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The Aquarium ft. @WalletConnect: The Onchain UX Ecosystem🎙️
Recorded: April 23, 2025 Duration: 1:03:27Space Recording
Short Summary
WalletConnect is making waves in the crypto space with its recent token launch, achieving over 250 million connections and announcing a grants program to foster community growth. The introduction of Smart Sessions is set to enhance user experience, while strategic partnerships are being formed to decentralize its network.
Full Transcription
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. All right, all right.
We got Pedro up on stage here. Let me just actually have a feedback.
What's going on, Pedro? How are you?
Good. How's everyone?
Good, man. Good. We are excited to have you. Welcome, everyone. This is a special episode of The Aquarium.
We usually start our Socratic-style panels at noon.
our Socratic style panels at noon.
However, we are opening a bit earlier today
because we want to get Pedro in
and hear about what Wallet Connect has been cooking
on the token side of things.
And yeah, I'm going to Dubai tomorrow for Token 2049.
If anyone's going to be there, I'd love to connect in person.
I'll be there for about nine days.
So multiple events happening, token. There's a SUI boot camp, base camp, something like that.
SUI boot camp happening. And there's one more event. So plenty of side events. If you guys are
new to the scene and want to go to some side events, shoot me a DM. I'm happy to share some
with you. Otherwise, let's get started we're gonna be yeah so we're
combining kind of the aquarium and and a promotion a paid promotion from wallet
connect and putting it out there and we are excited to hear more about what
Pedro has to talk about so Pedro before we get started give us a quick background
into yourself how you got into crypto how you got to working for Wallet Connect, and then give us a brief, for people that don't know what Wallet Connect is, give us a brief outline before we hop into the meat and the token and everything else.
use wallet connect maybe you have and didn't even notice but what you can imagine is every time you
go into an app the number one thing every time you want to go on chain is you need a wallet and
this might be a wallet that's either on desktop or mobile and wallet connect is the universal
standard for connecting especially mobile wallets but but not exclusively, to any application, whether it's on Ethereum, Solana, and it really exists across many, many popular blockchains.
I started in crypto as an engineer.
I was building a wallet back in 2017.
Things were very different back then.
There were very few wallets.
So it wasn't like there was a burning need for an actual standard that actually supports all wallets.
But there was definitely a very unfair and not competitive landscape. Like when you actually go into Ethereum in 2017,
you either have to use MetaMask
or you don't really have an option.
And that didn't feel right.
And obviously, as I was building a wallet back in that day,
I really wanted something that was more neutral,
more competitive, and kind of just embraced innovation.
And WalletConnect the next year is something
that I came up that wrote the prototype, tweeted about it.
People got really excited about it.
And then it just turned into a movement.
Like, it really is this growing ecosystem that
has hundreds of different wallet developers,
thousands of app developers, and even better, it has millions of users.
And today we support more than 250 million connections across 40 million users.
It's a humongous project and we decided last year that we needed to decentralize.
And that's when we announced the token and the WalletConnect network.
And now the token is launched, the ecosystem is growing and really happy to see how these seven years went.
Okay, so Pedro, first of all, congratulations on all the success.
I've obviously heard of WalletConnect having been in the industry around the same amount of time.
So, in what instances are people using Wallet Connect and they don't even know it?
Yeah, for example, I always use this use case because I've seen a lot of people come across Wallet Connect through this way.
come across Wall Connect through this way.
If you, for example, are on your phone
and you end up looking on Twitter
and someone just posts an airdrop
or someone posts a brand new app that you want to try
and you end up clicking the link to go to that app,
and what Twitter does, and most apps nowadays do this,
is they actually open the link inside of their own app.
So let's say, for example, today a lot of people
are talking about Zora.
And if you open Zora, it's going to open inside
of your Twitter app.
And then it's going to tell you, connect my wallet.
And obviously, Twitter doesn't have a wallet.
So how are you going to connect to a wallet that
lives outside of Twitter?
And Wallet Connect creates this link
where you could actually go and use a wallet outside
of another application and connect externally.
And this is supported by an end-to-end encrypted messaging
layer that the network provides.
And when you actually are inside of Twitter,
you go into a wallet, and then you approve the connection.
You go back to the Twitter, and the connection is still live,
and it's actually working smoothly.
And a lot of times, people don't realize because they say,
well, I use Metaask on my phone or I use Trust Wallet or OKX.
