Tria’s $20m beta surge: How a self-custodial neobank is redefining onchain finance

In just three months, Tria, a self-custodial neobank built on BestPath AVS, has processed $20 million in onchain volume, outpacing early competitors by 13x.

With 50,000+ users and seamless cross-chain payments, CEO Vijit Katta shares how Tria is reshaping digital asset banking and paving the way for a frictionless, user-controlled financial future.

Tria processed $20 million in onchain volume during a closed beta — 13× more than EtherFi’s card over the same period. What is driving such unusually strong early real-world adoption?

Katta: Simplicity and breadth are the two biggest drivers. Most crypto cards still force users into narrow spend paths or complex account structures that limit day-to-day utility. Tria is built for everyday spend at scale. You can top up with 1,000+ assets, maintain full self-custody, and use it in 150+ countries where Visa or Mastercard is accepted. It behaves like a real global bank card, not a crypto workaround.

You hit your first $1 million daily spend on November 19. Did organic user behavior drive that milestone, or did a specific event push Tria over the threshold?

Katta: It was a combination of organic growth and deliberate activation. Usage had been trending up steadily as more users made Tria their daily card. We also ran targeted value-add campaigns for cardholders. During the holiday shopping season, we launched Tria Treasure, where one purchase per day could be refunded. It was a simple way to reward early users, and it meaningfully accelerated both activity and retention.

Why do you think consumers are suddenly ready to use onchain assets for real-world purchases?

Katta: Because the experience finally feels normal. People do not want to manage bridges, gas, or chain switching just to buy something in the real world. With Tria, users can top up and spend, and BestPath handles the cross-chain execution in the background. When you remove the operational friction, onchain assets stop feeling like something you hold and start feeling like something you can use. Fees that are often lower than traditional cards make that decision even easier.

You manage automatic cross-chain execution without bridges, gas prompts, or UX friction — all while remaining fully self-custodial. What was the most challenging part of building that?

Katta: The hardest part was delivering payments-grade reliability while coordinating highly complex cross-chain execution behind the scenes. Turning a single user action into seamless, bridge-free, gasless execution across fragmented ecosystems isn’t just an engineering challenge — it’s an economic, security, and coordination challenge.

Each chain has its own quirks — different finality times, fee models, liquidity gaps, and failure modes. Abstracting away all of that while still staying self-custodial was incredibly difficult. Most systems break when forced to deal with multiple chains in one flow — we had to build Tria so it thrives in that environment. BestPath solves this by pre-computing optimal routes and powering a permissionless solver marketplace. PathFinders compete using relayers, liquidity routers, and fast-finality layers, with routes ranked in real time by cost, speed, and reliability. To keep it fully self-custodial while enabling multi-step automation, we built onchain permissioning + TSS-based execution — so users never touch bridges, gas, or token approvals.

It’s what makes Tria feel simple on the surface — even though under the hood, it’s solving some of the hardest problems in Web3.

Self-custody is historically intimidating for mainstream users. How does Tria make self-custodial banking feel as simple and safe as a traditional neobank?

Katta: We designed Tria to feel like a modern banking app first, not a Web3 product. The difference is that the user stays in control. You hold the keys, you can move your assets at any time, and you are never locked into a single platform. Tria is the interface that makes self-custody practical, giving users a simple way to spend, earn, and trade while keeping ownership and decision-making with the user.

Tria’s 50,000+ users and 5,000 ambassadors are unusually engaged for a product this early. What have you learned about the user behaviors driving this engagement?

Katta: People have wanted real-world utility for onchain assets for years, but the products were either too clunky or too custodial. When you give users something that is genuinely easy, transparent, and puts them in control, they do not just try it, they adopt it. The ambassadors are not engaged because of hype, they are engaged because the product creates daily habits and gives them something worth sharing. Our ambassadors promote Tria because they understand the full vision and know this is just the beginning.

Your recent round saw $66.7M in commitments for a modest $1M allocation with over 4,500 applicants. What does this level of oversubscription say about where onchain finance is heading?

Katta: It is a signal that the market is shifting toward utility. Stablecoins have proven product-market fit, but users and investors want more than a stablecoin wallet. They want a financial product where they can keep exposure, stay self-custodial, and spend, trade and earn all in one place. That is what we are building, and the level of demand reflects how ready the market is for onchain finance that actually works for consumers.

What makes Tria fundamentally different from previous crypto cards and neobanks — from Coinbase Card to Wirex to EtherFi’s product?

Katta: Tria isn’t just another crypto card. It’s a fully self-custodial execution layer — not bolted onto a wallet or restricted to a single ecosystem, but architected from the ground up to turn onchain assets into real-world spending power. While others require bridging, swapping, or giving up custody, Tria’s BestPath abstracts all of that. It intelligently routes cross-chain transactions in the background, so users can tap and pay like they would with any traditional card — no gas fees, no friction, no compromise on control.

But what truly sets Tria apart is what’s under the hood. We’re not just building a neobank — we’ve built the infrastructure beneath it. BestPath and CoreSDKs form a programmable, chain-agnostic foundation that powers everything from payments and trading to yield, lending, and beyond. This is what makes Tria scalable, composable, and fundamentally different: a self-custodial financial operating system, built on infrastructure no other crypto card or neobank has.

How do you plan to scale globally while keeping users in full control of their assets and avoiding traditional custodial models?

Katta: We scale by keeping the product consistent and reliable while adapting the rails to each market. Spending habits and regulations vary, but the core demand is universal: people want global access with control. We will keep expanding country by country as quickly as we can while maintaining the same self-custodial guarantees and user experience standards. In fact, we are launching three new countries this week: Argentina, the UK, and Nigeria.

Your early traction suggests onchain banking might finally be a real, mainstream category. What does this mean for the future of consumer finance over the next five years?

Katta: It means the default financial experience will become more open, more programmable, and meaningfully cheaper. Onchain rails can reduce friction and fees, expand access to yield and global markets, and give users more direct ownership of their money. Over the next five years, we believe Tria will be the leading onchain consumer finance platform where anyone can save, trade, spend, and borrow, not just crypto natives.