, risk of losing their seed phrases/passwords, and a difficult onboarding process for new platforms. And now the founders are advancing Solvo’s technology to solve these problems by developing the Qubit wallet.

How it works

With the Qubit wallet, gamers can focus on playing their favorite games while having the highest level of security and control over their assets, Denovitzer said. The wallet will come with gaming and security-focused features, including a multi-signature onboarding process.

When users look at their wallets, they will see that these can be cross-game and cross-chain. You can see all of their game resources for each game, regardless of the blockchain. It’s a more intuitive way to manage assets compared to the options available today, Denovitzer said. Because it’s a smart contract wallet, you can approve multiple transactions with just one click.

“Web3 is more popular than ever, but managing your crypto wallet is still difficult for even the most experienced Web3 user,” said Denovitzer. “Gamers want to play games, but need easier onboarding and more user-friendly wallet management options. This gives players ownership of their assets, which they earn, and helps them fully participate in the blockchain gaming space, a market that is expected to reach $65 billion by 2027. Our user-friendly wallet allows players to focus on having fun. We believe the Qubit wallet is the missing piece to attract new players to Web3.”

Designed to be the default wallet for Web3 players, the Qubit wallet allows players to get a wallet and start playing with a single click. In August it will be available as a web browser extension (similar to MetaMask), soon for desktop and mobile devices.

The wallet leverages account abstraction to improve the overall experience for gamers by allowing smart contracts to act as wallets, eliminating the need (and hassle) of a seed phrase while also eliminating custody.

The Qubit wallet also has its own “gas station” where players can pay transaction fees in currencies of their choice (not just ETH). This is especially valuable for games that involve frequent microtransactions.

“Digital assets in games are nothing new, but the ability to fully control and even monetize them is the next revolution in gaming,” Sason said in a statement. “Ease of purchase and safe self-storage of these assets is critical. That’s what the Qubit wallet is designed for.”

Denovitzer is from Argentina. She studied economics and then worked in strategic management consulting. She moved to London to join Revolut and started cryptocurrency in early 2020. To delve deeper into cryptocurrency, she left with co-founder Sason and founded Solvo in January 2022. They raised $3.5 million in funding and Denovitzer said the company was in a good cash position.

Of course, the crypto market has been difficult, crashing from one crash to the next. Denovitzer said she is aware that there are many scams and security flaws in the crypto business and that they are still happening. That makes being responsible for users’ wallets a huge responsibility. Since crypto prices have been unstable, there is less activity now, but it is definitely a focus area for the company.

Because it made sense, the company decided to switch to Qubit.

“We started with custody solutions as an entry point for people who want to get into the crypto world,” said Denovitzer. “Due to technological developments, that was no longer true. So we started to focus on non-custodial solutions.”

Depot wallet services keep private keys for you and are responsible for securing your funds. However, with a non-custodial wallet, you have full control over your private keys. You are responsible for securing your assets yourself.

Non-custodial cryptocurrency wallets are based on smart contracts and are programmable and flexible. They eliminate the need for a seed phrase, a long string of characters that you use to recover a wallet if you ever need to. Seed phrases are problematic because they often get lost.

“It allows the player to simply use social credentials like Gmail or a phone number and get a non-custodial wallet. So it’s multi-SIG, which means when you create the key, you have three parts of it,” Denivitzer said.

It’s basically multi-factor authentication. To make a transaction, you need to gather two or three parameters. If one of them is compromised, you have an encrypted backup to regain access to your wallet. So if you forget your seed phrase, you can still access your funds.

The company has 10 employees, some of whom are based in London. The company works with Layer 2 blockchains such as Polygon, Arbitrum and Optimism. Qubit will continue to add chains. Denovitzer said the company is also currently in talks with gaming companies.

Qubit’s team consists of large Web2 and Web3 companies including Revolut, Amazon, Bitpanda and The Sandbox. Their combined fintech, encryption and web3 gaming experience makes Qubit one of the most qualified startups in the web3 gaming space.

The wallet uses groundbreaking account abstraction to improve the overall experience for gamers. Account abstraction allows smart contracts to act as wallets, eliminating the need (and hassle) of a seed phrase while remaining non-custodial. Due to the multi-sig approval process, a recovery mode can be triggered if the user loses access to the wallet, allowing the player to restore access while protecting the funds.

The Qubit wallet also has its own “gas station” where players can pay transaction fees in currencies of their choice (not just ETH). This is especially valuable for games that involve frequent microtransactions.

The wallet’s social login feature allows players to create a wallet using a phone number or Gmail – no advanced Web3 skills are required.

The Qubit wallet also allows players to self-manage their virtual assets. Players can buy, mint and sell virtual assets using cryptocurrencies (the Qubit wallet can contain all major cryptocurrencies and EVM-compatible tokens). All players can easily see and showcase their game resources in their wallet, regardless of the hosted blockchain or game source.

The Qubit wallet browser extension can be installed both on the Qubit website and via games integrated with the Qubit wallet via Qubit’s SDK. Qubit’s initial partnerships will be announced shortly.

Qubit is a member of the Blockchain Game Alliance (BGA) and is backed by CoinFund, Index Ventures and FJ Labs.

The next big thing that Qubit will develop is its software development kit, which will make it easier to integrate into games. Traditional wallets end up becoming competitors, and there are other competitors like Sequence and Metamask.