And all of these wallets are using Wallet Connect.
So it is really something that kind of happens behind the scenes.
And that's why I use a lot of the times the analogy that Wallet Connect is building for wallets with Visa built for banks and it's really this universal global standard for connecting. Brilliant I actually had
no idea I that my my experience with Wallet Connect is when I'm trying to I use Rabi wallet
and so when I'm trying to connect to adapt Wallet Connect is one of the options however i never click on it because it
it seems like when i do it's it's a bunch of um it routes me to different i guess plugins or
applications that i'm not super familiar with or if i am familiar with them i just have never used
them for wallet purposes so that's really interesting how big is the team pedro i've always
how big is the team pedro i've always worked i've always wondered about how big some of these wallet
i've always wondered about how big some of these wallet teams are
teams are uh well yeah i mean technically we're not a wallet so i don't know how big are the
wallets i miss both there yeah i caught myself as a as a as an infrastructure project that we've
been building this we've grown a lot uh maybe less than people imagine.
Across the Rion team and the Wallachnick Foundation, we're 50 people.
So it's quite sizable and definitely is quite a journey to go from a solo founder project
to now having all of these talented people working by my side
and really making this a much better on-chain world.
So you guys recently launched a token, and I know that's one of the main things we want to talk about today.
Tell me about that. Tell me why a token. Tell me how the distribution looks.
Was there a pre-sale? Was there a private sale? Was it all airdrops based on how much people used it?
Just A to Z.
Well, the thing is, like most people, they end up launching tokens either a year after they fundraise or a year after they launched.
launched, but we actually really tried to make sure that we had the best experience
for users and at the same time, a very performant and reliable infrastructure.
So that meant we spent seven years just really, really heads down building and making sure
that they had a lot of traction.
But then obviously there's a lot of growth pains.
And now we actually,
we're really happy where we are today
and like having like so many people using this
and relying on WallaConnect.
But it got to a point where we realized,
how are we going to scale this?
How are we going to make WallaConnect
like a global network if it's all operated by one company?
It really didn't make sense.
And we even had, back in 2022, we had some outages where there was just so much traffic.
And even in 2023, there was some controversy about
Walletknack being centralized.
So we basically had so much experience building this
that we realized that it actually would be incredibly
easy to onboard.
There's so much goodwill.
There's so many good partners.
They're just very willing to run nodes.
And after going through many different iterations of the white paper, we ended up publishing it in September.
And we had the first eight node operators.
And if you have a network with all of these node operators providing the service, you also need to incentivize them.
And this is where the token really comes in.
The token allows you to provide rewards for the nodes.
It also allows us to give rewards to the wallets
because wallets have been super supportive of this network
and they haven't received anything in return.
And also the community.
We did an airdrop back in November.
Then we did some public sales in February through CoinList and BitGit
and several other campaigns like Layer 3, Myriad Markets.
We really grew the community of token holders until the launch around 300,000.
And out of those 300,000, we had 60,000 were staking.
So it's quite of an achievement.
And we're really happy with the launch this month.
You said there was FUD around it being centralized.
So does that mean that Wallet Connect is decentralized?
And if so, can you go into that place?
Yeah, I mean mean it really depends
on your definition of decentralized um i do think that's at this stage shut down can it be shut down
or revoked can it be shut down over a vote um it depends what that vote means but realistically
revoked
so for example
even when Tornado Cash was
sanctioned it was the front end
UI that was sanctioned so you could
still technically interact with the contract
or with the DAP
it was a bit more complicated
yeah so
if you go back two years ago yes it could have been shut down through sanctions.
Now it's not.
Now it's actually, we have 60 nodes, and we're likely going to even grow this to even have double of those nodes.
It's also essentially reliable in a way that, let's say that the foundation disappears today, the network will continue to operate and it has all of the mechanisms to actually sustain itself.
fee system so that like app developers they would actually pay not users app developers
and then that would actually kick off into the long term but even if that weren't to happen like
anyone can build on it that's actually the one of the most important things about decentralization
in my opinion is that like if someone wants to improve your system, they should be empowered in order to do that.
And all the tools and resources are available there.
And that's really important for us.
I couldn't agree more.
Tell me about the nodes.
What are the requirements for running a node?
Yeah, so we described this in the white paper.
And basically, one interesting thing about the Wallachnik staking is that you actually have to pick a locking period.
