A technology company co-founded by Dragons' Den star Steven Bartlett has acquired a crypto payments processing business.
thirdweb, a Web3 development platform which the entrepreneur established with Furqan Rydhan and Jake Loo, has snapped up Paper for an undisclosed sum.
Founded in 2021 by James Sun, Edward Sun and Phillip Ho, Paper counts the likes of Fnatic, Deadmau5, Boohoo and YesTheory as previous clients.
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Paper’s products will still operate independently and will be fully integrated into thirdweb’s platform within the next two months. Paper’s founders will be joining thirdweb in "key senior roles".
Mr Sun said: "When you are working with multiple vendors, it becomes hugely problematic. You need to run them through your compliance and security process, integrate each piece of technology and work with a bunch of different account managers.
"Being able to work with one platform that covers all your blockchain needs, simplifies development and go-to market. That’s where I feel thirdweb and paper are an extremely powerful combination."
Mr Rydhan added: "We're acquiring Paper first and foremost because the team has built the best onboarding experience for Web3.
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"By combining this with our development stack, we believe we can offer the most powerful solution in blockchain development to date.
"We truly believe that this will move the needle for the whole industry, and could spark the next huge wave of consumer application in Web3.
"We’ve worked very closely with them over the last year, side by side, and we felt like it was a natural fit. Together, we can go really far."
Mr Bartlett said: "This acquisition represents one of the biggest leaps forward in the blockchain infrastructure industry.
"Today two of the leading blockchain infrastructure players become one. We are hugely excited to be welcoming James and the team to the wider thirdweb team.
"Together, we’ll be able to revolutionise the way people interact with the digital world, streamline blockchain operations and continue lowering the barrier to entry for Web3 developers across the globe.
"Blockchains’s are going to change the world as we know it, and now thirdweb is perfectly-placed to enable this disruption."
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Mr Loo said: "We believe the next big market cycle will be triggered by a wave of consumer applications built with blockchain technology.
"This acquisition will be the catalyst in making this happen, as developers now have access to every piece of infrastructure they need under one roof.
"Our team shares a lot of values when it comes to customer obsession, dealing with the developers in the space and the pace of shipping our products.
"They really match our energy and what we care about at thirdweb. Ultimately, we want to serve blockchain developers and we believe that joining forces is the best way to do that."