【Sorted】Wallet for over 1 billion unbanked people / First crypto asset wallet designed for KaiOS feature phone users / $1.5M seeded from Tether / @sortedwallet
Wallet for people without high-end smartphones.
Good morning.
Mitsui from web3 researcher.
Today we researched "Sorted".
🔵What is Sorted?
💰Seeded $1.5M from Tether
💬 How to face emerging marketsHow to Face the Emerging Markets
🔵What is Sorted?
"Sorted" is a More than 1 billion unbanked and underbanked people in Africa and South Asiato bring financial inclusion through web3, a project that will bring financial inclusion to more than 1 billion unbanked and underbanked people in Africa and South Asia.
Specifically, we offer the first crypto asset wallet designed for KaiOS feature phone users called the "Sorted Wallet".This allows users to securely and easily store, send, and receive their digital assets without having to own a high-end smartphone.
KaiOS is the world's third largest mobile operating system after Android and iOS, KaiOS brings the best features of smartphones to affordable feature phone devices with the goal of bridging the information divide in emerging markets such as Africa, India, and Pakistan.
The current web3 wallet is only available if you have a high-end smartphone.However, it is the estimated 1 billion people without bank accounts who really need access to finance.
We provide wallets to such people and offer them the ability to send money across borders, hedge risk with stablecoin, on/off ramps, invest in cryptos, and secure revenue such as staking.We currently support three blockchains: the Ethereum Main Network, Polygon Mainnet, and Tron Mainnet.Each network supports its native currencies, ETH, POL, and TRX, respectively, as well as stablecoins such as USDT.
💰Seeded $1.5M from Tether
The Sorted Wallet was released in 2022 and has been in operation for two years from there.In the process, it announced a $1.5 million seed round of funding from Tether, a USDT issuer, in September 2024.
Tether states that it has the same mission as Tether to promote the wallet in areas where many people do not have bank accounts, and that this investment underscores Tether's commitment to promoting financial inclusion and economic empowerment in financially underserved areas.
With this investment, "Sorted Wallet was born out of the belief that financial empowerment should not depend on owning the latest smartphone, and with Tether's investment, we are making that belief a reality for millions of people in Africa and South Asia.With Tether's investment, we are making that belief a reality for millions of people in Africa and South Asia," said Stephen Browne, CEO of Sorted Wallet.
Regarding the outlook, no detailed roadmap has been released, but the website hinted at an L2 called "Sort L2".They are planning to release an L2 that is gasless, has native yield, and is customized for emerging markets.
Other feature updates are in the works, including support for local languages and releases on Cloud Phone.
💬How to face the emerging markets
The last is a consideration.
The "Sorted Wallet" is not particularly new in terms of functionality, but I see tremendous potential in this project.Business is still easier to penetrate if it solves a problem.It takes longer to penetrate a business that does not have existing practices, but when it does, the impact is greater.
It is often called the leapfrog phenomenon, and we believe that this is likely to happen in emerging economies with respect to web3.You may be able to have a web3 wallet before you have a bank account and no longer need a bank account to complete your transactions.
However, I don't think it will be a big business right now due to income issues to begin with, but there is certainly a big market sleeping that could become the next China or India.
Personally, when I research web3 projects, and even in my own subconscious mind, in most cases, global expansion = Asia and Europe (especially the U.S.), excluding emerging markets such as Africa.
This is the same thing that happens in the web2 world, so I don't think it is a bad thing, but I can't say that there is no possibility of losing opportunities by unconsciously excluding them from the list of options.
Therefore, I felt that if we were to expand globally with the web3 project, it would be better to verbalize which countries we would attack without using the abstract word "global.Emerging markets and the U.S. market are completely different to attack and have different targets, so they can only be attacked with completely different products.
For me personally, I am also strongly interested in contexts like ReFi, so I still wanted to find out what the current situation is in emerging countries and how I can reach them.
This was my research for Sorted!
🔗Reference/image credit: HP / X
Disclaimer：I carefully examine and write the information that I research, but since it is personally operated and there are many parts with English sources, there may be some paraphrasing or incorrect information. Please understand. Also, there may be introductions of Dapps, NFTs, and tokens in the articles, but there is absolutely no solicitation purpose. Please purchase and use them at your own risk.
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mitsui
A web3 researcher. Operating the newsletter "web3 Research" delivered in five languages around the world.
Contact
The author is a web3 researcher based in Japan. If you have a project that is interested in expanding to Japan, please contact the following:
Telegram：@mitsui0x
*Please note that this newsletter translates articles that are originally in Japanese. There may be translation mistakes such as mistranslations or paraphrasing, so please understand in advance.