And this essentially means that when you actually stake, you can't just stake and unstake whenever you feel like it.
You actually have to unstake only when the locking period actually expires.
have to unstake only when the locking period actually expires and that means that for example
node operators they're actually required to stake it for a year they have to put a hundred thousand
tokens for a year and that gives them like a staking power and the staking power would be
25 000. so as long as another operators have 25 000 staking power they be 25,000. So as long as node operators have 25,000 staking power,
they would be active.
And if they do that, then they are illegible to it.
But now, because we were trying to make sure
that it wasn't affecting the performance and reliability
of the user experience, we are currently onboarding
node operators one by one. It's not
fully permissionless in a way that
you can't just go right now,
buy 100,000 tokens
of WCT
and stake them and become
another operator automatically.
That would be in the future roadmap
where we transition into this
permissionless world.
Are you guys going gonna be at token
in dubai for people that want to connect with you yeah yeah uh i'll be there and uh other people from
our team will also be there so definitely happy to connect and i'll be at the token 2049 also at ifdubuy. So, yeah, I'm going to make sure to pay a visit
and maybe drop me a message if you want.
Absolutely.
Tell me about the upcoming developments.
What milestones are you guys hoping to reach this year
and what's it going to take to get over those barriers?
Well, some things that we have already achieved and are currently in progress is like with the governance, we have established the UX console.
And the UX console essentially is a very core working group that will be creating the proposals.
So some DAOs work a little bit differently where you actually have the community just throw proposals and then they're being voted.
We actually took a more pragmatic approach where you actually have a curated group of people who are essentially, call it advisors, experts, who actually create
the proposals and then the community votes on them. It's like a mini parliament. We're going
to announce the UX console members very soon. On top of that, we're also launching our token. So our token right now is live on OP Mainnet or Optimism, as many people know it.
And we're actually expanding the token to actually exist on other chains.
So that means that the token can actually be transferred around.
But it does not mean that, for example, the Wallachnex staking will work in every chain.
It just means that the token itself can live in any chain.
And on top of that, we also have some product features coming up.
A lot of people have already heard me talk about Smart Sessions.
Smart Sessions is a new feature the Wallet Connect provides
that allows you to actually connect your wallet
and never have to approve a transaction ever again.
So when you connect your wallet,
imagine a world where the app just works without you having to go back to the wallet to a
proverter thing. And finally, the fees that I always mention is a big project that will take
a long time. So when it comes to the kind of the seamless integration of not having to approve transactions, are there any risks that come with that?
going to be added risks.
I mean, you could think of it as, for example,
when you use a smart session, you are using essentially
a smart contract to manage your wallets.
And anyone that has used a smart contract wallets,
they know that it does come with its added features,
but it also comes with its added risks.
But the people working in these projects are incredibly talented and
we had so many audits going through and I feel very confident that those risks have been addressed
and the Wallachnik network is really really gonna like make this experience even easier
really going to make this experience even easier.
Brilliant. I want to pass it to a couple of our audience members and I'll circle back
with more questions. Aisha, go for it.
Yeah. Thanks, Noah. I have a couple of questions.
I heard you describe WalletConnect as a digital identity solution rather than a financial product with applications extending
beyond apps to places like ATMs, art galleries and even cars. Could you share your vision for
how Wallet Connect can be utilized in these non-financial environments
and any real-world pilots or partnerships underway?
Yeah, that's a great question and this is something that i've talked in the past and i'm glad that you
brought it up uh the reason why i think of wallet connect almost as a digital identity tool rather
than a financial one is because the way it actually works is that it validates signatures from your
wallet and while most of the signatures nowadays
are financially related, it does not
mean that it would be exclusive to the usage of Wallet
Connect.
I think that's one of the interesting things
that I've already experienced.
I mean, I go to a lot of conferences
and I've seen some people actually use Wallet Connect
for events. Basically, you can not only go into an event and verify that you have a ticket,
but you also can go and participate in an event for prizes
where you can scan a QR code with Wallet Connect
and then it verifies your wallet and maybe you can deposit something.
There's always some really interesting interactivity that you can do, but it doesn't really have to like stop there.
Like, like I once did a demo that I was doing a presentation about WalletConnect and then you could like scan the QR code in the actual presentation.
And then you could like vote on topics for the actual presentation, and then you could vote on topics
for people to talk about in the panel.
That was really cool because it was a good non-financial use
case with a lot of Wallet Connect.
