Coral raises $20 million to develop executable NFT wallet

Coral, a Solana-based developer, has completed a $20 million strategic funding round to build a wallet for NFTs, a Coindesk report said.

Called the Backpack, it will be the company’s first “flagship product.” This product will specifically work with executable NFTs. NFTs are typically digital assets with underlying smart contracts that prove ownership. An executable NFT makes it so that the user owns the right to execute a tokenized computer code, which makes it so that the user can launch an application. It can simplify onboarding, which is often a pain point for crypto.

Armani Ferrante, Coral’s founder, said decentralized ownership goes back to smart contracts and evolves through largely centralized things like apps and websites. The point of the backpack is to decentralize the UI layer.

“We can go from smart contracts, move up the stack to the UI layer, where we can have decentralized ownership of code and provide all the developer tools to make it happen,” Ferrante said. “Backpack acts as the original system, analogous to the iPhone, that allows people to use and interact with all these applications in a natural and safe way.”

The backpack has rolled out a private beta from Monday (September 26).

PYMNTS has written that NFTs can also be used in house purchases with the escrow accounts.

Read more: Blockchain-based smart contracts could cut escrow costs, prevent mortgage fraud

This can leverage one of the core features of the smart contracts, where two people agree on a sale, where the buyer locks ether into a smart contract that pays automatically when the conditions are met. They can also be set up so that the funds are returned if the conditions are not met in time.

Home buyers pay an average of 1% to 2% of the purchase price of the home – so buying a $250,000 home can cost $2,500 to $5,000 for a middleman who only really holds the buyer’s down payment until the terms of the sale are met.

Altisource, a service provider in the real estate and mortgage industry, said the security of blockchain could reduce the need for middlemen.

New PYMNTS study: How consumers use digital banks

A PYMNTS survey of 2,124 US consumers shows that while two-thirds of consumers have used FinTechs for some aspect of banking, only 9.3% call them their primary bank.