Magic Labs Sells Wallet Business to Kraken Parent Payward

thedefiant.io 1 h

Exchange

Magic Labs, the company behind the embedded wallet infrastructure used by apps including Polymarket and WalletConnect, sold its wallet business to Payward, the parent company of Kraken, and is rebranding itself as Newton Labs. Co-founder and CEO Sean Li announced the two decisions Monday in a post on X.

"First, we've sold our wallet business to Payward, Inc., the parent company of Kraken. This is an asset sale," Li wrote. The two companies remain separate and independent, and from August 1, 2026, wallet customers will be serviced by Payward. Li said customers need to take no action and that affected vendors and counterparties are being notified directly. The post did not disclose deal terms.

Magic Labs launched its embedded wallet, a login that creates a wallet invisibly behind a web2-style sign-in, in 2018. Since then more than 60 million wallets have been created on its infrastructure, supporting more than 200,000 developers across projects from Polymarket to WalletConnect to Naver, according to Li.

Magic Labs Pivot

The second decision is a strategic pivot. Magic Labs is becoming Newton Labs to concentrate on Newton Protocol, which Li described as "the authorization layer for onchain finance." The protocol "checks every transaction against policy before it settles," enforcing controls such as risk limits and compliance rules that Li argued smart contracts alone cannot see or apply.

Newton Protocol is live in production with VaultKit, a product that enforces compliance, security, identity, and risk controls on DeFi vaults in collaboration with partners including Redstone, Webacy, and VaultsFYI. Dennis Won, who has led Newton's engineering, is now co-founder and CTO, Li said.

"Onboarding the world was part one of the adoption mission. Securing the capital that follows is part two," Li wrote in a separate summary post.

The deal continues an acquisition run by Payward, which has recently agreed to buy Hong Kong payments firm Reap and U.S. derivatives exchange Bitnomial.

Newton's mainnet beta is now live, according to Li.