I think the coolest thing about it is that it's so universally
compatible with systems that you can basically imagine everything that is connected
to the internet could be connected to a wallet.
And that's why I've also seen community members doing these demos around ATMs with Wallet
Connect or smart art galleries with Wallet Connect.
So it's really cool.
I really like the power of the QR code and the distributed network.
Awesome.
Okay, moving to my next question.
I want to know, are there any plans for WalletConnect to integrate AI or machine learning models
to enable autonomous agents that can enhance WalletConnect dApps, directions, and security?
autonomous agents that can enhance Wallet Connect,
the apps, directions, and security?
Well, technically it's a yes, but also no.
Like, I think there is a big difference
between Wallet Connect Network enabling AI
to have more on-chain features,
but it's not like the actual Wallet Connect network
is adding AI into the actual network.
For example, when I mentioned the smart sessions,
the main motivation for these smart sessions
is to allow people to connect their wallets and basically not
have to always approve transactions
and go between back and forth between the app and the wallet
because that's a very inconvenient user experience. But the added benefit of it is actually, you could actually allow an AI
agent to work for you. They basically could use that smart session, the same one that you use to
connect your wallet, to essentially take operations and transactions on your behalf.
The reason this works is because Smart Sessions actually creates what we call a policy engine.
And this is just a set of rules that you define upfront that says, you can use my wallet, but you
can only do this, this, and that. And if you define these set of rules, then the AI agent now has more power
to act independently
without actually compromising your wallet.
So I think, if anything,
WalletConnect is going to be very powerful
for AI agents in the future
rather than we using agents ourselves.
All right, that makes sense.
Thank you so much for answering all the questions.
By the way, everyone, if you haven't done so already, please retweet the space.
I also see the wallet connect account in the audience.
If you don't mind coming up, I think it's great for optics.
I'll pass it over to Rahmat.
Yeah, thank you.
Can you hear me guys?
Yes, yes we can.
Awesome, awesome.
Okay, I also have a few questions.
Okay, I was wondering since Wallet Connect is an open protocol, how do you plan to further
reduce the risk of phishing attacks, especially as attackers become more sophisticated in
mimicking legitimate DApps and other prompts
i mean we we already had these problems like four years ago and we already addressed them
we call it the the verify or the wallet connect verify basically the way this actually works is
that every time a new developer actually creates an application or even a wallet,
they have to verify the actual domain and user bundle.
These are just small identifiers that actually
gives us more legitimacy.
It's actually quite similar to how the Apple App Store or Google Play works.
Every time you see these applications on the App Store,
they're actually being verified that they're the legitimate ones
so that Apple and Google actually are not showing you fake apps.
And we have a very similar approach.
So what this allows is that then wallets actually have this information served by the
Wallet Connect network, and then they are able to actually provide you with a badge that says,
this is the verified application, or they would show this is an unknown application. And even
we have the ability to detect if a phishing application is trying to mimic another app.
Because what they would do is actually
they would have the wrong URL.
Sometimes it's misspelled or something,
trying to look like the original one.
And this would be flagged in our system as an attack.
And we put a big red warning.
And then all of our wallet partners actually
will notify you that like do not connect to this wallet this is a phishing attack so you could
almost say like it's actually safer to connect your wallet through wallet connect than if you
connect it outside got it got it okay I was also thinking what specific one does the WalletConnect Foundation hold over the
WalletConnect network through WCT tokens?
And can you also explain the role of Reown, this incorporated company?
Yeah.
So Reown used to be called WallaConnect Incorporated
or WallaConnect Inc.
That was the original company and core developer
that built the network.
But obviously, as we decentralized,
we have multiple node operators.
We have 16 right now.
Reown is one of the 16 node operators.
And Reown is today still the main core developer. So all of the upgrades node operators and Rion is today still the main core developer so you know all of the
upgrades that have been published recently and probably will be for the next year or two will
come from the Rion team the foundation on the other hand is the one responsible for launching the
token we have launched the token in November.
We actually work with our partners to make it transferable this month.
So that's why you see so many exchanges trading WCT.
And on top of that, we have a large ecosystem treasury.
This ecosystem treasury is obviously part
of our staking program, which is very important.
We also have some marketing campaigns and educational campaigns.
We also host the WalletCon conference.
It's our annual conference that we highlight all of our partners, specifically wallets and others.
And on top of that, we also will have a grants program.
