Terra Wallet Leap Raises $3.2M in Private Token Sale

Leap, a startup building a non-custodial crypto wallet for the Terra blockchain, raised $3.2 million in funding co-led by CoinFund and Pantera Capital with contributions from Arrington Capital, Accel and Terraform Labs, according to a press release.

Leap raised the funding via a private sale of its LEAP governance and utility token, and in a March litepaper earmarked 8% of the tokens for a private sale. If these estimates hold true, the funding round values the project at $40 million. Founder Sanjeev Rao declined to comment on the valuation.

Leap plans to bolster its engineering, design, product and marketing teams with the fresh capital, Rao said.

Leap's crypto wallet is similar to MetaMask and is a Chrome extension with over 4,000 downloads, according to Rao. Leap supports asset transfers, non-fungible token (NFT) trades and decentralized finance (DeFi) applications across the Terra ecosystem, which runs on Terra's LUNA token and the stablecoin UST. Rao said iOS and Android mobile apps are on the way.

Terra is in “hyper growth phase,” as Rao put it, with UST’s market cap soaring tenfold as the chain’s total value locked (TVL) tops $30 billion, second only to Ethereum, according to DeFi Llama.

Rao said that Terra is bringing “a lot of new users into the space,” therefore, Leap wallet allows for individuals new to crypto to interact with the blockchain through its integration of decentralized applications (dapps) and NFTs in one “super wallet.”

Leap’s biggest competitor is Terra Station, Terraform Labs’ own non-custodial wallet. When asked about Terra Station, Rao said that “a good wallet experience makes or breaks when it comes to onboarding new users,” and Leap keeps up with the space’s rapid growth and changing needs, such as security, design and usability through its dapp integrations.

In the coming months, Leap will release a native governance token for a token-reward program for active wallets, according to Rao. Leap will also allow users to purchase NFT collections on the app.

Only the wallet users have access to their private keys in Leap’s non-custodial setup. This carries be-your-own-bank benefits while establishing personal responsibility, and thus increasing risk. People can still fall victim to copycat websites, Rao said.

Rao said Leap mitigates some of the scam risks by integrating directly with popular Terra-based DeFi protocols, allowing users to stake LUNA and UST without leaving the wallet.

“Being able to deposit in-wallet to Anchor [is] something we built quite early on, something people use a lot. Similarly, we've integrated multiple products from Stader labs, where now users have access to multiple staking options in-wallet.”

CoinFund and Pantera did not respond to CoinDesk's requests for comment by press time.