YC W23  |  New York, NY  |  B2B Infrastructure

The wallet
you never
see coming.

ZeroDev made crypto wallets invisible. No seed phrases. No gas confusion. Just the product - powered by the most deployed modular smart account on Ethereum.

Account Abstraction ERC-4337 Smart Wallets Web3 Infrastructure
5M+ Smart Accounts
40M+ Transactions
130+ EVM Chains
100+ Apps Built
Derek Chiang, Founder and CEO of ZeroDev
Derek Chiang
Founder & CEO, ZeroDev
Devcon SEA
The Story

Crypto's worst UX problem, quietly solved.

There is a moment every developer building a crypto product dreads. The user signs up, they click to mint or swap or stake, and then the seed phrase screen appears. Twelve words. The user closes the tab. That's not a crypto problem - it's a wallet problem. ZeroDev decided the wallet had to change.

Founded in 2022 by Derek Chiang, ZeroDev set out to build the plumbing that makes this friction disappear. The core idea was straightforward but technically demanding: replace traditional crypto wallets - where users hold private keys and pray they never lose them - with programmable smart accounts that behave like normal software. Log in with Google. Pay no gas. Approve nothing. Just use the app.

The vehicle for this was Kernel, a minimal, modular smart contract account built on ERC-4337 - the account abstraction standard that Chiang himself helped write. Kernel became the first implementation of ERC-7579, the modular smart account standard. Developers could add social login, gasless transactions, session keys, biometric authentication, or cross-chain support without redeploying the wallet. Swap plugins like Lego bricks.

"Crypto UX has been holding the whole industry back. The question isn't whether to fix it - it's how fast you can make the fix invisible."
Derek Chiang, Founder & CEO - ZeroDev

By August 2025, ZeroDev had powered more than 5 million smart accounts and 40 million transactions across 130+ EVM-compatible chains. With just five people on the team, the ratio worked out to roughly 1 million wallets per employee. Offchain Labs - the company behind Arbitrum - took notice. ZeroDev was acquired in August 2025, with the full team joining to advance consumer-facing blockchain tooling at scale.

Company at a Glance
Founded 2022
HQ New York, NY
Batch Y Combinator W23
Founder Derek Chiang
Investors YC, a16z, 6th Man, Orange DAO
Team Size 5 (at acquisition)
Acquired by Offchain Labs (Arbitrum)
Acquisition Date August 2025
Core Standard ERC-4337 / ERC-7579
5M+
Smart Accounts
Powered
40M+
Onchain
Transactions
130+
EVM Chains
Supported
100+
Applications
Built on Kernel
The Builder
Derek Chiang, Founder and CEO of ZeroDev

Derek Chiang - Founder & CEO

Derek Chiang
Founder & CEO, ZeroDev

Derek Chiang is not the kind of person who builds products about problems he read about in a blog post. Before ZeroDev, he spent years at the infrastructure layer of both traditional software and crypto - writing distributed systems at HashiCorp, handling data versioning at Pachyderm, and building at the L1 level at DFINITY, the Internet Computer blockchain.

He also ran Eternal, an NFT platform for content creators, which gave him a front-row seat to just how badly crypto wallets were failing regular users. Watching creators fumble with MetaMask was not academic research. It was the founding thesis for ZeroDev.

What puts Chiang in a rare category is his direct contribution to the ERC-4337 specification itself - the Ethereum standard that makes account abstraction possible at scale. He didn't just use the standard; he helped shape it. Then he built Kernel on top of it, the first modular implementation of ERC-7579, and made it open source. The crypto infrastructure community noticed: by the time ZeroDev was acquired, Kernel was the most widely deployed AA smart account on Ethereum.

Early Engineer at HashiCorp (infrastructure) and Pachyderm (data versioning)
L1 L1 engineer at DFINITY - the Internet Computer blockchain project
NFTs CTO of Eternal, an NFT platform for content creators
2022 Founded ZeroDev. Contributed to ERC-4337 spec. Built Kernel.
2023 Y Combinator W23. Backed by a16z, 6th Man Ventures, Orange DAO.
2025 ZeroDev acquired by Offchain Labs. Team joins Arbitrum's parent company.
How It Works

From seed phrases to social login - in four steps.

1
User signs in
Via Google, Apple, passkey, email, or biometrics. No seed phrase. No extension. No wallet download required.
2
Kernel deploys
A Kernel smart account is created onchain for that user. The developer controls the UX entirely.
3
Gas is covered
The paymaster sponsors transaction fees. Users never need to hold ETH to interact with the application.
4
It just works
Batch transactions, session keys, cross-chain actions - the full crypto UX stack, invisible to the end user.
The Stack

Everything a developer needs to ship a great wallet.