This is something that is still not completely open.
It's a closed grants program,
but we will have an open grants program later this year.
Great. Great.
We'll have a final thing from me.
I want to know what is your stance on maybe implementing
a standardized security certification or compliance framework
for the wallets or the apps that integrate with wallet connect to maybe reduce the risk for purely
that poorly implemented clients yeah that's a great question honestly we already had this problem
a long time ago and we kind of were trying to navigate uh with the help of our partners to be you know it's a it's
a big relationship that we build over these years and we want to make sure that we are making sure
that everyone is aligned and last year we announced the wallet connect certified program the wallet
next certified program essentially gives the wall wallets certain criteria to how they actually should build their user experience.
If they complete all of these, let's say, tasks, and they actually have actual experience matching our expectations,
they get a badge, which is a certified badge by the Wallach
Network Foundation. And this then gives them like also an opportunity in the Wallach Network to
receive added rewards. So it's a little incentive to make sure that everyone is using the latest
standards, the best user experience, and they have good security guidelines
to provide what is a high quality wallet.
And on top of that, with the WalletMate network,
they would actually get extra rewards for that.
Great, great.
Thank you so much for your time.
It's been really nice chatting with you.
Over to you, Noah.
Thanks, Rahmat.
What is Wallet con and where is it
so wallet con um happens in different places uh we've hosted it in bangkok we've hosted it in
denver um and yeah i mean it changes all the time we try to stay as global as possible so it never has only one place
understood um so one of the things that i i often wonder is is the evm going to reign supreme or
you know are we going to have the svm and solana or eventually Sui come in and take a big portion of the cake?
Is your infrastructure built out to support those ecosystems?
Yeah.
So this actually was part of a massive upgrade of the network around in 2023.
So this was even before we were decentralized in the token.
We went full chain agnostic.
This means that in the past, we actually had to build separate Wallachnets.
And it was incredibly inconvenient.
We had to have a Wallachnets for Ethereum, a Wallachnets for Solana, a Wallachnets for Cosmos, a Wallachnets for Polkadot.
And it made no sense that this worked this way.
So then we actually did this massive upgrade
where we just aggregated all Wallachnets
into one big Wallachnets.
And it was a chain-agnostic version or a multi-chain version.
So now actually, it's designed so beautifully
that even when a new chain shows up that
has a completely different virtual machine,
it actually is supported automatically.
It takes like a couple of hours for any developer to support a new chain and the new Wallachnec network.
Who is going to win?
Honestly, Wallachnec does not believe that there will be one winner.
I think that EVM has its advantages, but I also really like
what Solana is doing.
I think they are very complementary
to each other, and I'm just really
happy to have both of them supported
in the Welcoming network.
I, Pedro,
could not agree more. I think
the future is multi-chain. Benis, what's
going on, brother?
Yeah, doing great, Noah.
Thank you so much for allowing me.
Okay, I have been listening in Pedro,
and I'm really a fan of Wallet Connect.
We have been seeing it in almost everywhere,
almost every wallet.
So I'm curious today about the future of your relay network.
Could we eventually see a sort of premium relay market where DApps pay to use the reliable
relayers?
Like imagine Uniswap wants guaranteed fast messaging so they pay more to high reputation
nodes.
Wouldn't that make Wallet Connect kind of a layer zero economy of its own as well.
Well, this was something that was proposed.
I can't remember.
I think it was like 2022.
And it was really attractive at the time.
It kind of sounded cool.
But the reality is that that's not how developers think about things like even if you
look at for example rpc uh if a developer is picking an rpc provider for their favorite
blockchain they actually don't care so much if you have like a little little extra 100 milliseconds or not, you really need to have 10x or 100x better performance
for things to matter.
And we then also saw there was a big disadvantage,
as I mentioned, to have separate Wallaconic networks.
Before, we had separate Wallaconic networks
for, like I said, different block blockchains so if you then had like
separate wallet connect networks or relayers on top of the network that had like different
performances it just made the whole system more inefficient um so we currently do not have a plan
to do that and i honestly don't see today any reason to have any premium access because the network is really fast and if it gets
any faster it will get faster for everyone okay okay i completely understand that and i i noticed
that wallet connect uses snapshot and discourse for governance which are both off chain so my question is if decisions are being made
off chain like how tokens should work or what upgrades are needed how can we be sure those
decisions actually get enforced on chain and can't be tampered with yeah i mean uh we did this on purpose because we wanted to make sure that, you know, it's like, I mean, I'm comparing it to the Ethereum proof of stake because it's the best example.
