Compared to targeting the C-end, the expensive customer acquisition costs and difficult channels in the crypto market have led many startups to turn to the B-end for growth opportunities.

Written by: Weilin, PANews

On March 18, Web3 workflow protocol developer Halliday announced the completion of a $20 million Series A funding round, led by a16z crypto, with other participants including Avalanche Blizzard Fund, Credibly Neutral, Alt Layer, and several angel investors. This round of financing brings Halliday's total funding to $26 million.

Vision: Shortening smart contract creation time, prioritizing the development of payment application Halliday Payments

According to the official introduction, Halliday focuses on building infrastructure that allows developers to delegate workflows to automated systems when creating smart contracts. The company is committed to making the creation of smart contracts more efficient and user-friendly, thereby shortening development time.

Halliday also stated that it is enabling secure AI systems to be applied on decentralized networks, changing the way developers build on-chain applications. AI on the blockchain remains difficult to popularize, mainly due to compliance and security limitations. To run AI on-chain, robust security infrastructure must be built to ensure that enterprises can oversee AI-driven automated processes. The Workflow Protocol addresses these two issues and supports the automation of any process, including:

• Accessing new L1/L2/L3 networks

• Regular payments

• Yield maximization

• Fund management

• B2B agents

Halliday Payments is its currently promoted product, which includes the following features:

• Fiat onramps: Users can easily consume, manage assets, and trade through fiat-to-crypto exchanges, cross-chain asset management, and fully functional smart accounts built on ERC-4337.

• Centralized Exchanges: Connects hundreds of millions of centralized exchange accounts globally, allowing users to directly purchase your tokens using CEX balances.

• Bridging: Whether your chain has one or multiple bridges, or is a native or third-party bridge, we can simplify the complexity of cross-chain bridging, allowing you and your users to easily transfer assets across chains.

• Cross-Chain Swaps: Users can use any existing cryptocurrency for payments, enabling exchanges between any tokens, applicable to any chain.

• Fiat offramps: Provides fiat off-ramp solutions tailored for your tokens and blockchain, allowing users to easily liquidate assets.

Since 2023, Halliday has been rigorously testing its self-developed workflow system. Teams from DeFi Kingdoms, Avalanche, ApeCoin, StoryProtocol, Metis, SHRAPNEL, and others have utilized the engine to optimize payment processes. In the future, Halliday will collaborate with on-chain projects such as Frax Finance and Lens Chain.

Transformed from a "buy now, pay later" project focused on in-game purchases

Founded in April 2022 and headquartered in San Francisco, Halliday was co-founded by two entrepreneurs, Akshay Malhotra and Griffin Dunaif, with Dunaif currently serving as CEO.

Dunaif graduated from Stanford University in 2023 with a degree in computer science, and his entrepreneurial journey has been deeply inspired by blockchain and crypto technology. In an interview in 2024, he recalled: "I took a course called CS251, and I remember the first class where the professor showed a slide that said 'Cryptocurrency or blockchain is the intersection of distributed systems, cryptography, and behavioral economics.' When I saw those three combined on one slide, I thought this class would be interesting. It actually sparked my interest in the entire discipline, and it was this course that deepened my understanding of the field. Later, I took a course on zero-knowledge protocol design, where I did some interesting experiments with a professor involving protocol construction and testing. Ultimately, these experiences led me to leave school and start Halliday."

Initially, Halliday's founding team aimed to create a "buy now, pay later" financial product specifically for players wishing to make installment payments for in-game purchases. In this concept, players could use Halliday's extension tool to purchase in-game assets and use them immediately, but these assets would be held in custody by Halliday until the player completed the payment. This approach not only reduced the economic pressure on players within the game but also provided flexible payment options. If players failed to pay on time, Halliday would regain control of the assets without reporting overdue records to credit agencies.

To achieve this goal, Halliday successfully completed a $6 million seed round in 2022, with participation from several investment firms including a16z crypto, Hashed, and a_capital. However, as they further explored blockchain applications, Griffin Dunaif realized that while the crypto industry culture is rich, there is a lack of effective commercial infrastructure, especially in the processes of exchanging value, owning, and transferring assets. He believes that blockchain needs better commercial support to make the distribution of goods and services more automated and seamless, thereby promoting the construction of "digital cities."

Building a higher-level multi-chain programming model, planning to profit from the computing power required by customers

As their understanding of blockchain technology deepened, Dunaif and the team decided to shift Halliday's focus from the gaming sector to a broader construction of blockchain commercial infrastructure. Halliday's goal is to automate the distribution process of goods and services by reducing friction in transactions and interactions.

For example, Halliday hopes to support the complex process of integrating fiat into L3 networks. "We are talking about the Ape chain, which is actually an L3 on Arbitrum Orbit. Now the question is, how do we support fiat integration into this L3? Stripe, as one of the main access methods, actually does not support L3; its coverage is very limited, but its product is excellent. So what can ultimately be done is that you can enter the Base chain with fiat, swap, then bridge cross-chain, swap again, and bridge to L3, forming a multi-hop process, or you can first enter the mainnet with fiat, swap, and then bridge to L3. You will see many different paths. In short, what we do is, if you want to access a fiat integration method that only supports a few networks, we will automatically route and handle all these processes on-chain, giving you a native access experience on L3 or L2. Whether you are using CCIP, LayerZero, or other access solutions, we will integrate these at a higher level, allowing you to transact on your chain," Dunaif explained in an interview last year.

As Dunaif stated: "You can think of us as building a higher-level programming model that knows how to interact with fiat systems, how to engage, and also knows how to abstract automation, composability, and complexity in the blockchain world. It’s almost like a virtual machine; in fact, it is a higher-level virtual machine that can be programmed. You can build programs. We are currently building these programs and offering them as products. But our vision is actually to open it up and see that multi-chain programs have become possible and simple. It may sound crazy now because no one wants to build a multi-chain program because it is 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 product 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 the profit 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 commercial automation. Other blockchain companies, such as Consensys, are also driving the automation of workflows for financial institutions through products like the CodeFi blockchain application suite.

Compared to targeting the C-end, the expensive customer acquisition costs and difficult channels in the crypto market have led many startups to turn to the B-end for growth opportunities. PANews recently published an article titled "a16z Invested 3A Chain Game Champions Ascension Unexpectedly Suspends Operations, Team Shifts Focus to New Project Concentrating on Customer Acquisition," which also highlights how a16z invested company turned to B-end business for game distribution after facing challenges, indicating that acquiring C-end users seems to be a common dilemma across the industry.

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