For a developer building a cross-chain application, the operational overhead is a known tax. You need to source and manage native tokens,ETH for Ethereum, MATIC for Polygon, AVAX for Avalanche,just to pay the gas fees that let a transaction happen. The friction is a barrier to wider adoption, and Tychi Labs, a New Zealand-based startup founded in 2024, is making a straightforward bet: eliminate that complexity entirely [F6S, 2024].
Their proposed solution is a Universal Gas Fee (UGF) system, which promises to let users and developers pay all transaction fees across any supported blockchain using a single base asset, like ETH [Tychi, 2026]. It’s a classic infrastructure wedge, aiming to sit beneath the application layer and handle the messy, multi-currency plumbing so builders don’t have to.
A bet on usability as a wedge
The product claim is specific and addresses a tangible pain point. If the technology works as described, a user could initiate a transaction on Polygon using tokens in an Ethereum wallet, with the gas fee automatically deducted in ETH instead of requiring them to first acquire and hold MATIC. For Tychi Labs, the bet is that this usability improvement is not just a nice-to-have but a fundamental unlock for more smooth multichain applications. The company positions itself in the Web3 usability layer, explicitly focused on solving friction for the next wave of users and developers [F6S, 2024]. It’s a pragmatic approach, targeting a known bottleneck rather than inventing a new use case.
The team and its crypto-native backing
Founders Rudr Rishi and Yash Singh bring a blend of entrepreneurial and technical depth to the early-stage venture. Rishi, based in Sydney, is described as a Web3 entrepreneur and early Bitcoin adopter with a track record dating to 2014 [F6S, 2024]. Singh, the New Delhi-based CTO, is an Engineering Physics graduate from IIT Indore focused on making crypto usable [F6S, 2024]. The team has at least five members, according to their profile [F6S, 2024]. More telling than the undisclosed funding amount is the named investor: STON.fi DEX, a decentralized exchange built on the TON Blockchain [F6S, 2024]. This is a signal of crypto-native validation, suggesting the thesis resonates with operators deep in the space who understand the gas problem firsthand.
| Role | Name | Background |
|---|---|---|
| Co-founder | Rudr Rishi | Sydney-based entrepreneur, Web3 experience since 2014 [F6S, 2024]. |
| CTO & Co-founder | Yash Singh | IIT Indore graduate in Engineering Physics, focused on developer usability [F6S, 2024]. |
| Chief Investment Officer | Nitin Kaushik | Associated with Tychi Limited, involved in investment strategy [RocketReach]. |
The execution gauntlet ahead
The ambition is clear, but the path is lined with significant technical and go-to-market hurdles that Tychi Labs must now navigate. The company is pre-product and pre-traction, with no public deployments, customer names, or detailed technical whitepapers available. Building a reliable, secure gas abstraction layer that integrates with multiple, evolving blockchain virtual machines is a profound engineering challenge. Furthermore, success depends on achieving critical mass of chain integrations and developer adoption to become a standard, not just another optional API.
- Technical risk. The core promise requires deep, low-level integration with each blockchain's fee market and security model. A flaw or exploit in the bridging or relayer mechanism could be catastrophic.
- Commercial risk. As an infrastructure play, the monetization model and sales motion are unproven. Will they charge per transaction, a SaaS fee to developers, or take a spread on gas? The answer is unclear.
- Competitive risk. While no direct competitors are named in the sources, the space for cross-chain infrastructure is crowded. Larger, well-funded players and existing wallet providers could build similar functionality, making differentiation and market capture difficult.
For Tychi Labs, the ideal customer profile is not the end-user but the development team at a crypto-native startup or a DeFi protocol. These are builders who are actively wrestling with multichain complexity and for whom a simpler gas management API could accelerate development cycles and improve user onboarding. The realistic competitive set extends beyond any single startup to the roadmap of major wallet providers like MetaMask, blockchain-native infrastructure firms like Biconomy, and the cross-chain messaging protocols themselves, any of which could decide to own this abstraction layer. Tychi’s window is to move faster and ship a more elegant solution before those entrenched players do.
Sources
- [F6S, 2024] Tychi Labs Company Profile | https://www.f6s.com/company/tychi-labs
- [Tychi, 2026] Tychi Wallet Team Page | https://tychiwallet.com/know-your-team
- [RocketReach] Nitin Kaushik Contact Information | https://rocketreach.co/nitin-kaushik-email_829304541
- [LinkedIn] Rudr Rishi Profile | https://au.linkedin.com/in/rishi-rudr
- [LinkedIn] Yash Singh Profile | https://www.linkedin.com/in/singhyashh/