OneKey has obtained a new round of financing today. From a user's perspective, the growth of this company is worth learning from.

At first glance, hardware wallets do not seem like a big business. In the context of the Chinese market, selling hardware has always been difficult to achieve high margins.

OneKey's first phase is to solidly develop the hardware wallet itself and win market trust through complete open-source. "Creating a Web3 wallet" is not difficult; the challenge lies in how to gain trust and encourage bold use. Although MetaMask has been stagnant for the past three years with poor product experience, its brand remains top-tier for this reason.

Secondly, regarding user experience, from my usage perspective, OneKey is one of the rare startup teams that can do both hardware and software well. @ohyishi's product aesthetics are very impressive.

In addition, hardware wallets have another significant competitive advantage that software wallets do not possess. Under the premise of security, once users choose a hardware wallet, they are unlikely to switch easily.

For example, in my commonly used EVM hot wallets, I have entered/imported a set of mnemonic phrases/private keys in wallets from at least five different brands. The funds are essentially fluid; we are constantly verifying the fundamental characteristics of Crypto public-private key pairs, making it difficult to have absolute loyalty to software wallets. However, the same cannot happen with hardware wallets; those who have used hardware wallets understand this principle.

Therefore, this is essentially the core barrier of hardware wallets. Unless the hardware fails or in other extreme situations, the user's migration cost is extremely high. The larger the amount of funds, the more cautious users become, and the more they tend to stay put.

OneKey has recognized this point and launched the OneKey Earn product aimed at high-net-worth users. Without requiring users to move their funds, it meets the financial management needs of some individuals, resulting in a 11-fold increase in stored user assets and DeFi scale over three years.

Thus, in the wallet sector, brand and security are the most crucial foundations, and it is more suitable for true long-term thinkers.

In 2022, I asked Yishi if OneKey could be purchased domestically, and he sent me ten OneKey Mini devices. Besides one for personal use, I gave the rest away. This team's operations are also very warm.