Dfns Raises $13.5M to Build Out Password Protection for Crypto Wallets

The French company's service splits a wallet's private key, or password, and distributes the pieces so it no longer exists in a single place.

By Jamie Crawley

Apr 13, 2022 at 2:28 p.m. UTC

Updated Apr 13, 2022 at 2:46 p.m. UTC

Dfns plans to prevent crypto wallets being hacked by splitting the keys and distributing them across a network. (Shutterstock) — (Shutterstock)

Jamie Crawley

Jamie Crawley is a CoinDesk news reporter based in London.

Follow @JamieCrawleyCD on Twitter

Crypto wallet startup Dfns raised $13.5 million in seed funding to expand its offering that secures the digital assets of fintech companies and banks by safeguarding the passwords to their crypto wallets.

The funding was led by White Star Capital. Other investors, including Hashed, Susquehanna and the venture arms of crypto exchange Coinbase and Dutch bank ABN AMRO, also participated in the round.
Dfns aims to help companies secure digital assets by sharding crypto wallet passwords, known as private keys, and distributing the pieces across a peer-to-peer network. "Hence, the password to the crypto wallet doesn't exist anymore in its full format," Dfns said in an announcement Wednesday.
A perceived lack of security in crypto remains one of the major impediments to institutional adoption. Just last month the Ronin network suffered a $625 million exploit, one of the largest on record, with hacked private keys used to fake withdrawals.
Dfns, based in Paris, intends to use the funding to deploy its keyless wallets across all decentralized finance (DeFi) applications and expand its team.

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