The team behind it has raised approximately $90 million, with investors including PayPal Ventures, Tiger Global, and others.
Written by: KarenZ, Foresight News
In Web3, issues such as blockchain ecosystem fragmentation, low capital efficiency, and lack of automated trust still exist. Against this backdrop, Newton Protocol is dedicated to building a verifiable automated system for the on-chain economy.
Newton enables users to delegate agents to perform on-chain operations through verifiable automation (combining TEE trusted execution environments and zero-knowledge proofs, ZKP), while ensuring that actions comply with preset rules. This article will explore four aspects: an introduction to Newton, the team and funding background, operational mechanisms, and how to participate.
What is Newton Protocol? What is its background?
Newton Protocol is an infrastructure jointly developed by Magic and the Magic Newton Foundation, aimed at introducing a verifiable automation layer for the on-chain economy. Newton ensures that every agent's operation is executed within the boundaries set by the user and is encrypted and verified through the combination of trusted execution environments (TEEs) and zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs).
Magic Labs, the team behind Newton, was established in May 2018. Magic Labs has eliminated the complexity of seed phrases and browser plugins through embedded wallets, allowing ordinary users to easily enter the Web3 world.
Magic Labs was co-founded by engineers Sean Li and Jaemin Jin from the University of Waterloo in Canada.
Sean Li: serves as CEO of Magic, previously co-founded Kitematic (later acquired by Docker and developed into Docker Desktop, used by millions of developers monthly).
Jaemin Jin: serves as Chief Product Officer of Magic, previously worked as a software engineer at Uber from September 2015 to June 2018, and also spent 10 months as a software engineer on the Apple Siri team.
Magic states that its team members include talents from technology and crypto companies such as Coinbase, OpenSea, and Alchemy.
Since its inception, Magic has primarily focused on embedded wallets and API wallets, with its SDK capable of being integrated into any web or mobile application, facilitating passwordless authentication, non-custodial wallet-as-a-service, customizable embedded wallet widget UI, and compatibility with over 30 blockchains. As of April 2025, Magic claims to have integrated over 50 million wallets and supports wallet applications for Polymarket, WalletConnect, Helium, Immutable, and others.
In terms of funding, Magic has raised approximately $90 million in total.
In July 2021, Magic completed a $27 million Series A funding round led by Northzone, with participation from Tiger Global, Placeholder, SV Angel, Digital Currency Group, CoinFund, and Cherubic, among others. Angel investors include Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, former Coinbase CTO Balaji Srinivasan, former Adidas vice president Ben Pruess, Vercel CEO Guillermo Rauch, GitHub CTO Jason Warner, and AngelList co-founder Naval Ravikant.
At the end of May 2023, Magic announced the completion of a $52 million strategic funding round led by PayPal Ventures, with participation from Cherubic, Synchrony, KX, Northzone, and Volt Capital.
How does Newton operate?
The operation of Newton Protocol involves participants such as users, developers, operators, and validators, as well as components like smart accounts, zkPermissions, and execution coordinators.
The following is the operational flow of Newton:
Developers build automated agents and package them as containerized applications: Using the Newton SDK and zkML framework, they define the logic, constraints, and interfaces for agents to interact with users and protocols, converting their off-chain services into verifiable agents.
Users initiate requests: Users submit automated intent orders.
Order matching and task assignment: The execution coordinator matches the user's automated intent with operators through a limit order book mechanism, selecting suitable operators to execute the tasks.
Operators execute tasks: After accepting the task, operators execute the defined automation logic off-chain, using TEEs (trusted execution environments) to ensure trusted computation, or running zero-knowledge proof circuit machine learning model agents, embedding verifiable execution directly into zero-knowledge proofs (ZKP). Upon task completion, operators generate and submit TEE proofs and ZKPs.
Result verification and execution: TEE authentication and ZKP are verified on-chain; if successful, approved operations are executed through a restricted session key, completing the task and updating relevant states. If unsuccessful, the task is rejected, and the operator may face economic penalties.
Reputation system update: Based on the operator's execution history, task success rate, and user feedback, the operator's reputation is updated. Well-performing operators will gain better reputations, attracting more user orders, while poorly performing operators may face economic losses and reputation decline.
According to Newton, its three core components are:
1. Smart Accounts: Utilizing standards such as ERC-4337 and EIP-7702 to ensure user wallet security, supporting fine-grained and revocable permission authorization in an encrypted manner. Users can safely delegate operational authority to automated agents through policy-based delegation without giving up their private keys.
2. zkPermissions: A zero-knowledge proof permission system, where each session key is bound to a zero-knowledge circuit zkPermissions, capable of encoding automation rules. Core permission types covered include:
Data-based execution conditions: Execute trades only when on-chain sentiment data is bullish; advanced trading strategies such as golden crosses, slippage, liquidity conditions, Gas settings, and even conditions where inflation rates are below 2% after CPI data is released can be set.
Risk checks: For example, volatility-gated execution, setting up oversold buy executions, and price difference-triggered limit orders.
Volume, frequency, and time limits: For example, setting a maximum number of trades per day, and maximum volume per trade.
Enforcing baseline session key permissions for each agent, including common permission types such as spending limits, expiration dates, and token allowlists.
3. Execution Coordinator: Acts as a decentralized automated task marketplace, matching user intents with operators and verifying the correctness of executions.
In summary, Newton Protocol transforms automation into verifiable on-chain primitives, combining the efficiency of TEEs and the verifiability of ZKPs, providing new infrastructure for the integration of AI agents and DeFi, and promoting the development of a programmable economy and user-driven on-chain ecosystem.
How to interact?
- Earn points on the portal at https://www.magicnewton.com/portal/rewards, with earning methods including:
Rolling dice;
Clearing minefield games;
Social tasks (side quests).
Register for the Newton App (https://newton.xyz/app) and complete agent tasks. It is important to note that currently, it is not recommended to deposit large amounts of funds, as the Newton App only supports fund inflow and not outflow.
Post related high-quality content on Twitter. The Newton Foundation will allocate 0.75% of its token supply to the Kaito community as rewards, with 0.5% allocated for quality yapping and successful referrals, and 0.25% distributed to the broader Kaito community (stakers, holders, yappers) based on community milestone achievements.
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