●
Kernel Smart Account
The first modular, extensible smart contract account. Implements ERC-7579. Plug-and-play validators, executors, and hooks without redeploying the contract.
△
Bundler
Infrastructure for processing ERC-4337 user operations at scale across 130+ EVM-compatible chains. The engine that submits smart account transactions onchain.
◆
Paymaster
Gas sponsorship infrastructure. Developers pay transaction fees on behalf of users, enabling fully gasless product experiences without any user friction.
■
ZeroDev SDK
TypeScript/JavaScript SDK for rapid integration. Social login, passkeys, session keys, paymasters, and transaction batching - all accessible via clean API calls.
☀
EIP-7702 Toolkit
Upgrade existing Ethereum wallets (EOAs) to smart accounts using the Pectra upgrade standard. No address change. Full backward compatibility.
☷
Orchestra
Multi-chain contract deployment tool. Deploy the same smart contract across many chains simultaneously, without the copy-paste-and-pray workflow.
The Technical Edge

Standards first.
Products second.

Most infrastructure companies build the product first and figure out standards later. ZeroDev flipped the script. Derek Chiang was involved in writing the ERC-4337 spec before Kernel existed. That put ZeroDev in the room when the account abstraction standard was being shaped - and gave Kernel a structural advantage over competitors who were implementing someone else's design decisions.

The same pattern held with ERC-7579. When the modular smart account standard was being formalized, ZeroDev was first to implement it - building a wallet architecture where validators, executors, and hooks can be swapped like plugins without touching the core account. This is what lets a developer using Kernel swap from a passkey validator to a WebAuthn biometric validator without a redeployment.

For EIP-7702 - the Ethereum Pectra upgrade that lets existing EOA wallets transform into smart accounts - ZeroDev built a live playground at 7702.zerodev.app before most teams had even finished reading the spec. Early mover advantage, not as a marketing position, but as a technical one.

ERC-4337
Account Abstraction Standard
Derek Chiang contributed to the spec and reference implementation. The foundation for all smart account infrastructure at ZeroDev.
ERC-7579
Modular Smart Accounts
Kernel was the first implementation. Plug-and-play architecture where validators, executors, and hooks can be swapped without redeployment.
EIP-7702
EOA Wallet Upgrades
The Pectra upgrade standard. ZeroDev shipped tooling and a live playground before widespread adoption - with full backward compatibility for existing wallets.
Track Record

Five people.
Five million wallets.

★ Most deployed AA wallet: Kernel is the most widely used modular smart account in the Ethereum ecosystem as of 2025.
● ERC-4337 author: Derek Chiang contributed directly to the spec and reference implementation of the account abstraction standard.
■ First ERC-7579 implementation: Kernel pioneered modular smart accounts before the standard was widely adopted.
△ Gemini integration: Powers biometric-secured universal smart wallets for Gemini using WebAuthn validator.
◆ 150K+ accounts on Optimism: 400,000+ user operations processed on Optimism alone in early deployment phases.
☀ YC W23 + a16z: Backed by Y Combinator and Andreessen Horowitz, among others, validating the infrastructure thesis.
Ecosystem
Who builds on Kernel.
Gemini Crossmint DIMO Infinex DeFi.app Glider APECHAIN Privy Magic.link Lit Protocol Across Protocol QuickNode Avalanche Conduit Rodeo
Exit & Next Chapter

Arbitrum bets on
the wallet layer.

In August 2025, Offchain Labs - the company that built Arbitrum, Ethereum's most active Layer 2 network - acquired ZeroDev. The full five-person team moved over. The acquisition wasn't a fire sale; it was a strategic move by one of the most well-capitalized companies in the Ethereum ecosystem.

Offchain Labs had spent years building the chain. ZeroDev had spent years building the wallet infrastructure that sits on top of chains. The combination gave Offchain Labs a full stack: L1-to-L2 settlement at the bottom, and developer tools for building consumer-facing applications at the top.

For ZeroDev, it means Kernel's reach extends to the full Arbitrum ecosystem - and the team gets to keep building without the constraints of a five-person startup. The mission didn't change. The resources did.

Acquirer Offchain Labs
Product Arbitrum (Ethereum L2)
Date August 13, 2025
Terms Undisclosed
Team All 5 joined Offchain Labs
Rationale Full-stack: chain + wallet infra
Explore

Go deeper on ZeroDev.

Website ZeroDev.app zerodev.app Documentation Developer Docs docs.zerodev.app GitHub ZeroDev on GitHub github.com/zerodevapp Twitter / X @zerodev_app twitter.com/zerodev_app LinkedIn ZeroDev Company Page linkedin.com/company/zerodev Y Combinator YC Profile (W23) ycombinator.com/companies/zerodev Blog Acquisition Announcement docs.zerodev.app/blog Tool EIP-7702 Playground 7702.zerodev.app Press Blockworks: The ZeroDev Bet blockworks.co