YZi Labs and Coinbase Back the Same Horse: OneKey Secures Series B at $150M Valuation

OneKey, the crypto hardware wallet startup, is taking a major step toward joining the crypto world’s unicorn club.

This surge is fueled by a remarkable 11x increase in user assets secured over the past three years, and nearly 300% average annual growth in hardware wallet sales.

The Series B round was led by YZi Labs (Prev. Binance Labs), marking its largest investment to date in the hardware wallet sector. Previous investors include Dragonfly, Ribbit Capital, Coinbase Ventures, and other top-tier VCs.

The six-year-old startup, now with a team of 60, known for its open-source code, security reputation, and pragmatic approach, has been widely adopted by major exchanges and projects.

“We’ve been fully open-source since day one,” said founder and CEO Yishi Wang. “We stand behind our code with complete confidence—and that’s the foundation of our community’s trust.”

Security-First in a High-Risk Environment

For crypto newcomers, managing private keys remains a daunting challenge. Whether using Bitcoin, Ethereum, Tron, or Solana, private key management is consistently painful.

While many opt for convenience through browser extensions or centralized exchanges like Binance, those seeking true self-custody and protection from network threats face a clear choice: invest in a properly audited, open-source hardware wallet.

At a recent security-focused event, OneKey's technical team demonstrated their edge in practical security. They highlighted a case where a major exchange suffered a $1.5 billion hack because their hardware wallet failed to properly parse complex Safe contract calls, displaying only unintelligible code that led operators to approve malicious transactions unknowingly.

OneKey's solution, by contrast, would have correctly parsed the transaction, displayed the complete call structure, and flagged potential risks—capabilities stemming from the company's substantial investment in contract parsing and interaction security. 

Priced just over $100, OneKey’s hardware wallet offers a compelling tradeoff: a modest upfront cost versus the risk of catastrophic losses.

In the open-source space, OneKey maintains extremely high activity levels, with GitHub repository issue and PR processing speeds even exceeding many well-known software companies. Community users can audit and reproduce all of OneKey's code and firmware compilation processes at any time, providing unprecedented transparency for users and security experts.

Compared to many hardware wallets in the industry that use closed-source designs, OneKey believes that true security comes from complete transparency. It's this extreme transparency that allows the community, users, and even investors to view each incident and challenge more objectively and comprehensively.

It's precisely this extreme discipline that has earned OneKey the trust and continued adoption by multiple exchanges and projects.

[OneKey is the only hardware wallet with exclusive co-branding partnerships and team-wide adoption across top exchanges like Binance, OKX, Bybit, and Bitget.]

Global Expansion Beyond Market Cycles

While establishing a solid foothold in Asia, OneKey is aggressively targeting international markets.

During a major Web3 conference at Hong Kong's JW Marriott, Wang moved briskly between meetings, explaining the company's distributed structure: "Our team spans Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Japan, South Korea, Dubai, Italy, and more—backed by distribution channels across key economic regions. If we were just another remote Web3 dApp team, scaling would be straightforward—but building a fintech hardware company with complex supply chains and technical pipelines creates an entirely different challenge."

This complexity, however, forms a significant competitive moat. Chief Growth Officer Niq Chen—a Gen Z exec and former top NFT collector who’s weathered two bull markets—brings a sharp, cycle-tested perspective: "After experiencing market cycles, I've learned that what truly matters is building products with lasting impact and defensible advantages, alongside exceptional talent tackling meaningful challenges."

The company has seen particularly strong traction in German-speaking markets, with daily user feedback flowing in from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland—prompting a rapid rollout of comprehensive German language support.

Brazil has emerged as another unexpected growth market. Upon investigation, the team discovered that key crypto opinion leaders had organically adopted and recommended OneKey, triggering viral adoption. This grassroots momentum subsequently attracted local distributors and even physical OTC shops to actively promote the product.

"This validated our core thesis," noted OneKey's Chief Sales Officer Mildred. "When you nail product quality and solve genuine pain points, international markets can develop organically without massive marketing spend."

[OneKey received on-site recommendations from many content creators during the Binance Blockchain Week event in Dubai]

On talent and technology, Wang maintains provocative positions that have sparked industry debate. He publicly stated he wouldn't consider engineers who haven't adopted AI coding tools like Cursor and MCP by 2025—a stance he stands firmly behind despite controversy.

