Gelato

Gelato is a Web3 infrastructure and Rollup-as-a-Service (RaaS) platform providing smart wallet infrastructure, paymasters, bundlers, and custom Layer 2 chain deployment across more than 100 blockchains. The platform has processed over 1 billion transactions and secures more than $600M in total value.

Company background and funding

Founded in 2019 and headquartered in Zug, Switzerland, Gelato operates with a team of around 64 employees. The project has raised $23.2M in total funding across multiple rounds. Investors include Hack VC, Dragonfly Capital, Galaxy Digital, and IOSG Ventures. In September 2020, Gelato completed a $1.2M seed round led by IOSG Ventures and Galaxy Digital, followed by an $11M Series A led by Dragonfly Capital in September 2021. In October 2024, the team raised an $11M Series A extension led by Hack VC alongside announcing its infrastructure partnership for Kraken's Layer 2 network, Ink.

Core services and architecture

Gelato provides developer tools centered on transaction abstraction and chain deployment. Its account abstraction stack includes ERC-4337 and EIP-7702 paymasters and bundlers, enabling applications to sponsor user gas fees or accept fee payments in arbitrary ERC-20 tokens. Relaying tooling such as Turbo Relayer supports sub-300ms confirmation times with pre-confirmations on compatible networks like Ink. Through its Rollup-as-a-Service suite, developers can launch Based, ZK, and optimistic rollups using modular execution frameworks and data availability layers such as Celestia.

Track record and ecosystem adoption

Following its initial GEL token launch in September 2021, Gelato expanded its infrastructure across ecosystems including Ethereum, Arbitrum, Optimism, Base, and Polygon. Over 4.5 million daily transactions route through its systems. Gelato serves as the core rollup infrastructure provider behind Kraken's Ink chain, which exceeded $100M in total value locked and 70 million transactions within its launch cycle. Applications such as Avantis, Rainbow, Infinex, and MegaETH use Gelato for sponsored gas, airdrop distributions, and account abstraction flows.

Operational risks and trade-offs

Using Gelato involves outsourcing relayer and rollup operations to a specialized third-party provider, creating reliance on Gelato's infrastructure availability. Outages or latency spikes in bundler networks can delay user transactions or gas sponsorships. Projects launching custom rollups through managed providers also face potential vendor lock-in if migrating off proprietary orchestration stacks, while token-governed components linked to the GEL utility token can introduce governance or economic interdependencies.