Eco launches Beam, the “easiest-to-use” crypto wallet

Eco unveiled Beama self-depository portfolio built on Base and Optimism which aims to reinvent the crypto-currency payments.

Backed by Pantera, Lightspeed, a16z and other major investors in the crypto space, Eco announced this week the launch of its wallet Beam in beta.

With its portfolio, the startup hopes to bring the crypto payment experience closer to that of cash. Eco wants to offer a product that “normal people actually want to use without sacrificing the promises of Web3”.

Beam is sold as a self-guarding wallet, permissionless and censorship-resistant. The wallet, which resembles a P2P crypto transfer service, is built on layers2 Optimism and Base. In particular, it takes advantage of Account Abstraction, thanks to the new Ethereum token standard. ERC-4337.

No application or registration is required to use Beam. Users must go to a web page on which a QR code linked to a wallet address is automatically generated. They can then transfer funds from an existing wallet or by using Moonpay, a service enabling them to buy crypto-currencies. Note that transaction fees are minimized and paid for by the tokens sent, without having to use ether specifically.

Want to pay your friend? Send them a Beam link in a text message or send money directly to their username. No need to think about which channel you’re on or what their address is,” claims Eco in a blog post.

Beam initially supports the USDC stablecoin and ECOthe start-up’s native token. It should open up to other digital coins in the future.

On TechCrunchAndy Bromberg, CEO of the company founded in 2018 in San Francisco, indicated that Beam positioned itself more in competition with traditional players such as Venmoa mobile payment service owned by Paypal, rather than with other crypto wallet providers.

The promise of crypto is self-guarding, decentralization, resistance to censorship – all these things, and if you want to keep them in a product, it adds all kinds of friction to build that up […] What we’re really proud of here is that Beam is the closest thing I’ve seen to a Web2″ experience, he said.