chain-abstraction
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Clinton Bembry’s Second Exit Was Built on Making Crypto Feel Boring
First Astro Wallet sold to Coinbase. Then Slingshot sold to Magic Eden. Across both companies, Clinton Bembry has pursued the same unfashionable idea: crypto works better when users do not have to think about crypto.
Particle Network
Particle Network is a Singapore-based Web3 infrastructure company building chain abstraction technology so users can interact with any decentralized application on any blockchain from a single account and balance - no bridging or network switching required. Founded in 2022 as a wallet-abstraction provider, it evolved into a modular Layer-1 blockchain that coordinates transactions across chains through its flagship Universal Accounts, Universal Liquidity and Universal Gas products. Its stack has been integrated by hundreds of dApps, helped secure billions in user assets, and reached millions of users; its native PARTI token launched in March 2025.
Burnt
Burnt is a New York-based Web3 company and the core team behind XION, a Layer 1 blockchain built to make crypto invisible to everyday users. Founded by Anthony Anzalone - better known as the artist-provocateur 'Burnt Banksy' - the company uses 'generalized abstraction' to remove wallets, private keys and gas fees so that people can sign in with an email or a face scan and pay in USDC. Burnt has raised more than $36M from investors including Animoca Brands, Circle Ventures and Multicoin, and pitches XION as consumer-grade infrastructure for brands like Uber, BMW and others. In 2026 the XION network rebranded to Verona.
Slingshot
Slingshot is a San Francisco-based crypto trading app that lets people buy, sell, and swap hundreds of thousands of tokens across multiple blockchains from a single USDC balance - hiding the usual friction of wallets, bridges, and gas fees behind a clean consumer interface. Founded in 2020 by Coinbase alum Clinton Bembry, it raised roughly $18M through a Ribbit Capital-led Series A and was acquired by NFT marketplace Magic Eden in April 2025.
Illia Polosukhin
Illia Polosukhin is a Ukrainian-American computer scientist and entrepreneur who co-authored 'Attention Is All You Need' (2017), the paper that introduced the Transformer architecture powering virtually every modern AI system, and co-founded NEAR Protocol, a layer-1 blockchain that raised $500M+ and peaked at a $20B+ market cap. Now CEO of the NEAR Foundation, he is building 'User-Owned AI' - privacy-preserving, decentralized AI infrastructure that puts users in control of their data and models rather than corporations.