Like when Ethereum switched from proof of work to proof of stake, you have to understand that like, it's very hard to make a technical upgrade like this when millions of people are using the network.
There is a lot of
risks of having like things happen on the fly and having the governance directly influence how the
network is going to operate it could cause a lot of risks because then you could potentially have
like an attack where someone actually would create a proposal and then it gets voted and
it passes the proposal and then it shuts down the network.
So we essentially have a security multisig that acts as the last layer of security that
basically says that anything that passes on the snapshot requires five out of seven signatures
to actually be activated and obviously
it really depends but most of the time it's expected that it will be within a week maximum
unless there is any concern around security which hasn't happened to this day anything
that passes the proposal on snapshot will be signed by the security multi-sign.
Okay okay and as we know that we are starting to see AI agents managing wallets and interacting with
dApps without any human clicking buttons. So do you think a Wallet Connect could evolve to
support agent to agent communication? Like is the protocol ready for a future where users aren't even human?
I actually think that from a technical perspective,
there isn't any blockers for that to happen.
There wasn't actually any demand per se, right?
Because when you actually see the benefit of Wallet Connect Network is actually
really to have this human interface, the moment you actually start talking about purely AI to AI
interfaces, usually you know the counterparty. there's a very clear distinction
between how the one AI is going to talk to another AI.
But if there's a big marketplace of AI,
maybe that's where the Wallachnet network
would become really interesting.
So if we had some sort of discovery mechanism where
you could essentially search within a marketplace of apps
and AI, maybe that could start to happen. where you could essentially search within a marketplace of apps and AIs,
maybe that could start to happen.
We do not currently have that in our roadmap,
but from a technical perspective, there's nothing stopping us from doing it.
Yeah, and Pedro, I believe right now you guys are connecting wallets,
managing sessions, relaying messages.
That's a lot of control. So I was wondering at what point do you think or at what point does Wallet Connect stop being just a connector and start acting like a
wallet itself? I mean if you control the comms and session what's stopping the Wallet Connect
from becoming a wallet in disguise? Well I think we shouldn't underestimate how hard it is to build a wallet um i think also like the
beauty of wallet connect not being a wallet is that it can be all wallets like if we had made
the decision to just become a wallet then we have lost like 600 partners that have been supporting us all of this time.
And one of the advantages of having this diversity of partners is that you never know how the future
is going to look like. And there's like so much innovation and diversity showing up. Like if I
had the leaderboard of which wallets were the most popular five years ago and which walls are
the most popular now it would look completely different these markets change very rapidly
they're very volatile and if there's anything that has benefit the wallachnet network is having
a very competitive market of wallets okay okay yeah that's impressive and thank you so much for answering my all other
questions. Thank you. Thanks, Venice. Pedro, I was curious to know, this is a little bit unrelated to
Wallet Connect, but you brought it up or we were talking about it, the merge, do you think it was a good decision?
I think the merge was a good decision,
mostly because I don't see many benefits to proof of work.
And this is kind of like a more philosophical question, which is like, should we use proof of work
or should we use proof of stake?
I definitely fall under the camp that I believe that blockchains are better if it's proof of work or should we use proof of stake i definitely fall under the camp that i
believe that blockchains are better if it's proof of stake and right now if you look at how many
blockchains actually use proof of work based on their market cap if you exclude bitcoin everything
is proof of stake so i don't think that was a bad decision. I know that there's a lot of people concerned about the performance
of Ether, the
assets, and blaming
the merge. I do not
think they're related.
Fair enough.
I do hear that a lot, actually,
that the two are related,
but I think there are probably other factors
at play, which is resulting in
ETH's pricing. There's definitely so many other factors at play.
What do you think?
I mean, you come off as someone who's experienced and outside of Wallet Connect probably has a lot of wisdom and a lot of your own opinions as it pertains to the industry.
So I'd like to open up the conference.
And this is the aquarium, right?
We don't typically have one-on-one podcast-style interviews on Wednesdays.
And so these often are Socratic-style discussions.
So we can open the discussion a bit.
And I'm curious to know what your thoughts are.
I appreciate that.
And I appreciate the special episodes for WallaConnect.
I mean, what is the problem that people are describing?
