Solvo turns from crypto investment app to Web3 gaming wallet

London-based crypto investment app Solvo has announced that it is transitioning to Qubit, a new venture aimed at making Web3 more accessible to gamers.

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

The gamer-friendly wallet comes with gaming and security-focused features, including an onboarding process, an “intuitive user interface,” and the ability to sign in and recover your account using phone or email. It offers a social login, account recovery and easy self-storage to help web3 games onboard users. Users can request an invite here.

Company founders Ayelen Denovitzer and Shailendra Sason, both former executives at Revolut, founded Solvo to address the lack of an easy-to-use, reliable investment platform.

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

How it works

The Qubit wallet allows gamers to focus on playing their favorite games while still having the highest level of security and control over their assets, Denovitzer said. The wallet comes with gaming and security focused features including a multi-sig onboarding process.

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

“Web3 is more famous 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 friendlier wallet management options. This gives gamers the ownership they earn over their assets and helps them participate fully in the blockchain gaming space, a market expected to reach $65 billion by 2027. Our user-friendly wallet allows the gamers to focus on having fun. We believe the qubit wallet is the missing piece to bring new gamers to Web3.”

Designed to be the default wallet of Web3 gamers, 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) with desktop and mobile coming soon.

The wallet uses account abstraction to improve the overall experience for gamers, allowing smart contracts to function as wallets, eliminating the need (and hassle) of seed phrase while remaining non-custodial.

The Qubit wallet also has its own “gas station” that gamers can use to pay transaction fees in the currency of their choice (not just ETH). This is especially valuable for games that feature frequent microtransactions.

“Digital assets in games are nothing new, but the ability to fully control them and even monetize them is the next revolution in gaming,” Sason said in a statement. “Easy acquisition and secure self-storage of these assets is critical. This is what the qubit wallet is designed for.”

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

Of course, the crypto market was difficult, going from one crash to the next. Denovitzer said she realizes that there are many scams and security breaches in the crypto business, and they are still happening. That makes it a big responsibility to be in charge of a wallet for users. There is less activity now that crypto prices are unstable, but it is certainly a focus for the company.

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

“We started with custodial solutions as an entry point for people looking to get into crypto,” Denovitzer said. “Due to technological developments, that was no longer the case. So we started focusing on non-custodial solutions.”

Custodial wallet services hold private keys for you and are responsible for securing your funds. But a non-custodial wallet gives you complete control over your private keys. You are responsible for securing your equity.

Non-custodial cryptocurrency wallets are based on smart contracts and they are programmable and flexible. They eliminate the need for a seed phrase, a long string of characters you use to recover a wallet should you ever need it. Seed phrases are tricky because people often lose them.

“It allows the gamer to just use social credentials, like Gmail or a phone number, and get a non-custodial wallet. So it has multi-SIG, which means when the key is created, you have three parts of it,” Denivitzer said.

It is actually multi-factor authentication. You need to put together two or three of the parameters to execute trades. If any of them are compromised, you have an encrypted backup to regain access to your wallet. So if you forget your seed phrase, you can still recover access to your funds.

The company has 10 people, some of them in London. The company works with Layer 2 blockchains such as Polygon, Arbitrum and Optimism. Qubit continues to add chains. Denovitzer said the company is now talking to game companies as well.

Qubit’s team comes from major Web2 and Web3 companies, including Revolut, Amazon, Bitpanda, and The Sandbox. Their combined experience in fintech, encryption and web3 gaming positions Qubit as one of the most qualified startups building for web3 gaming.

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

The Qubit wallet also has its own “gas station” that gamers can use to pay transaction fees in the currency of their choice (not just ETH). This is especially valuable for games that feature frequent microtransactions.

The wallet’s social login feature allows gamers to create a wallet by using a phone number or Gmail – no advanced web3 knowledge is required.

The Qubit wallet also allows gamers to self-serve their virtual assets. Gamers can buy, store and sell virtual assets with cryptocurrencies (the Qubit wallet can hold all major cryptocurrencies and EVM-compatible tokens). All gamers can easily see and use their game assets in their wallet, regardless of the hosted blockchain or game source.

The Qubit wallet browser extension will be available for installation from both the Qubit website and through games integrated with the qubit wallet through the Qubit SDK. Qubit’s first partnerships will be announced soon.

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

The next big thing Qubit will make is the software development kit, which will make it easier to integrate into games. Traditional wallets will become competition and there are other competitors such as Sequence and Metamask.