OneBalance

OneBalance was a chain abstraction settlement layer that aimed to eliminate the friction of multi-chain crypto — no manual bridging, no per-chain gas management, no network switching. Built by former Flashbots co-founders, it processed over $3 billion in cross-chain transaction volume before deprecating its developer API in May 2026 and shutting down its consumer app the following month.

What OneBalance Did

The core pitch was straightforward: hold one balance, spend anywhere. A user with USDC spread across Ethereum, Polygon, and Base would see a single unified balance of, say, 50 USDC — and could spend the full amount on any supported chain with a single click, without pre-funding each network or paying bridging fees. OneBalance described this model as "chain-free Web3."

Underneath the seamless UX was a technically novel architecture with three interlocking components.

Resource Locks formed the foundation. When a user initiated a cross-chain action, a portion of their balance was temporarily locked in escrow with specified fulfillment conditions and an expiry time. This lock created a credible commitment: solvers (third-party executors) could instantly fulfill the transaction on the destination chain without waiting for source-chain finality, because the lock mathematically guaranteed they would be settled. The result was sub-second execution — the team measured 250ms average transaction speed — without exposing solvers to double-spend risk.

The Permissions Engine sat on top of Resource Locks, letting users delegate transaction authority to applications through scoped session keys. This enabled programmable, time-limited, or limit-order-style permissions without giving any counterparty full wallet control. Circuit breaker policies could automatically revoke access under defined conditions.

Virtual Account Environments completed the stack by wrapping each user's on-chain state across all supported chains into a single logical account — essentially treating the user's portfolio as its own rollup. Cross-chain execution proofs unified the experience without requiring the user to interact with individual networks directly.

Bridges remained in the picture for final settlement, but OneBalance removed them from the critical execution path. Fulfillment happened instantly; settlement happened asynchronously in the background.

Products

OneBalance shipped two main products before closing.

The OneBalance Toolkit was a developer API launched in open beta in January 2025. It gave application developers a single integration point for balance aggregation, cross-chain asset lists, transaction execution, and payment flows. Integration partners included Privy (embedded wallets), Turnkey (key management), VOOI (perpetual trading), and Dexari (self-custodial trading). The Toolkit supported EIP-4337 smart contract accounts natively and added EIP-7702 compatibility in September 2025.

OneApp was the consumer-facing interface — a non-custodial wallet with built-in cross-chain trading, yield access, and payment capabilities. It used passkey and social authentication to reduce onboarding friction.

Chain and Asset Coverage

OneBalance supported 50+ blockchains and over one million tokens. EVM chains included Ethereum, Arbitrum, Optimism, Base, Polygon, Linea, Avalanche, and BNB Chain. Solana support launched at the end of June 2025 — integrating differently from EVM chains in that proxy accounts were not required. Bitcoin was added as well, with Resource Locks enabling near-instant BTC-to-EVM swaps despite Bitcoin's slow finality.

Solana Fit

OneBalance entered the Solana ecosystem relatively late in its lifecycle, with Solana support going live in Q3 2025. The integration targeted developers building cross-chain applications where users might hold assets on Solana and want to deploy them elsewhere, or vice versa. Because Solana does not require the ERC-4337 smart contract account model, the Toolkit handled Solana accounts natively without a proxy layer.

Team and Funding

OneBalance was founded in London by three veterans of crypto infrastructure.

Stephane Gosselin (CEO) co-founded Flashbots, the dominant MEV infrastructure project, and led research at Frontier Research before starting OneBalance. Daniel Worsley (COO) was Flashbots' operations co-founder. Ankit Chiplunkar (CTO) came from Coinbase's smart contract engineering team and holds a PhD in Aerospace Engineering.

The company raised $5 million in an angel round and followed with a $20 million Series A in June 2025 co-led by Cyber Fund and Blockchain Capital. Participants included Consensys, Mirana Ventures, L2IV, Wintermute Ventures, and Binance Labs. Total funding reached $25 million.

At its operational peak the project reported $3 billion in settled transaction volume and 99.99% uptime over a six-month window.

Shutdown

OneBalance deprecated its Toolkit API on May 18, 2026. OneApp was sunset on June 30, 2026. No public acquisition or merger announcement was made. The migration guide published by Zerion directed former Toolkit users to Zerion's API for wallet data (balance aggregation, portfolio reads, transaction history) and suggested Relay as a replacement for chain-abstracted execution. The official documentation at docs.onebalance.io now displays only the deprecation notice.

The reasons for the shutdown were not publicly disclosed. Given the $25 million raised and the credentialed team, the closure reflects how difficult the chain abstraction market proved to be — a space with well-funded competitors and fragmented developer demand.

Legacy

OneBalance's core contribution was bringing Resource Lock-based chain abstraction into production at meaningful scale. The approach — separating instant fulfillment from asynchronous settlement to unlock cross-chain speed without sacrificing self-custody — influenced how the broader ecosystem thinks about cross-chain UX. Its integrations with wallet infrastructure providers like Privy and Turnkey demonstrated that chain abstraction could be layered into existing products rather than requiring users to adopt entirely new wallets.