UK web3 infrastructure firm Pimlico raised $4.2 million in a seed financing round led by a16z crypto. The company said it intends to use the funding to expand operations.

Pimlico aims to augment Ethereum through smart accounts via ERC-4337, a token standard that allows for account abstraction, with the ultimate goal of making Ethereum easier to use and add more ways to execute transactions on the network. 

"Smart accounts tackle many limitations the Ethereum protocol has hardcoded, namely that each native account is linked to a single private key. Smart accounts introduce completely customizable logic, unlocking capabilities such as gas sponsorship, gas payments with ERC-20 tokens, better account recovery, spending thresholds, FaceID or passkey verification, among many other …