"Different team sizes and talent densities create fundamentally different organizational structures compared to traditional corporations," Wang explained. "I believe even $1.5M annual compensation for DeepSeek team members is justified—their revenue-per-employee metrics outperform Pinduoduo by an order of magnitude. AI has completely rewritten productivity equations. The same tools yield radically different outcomes depending on who wields them. Companies clinging to outdated hiring frameworks will only attract outdated talent."

OneKey has assembled a team drawing from tech leaders including ByteDance, DJI, and OPPO. They've established an internal security research division—OneKey Anzen—dedicated to testing and breaking existing hardware wallets to advance security standards industry-wide.

Despite recent market volatility causing many founders to retreat, Wang maintains disciplined focus: "We're likely among the companies managing the highest user asset volume per employee globally. Every crypto cycle sees participants exit, but we've remained committed throughout. Building the iPhone of crypto takes discipline, not hype."

"I've assembled a team of genuine crypto, hardware, and security experts who constantly push boundaries and challenge assumptions. They're not optimizing for quarterly KPIs—they're building what they fundamentally believe is right."

[Photo of OneKey CTO, CEO and COO with CZ]

[OneKey Eco Lead Cavin sharing security practices at an event]

DeFi Yield: The Next Frontier

When OneKey launched its USDC-based Earn Feature with Morpho, it attracted over $62 million in deposits in a short period.

"We've essentially become the on-chain private banking desk for crypto whales," Yishi Wang noted with characteristic directness. His analysis of the crypto landscape is equally straightforward: only two types of players capture significant value—token issuers and those facilitating asset flows through essential infrastructure like exchanges and wallets.

As more users built substantial self-custodied positions, demand surged for yield solutions that didn’t compromise on security. OneKey responded with its Earn feature in the OneKey App—offering a non-custodial interface to access DeFi yields safely.

But this, Wang insists, is just the beginning. On-chain yield has much deeper potential. Capturing protocol incentives and LST rewards is merely step one. The next evolution? Structured products.

Take Pendle’s PT/YT model, which splits yield and principal to match different time preferences. But existing order books are inefficient and tokens are often mispriced. Yishi envisions a basket of LP pools designed to improve efficiency by matching users with different risk horizons.

DeFi’s composability opens doors that traditional finance never could—especially when combined with true self-custody. OneKey aims to build safe, flexible and high-efficiency investment tools that TradFi simply can't replicate.

In an internal Slack message that captures his management philosophy, Wang wrote: "Obsessing over competitors blinds you to actual user needs. Company success hinges on making correct fundamental decisions, not polishing flawed concepts. Excessive focus on minutiae is counterproductive—raw effort without direction won't yield results."

[On Yishi's Hong Kong desk sits a gold frog gifted by Ribbit Capital — a signature token for portfolio companies they've backed]

Building for the Long Game

Unlike many crypto startups chasing trending narratives, OneKey has deliberately focused on perfecting fundamental infrastructure—often thankless work that doesn't generate immediate hype. In an industry defined by rapid cycles, this measured approach stands out precisely because of its rarity.

The company operates on a simple premise: truly valuable infrastructure isn't built through marketing narratives, but by consistently delivering reliable products that earn user trust transaction after transaction.

About OneKey

Founded in 2019, OneKey is one of the world's best-selling, most secure open-source hardware wallet and cold wallet brands.

Its hardcore philosophy of being completely open-source from day one has earned the trust of billions in assets. All hardware and software code has passed security audits by SlowMist and Offside Labs, and is completely open-sourced on GitHub for community review. With its exceptional quality, OneKey has received funding support and adoption from top investment institutions like Coinbase and Dragonfly.

$99 entry-level security hardware + free App = institutional-grade security solution worth $100M+. OneKey's vision is to make institutional-grade, full-chain secure self-custody technology available to every crypto citizen in an open-source, permissionless manner.

Products:

Classic 1S / 1S Pure: The best-selling entry-level ultra-thin credit card-style cold wallet, fulfilling all your expectations for hardware-isolated private keys.

OneKey Pro: Air-gapped QR code signing, encrypted fingerprint verification, wireless charging, providing top-tier truly wireless security protection.

All hardware wallets come standard with EAL6+ industry-highest grade security chips + anti-theft self-destruct technology, supporting almost all chains.

OneKey App: Supports 60+ blockchains (including Bitcoin, Ethereum, BNB Chain, Tron, Solana, XRP, Cardano, etc.), covering mobile, desktop, browser extensions and web versions, easily accessing the Web3 ecosystem. Supports advanced website and contract anti-phishing detection, signature result simulation parsing, and other security features.

Explore OneKey's open-source wallets and join the future of secure self-custody: https://onekey.so/