On March 18th, Web3 workflow protocol developer Halliday announced the completion of a $20 million Series A financing round, led by a16z crypto. Other participating investors include Avalanche Blizzard Fund, Credibly Neutral, Alt Layer, and multiple angel investors. This funding round brings Halliday’s total financing to $26 million.
Vision: Shorten smart contract creation time, prioritize building payment application Halliday Payments
According to the official introduction, Halliday focuses on building infrastructure that allows developers to delegate workflow to automated systems when creating smart contracts. The company aims to make smart contract creation more efficient and user-friendly, reducing development time.
Halliday also claims to be applying secure AI systems to decentralized networks and changing the way developers build applications on the blockchain. AI on the blockchain is still not widely adopted, mainly due to compliance and security limitations. To enable AI to operate on the chain, a robust security infrastructure must be built to ensure companies can oversee AI-driven automated processes. The Workflow Protocol addresses these two problems and supports the automation of any process, including:
Access to new L1/L2/L3 networks
Regular payments
Maximizing profits
Fund management
B2B intelligence
Halliday Payments is their current flagship product, which includes the following features:
Fiat on-ramps: Allows users to easily convert fiat currency to cryptocurrencies, manage cross-chain assets, and use fully functional smart accounts built on ERC-4337 for transactions and asset management.
Centralized exchanges: Connects to millions of centralized exchange accounts worldwide, enabling users to directly use CEX balances to purchase their tokens.
Bridging: Simplifies the complexity of cross-chain bridging, whether a chain has one or multiple bridges, or whether they are native or third-party bridges, allowing users to easily transfer assets across chains.
Cross-chain swaps: Users can use any existing cryptocurrency for payments and achieve exchanges between any tokens, applicable to any chain.
Fiat off-ramps: Provides fiat off-ramp solutions specifically designed for their tokens and blockchain, allowing users to easily liquidate their assets.
Since 2023, Halliday has been rigorously testing their self-developed workflow system. Teams such as DeFi Kingdoms, Avalanche, ApeCoin, StoryProtocol, Metis, and SHRAPNEL have utilized their engine to optimize payment processes. In the future, Halliday will collaborate with blockchain projects such as Frax Finance and Lens Chain.
Transitioning from a project focused on in-game purchases with “buy now, pay later” to a broader scope
Founded in April 2022 and based in San Francisco, Halliday was co-founded by Akshay Malhotra and Griffin Dunaif, who is currently the CEO. Dunaif graduated from Stanford University with a degree in computer science in 2023, and his entrepreneurial journey was inspired by blockchain and cryptotechnology. In an interview in 2024, he recalled, “I took a course called CS251, and I remember in the first class, the professor showed a slide that said, ‘Cryptocurrencies or blockchains are the intersection of distributed systems, cryptography, and behavioral economics.’ When I saw those three things combined on one slide, I thought, ‘This class is going to be really interesting.’ It actually sparked my interest in the whole field, and that class is what really got me into it. I then took a course on zero-knowledge protocol design, where I did some cool experiments with a professor involving building and testing protocols. Eventually, these experiences led me to leave school and start Halliday.”
Initially, Halliday’s founding team focused on building a “buy now, pay later” financial product specifically for gamers who wanted to make installment payments for in-game purchases. In this concept, players could use Halliday’s extension tool to buy in-game assets and use them immediately, but the assets would be held by Halliday until the player completed the payment. This approach not only reduced financial pressure on players within the game but also provided flexible payment options. If a player failed to make timely payments, Halliday would regain control of the assets without reporting late payment records to credit institutions.
To realize this goal, Halliday successfully completed a $6 million seed funding round in 2022, with participation from a16z crypto, Hashed, a_capital, and other investment institutions. However, as they further explored blockchain applications, Griffin Dunaif realized that although the crypto industry had rich cultural resources, what was lacking was an effective business infrastructure, especially in the process of exchanging, owning, and transferring assets. He believed that blockchain needed better business support to automate and streamline the distribution of goods and services, thereby driving the construction of a “digital city.”
Building a higher-level multi-chain programming model, planning to profit from customer-required computing power
As their understanding of blockchain technology deepened, Dunaif and the team decided to shift Halliday’s focus from the gaming industry to the broader field of blockchain business infrastructure. Halliday aims to automate the distribution process of goods and services by reducing friction in transactions and interactions.
For example, Halliday aims to support the complex process of fiat currency integration with L3 networks. “We’re talking about the Ape chain, which is essentially an L3 on Arbitrum Orbit. The problem now is how to support the integration of fiat currency with this L3. Stripe, as one of the main integration methods, does not actually support L3 and has very limited coverage, but their product is very good. So, what can be done in the end is that you can enter the Base chain with fiat currency, make exchanges, then bridge and exchange again, and bridge to L3, forming a multi-hop process. Or you can first enter the mainnet with fiat currency, exchange, and then bridge to L3. There are many different paths. In short, what we’re doing is trying to access fiat currency integration methods that only support a few networks, and we will automatically route and handle all these processes on the chain to give you a native integration experience on L3 or L2. Whether you use CCIP, LayerZero, or other access solutions, we will integrate them at a higher level, allowing you to transact on your chain.” Dunaif explained in an interview last year.
As Dunaif put it, “You can think of us as building a higher-level programming model that knows how to interact with fiat systems, how to interact with each other, and also knows how to abstract away the automation, composability, and complexity in the blockchain world. It’s almost like a virtual machine, but it’s actually a higher-level virtual machine that can be programmed. You can build processes. We’re now building these processes and offering them as products. But our vision is actually to open it up and see that multi-chain programming has become possible and easy. It may sound crazy now because nobody wants to build a multi-chain program because it’s very complex, but our company is a multi-chain program, and we want to reduce that complexity by tenfold.”
Currently, Halliday has launched an early access program and has received over 11,000 applications. The program is expected to officially launch in the second quarter, providing users with more customized features and services.
In terms of their revenue model, Halliday will charge based on the computing power required by customers, allowing them to purchase the corresponding computing resources according to their needs.
Halliday is not the only company exploring blockchain payments and business automation. Other blockchain companies, such as ConsenSys, are also driving the automation of financial institution workflows through products like the CodeFi blockchain application suite.
Compared to the high customer acquisition costs and difficult customer channels in the consumer market, many startups have turned to the B2B market to seek growth opportunities. An article published by PANews titled “Champions Ascension, a 3A Chain Game Invested by a16z, Unexpectedly Suspends Operations and Shifts Focus to B2B, Focusing on Customer Acquisition” highlights the challenges many companies face in acquiring C2C users.
This article was originally published in collaboration with PANews.