Obviously, everyone cares about the price but
i think people are ignoring the biggest uh problem which is the fragmentation you know
there was a past where everything was built on the same chain you know the theory mainnet and the
moment we actually moved into roll-ups we actually solved one problem but we
created a new one and if you have some liquidity or some tokens or some application in two different
chains right now in order for you to bridge between the two it's like completely separate worlds it's
like taking one unified country i don't know like take United States and split it into 50 countries,
you obviously are going to start seeing some power being
diluted with this fragmentation unless you actually
create some unity between these segregated countries
to actually have good flow of economies, you know?
And one good example of that is like European Union, because European Union is actually separate countries, but then the money and the people can actually flow very easily.
Why?
Because they just have like very good bridges between them.
The lack of bridges between the roll-ups is the problem.
It's breaking the experience, it's breaking the money flow,
it's not really helping apps, it's breaking the composability.
We just need more standardization and more unification.
Who is supposed to do that?
Well, it's definitely not me, but someone else has to do it.
It's interesting to think about,
I wholeheartedly agree with everything that you said it's interesting to think about bridges and 2021 there it was
bridging was scary because you would hold your breath for oftentimes hours just hope that your
funds appear on the other side. You would have to
use sketchy bridges to get from, let's say, BSC to Harmony because the main one wasn't working.
I can go into the nuts and bolts of how broken and inefficient bridging was. Fast forward to today,
you have aggregators like Li-Fi and white-labeled versions of that, like Jumper Exchange,
which basically just let you pick the departure and the arrival, and it works quite seamlessly.
So I think that we're getting there in terms of that analogy you drew comparing the European Union to what the EVM needs to become
with all the roll-ups.
Do you not think that, you know,
and if you think about the last four years of progress
when it comes to bridges, cross-chain aggregating bridges
and all that stuff, do you think that the next four years
aren't going to be even exponentially,
or aren't going to see exponentially more growth?
I think the problem here is that bridges
shouldn't even be part of the user experience.
You know, like, I think that we sometimes confuse
technical requirements with user requirements.
Like, an actual bridge needs to exist
for the tokens to flow between all of these chains.
But the user shouldn't have to use a bridge.
And one good example of this, and I think this analogy will resonate with everyone here,
is that there's a big user experience difference between you going into a store and using a credit card or you going to a
store that says we don't accept credit cards we only accept cash go outside go to an atm withdraw
some cash and come back 90 of the time unless you really want to buy that you're gonna go outside
and then you realize actually i can't be bothered i'm just going to go somewhere else and this is what's happening with rollups like we're asking people to
go to the atm to withdraw some cash and come back and most people don't come back and if we actually
had a credit card system that just allowed you to use money from one place into another directly in the store, in this case,
directly into the app, then you actually
have a great user experience.
And this is what chain abstraction is all about.
This is what intent networks are all about.
And even the Reon team is building solutions for this,
where you could actually have, they call it call it like in-flight bridging.
So it's basically every time you transact with Walla Connect
you actually would have the bridging happen at the same time
you're transacting so you don't even see it. So it almost feels
like there was no bridging but it actually happened in the background.
And that's the missing piece.
And once we have that, then people won't need to go to a special website
to switch tokens from one chain to another.
Yeah, TLDR, the day that Web3 feels like Web2,
is when we get mass adoption.
Pedro, I wanted to circle back to Wallet Connect really quick before I ask you the next question.
I just remembered, is there anything that we didn't ask about or didn't cover as it pertains to Wallet Connect that you find important to highlight?
Yeah, I mean, one thing that I always highlight is that some people ask, why should we buy WCT?
Why do you need people to own the Wallet Connect token?
At the end of the day, the Wallet Connect token is being used by node operators and our wallet partners and app developers.
But as a community member, there's multiple advantages to actually having the
WealthNet token. One of them is the staking part. Our staking is actually dependent on how much the
network grows. So actually, as the network is growing, there will be more rewards. And that
means that you as a staker will then be getting rewards based on our growth.
That's one great advantage.
The other one is that we actually do not allow voting on Snapshot
if you're not staking.
And this is something that some DAOs have done this before.
We're not the first ones, but we might be the biggest one that does this.
That if you want to vote in the future of Wallaconect,
you can't just buy a token and vote. You actually have to stake it. And on top of that, because our
staking is bounded by time, you can't just stake it for a week to vote and have the most voting
power. So if you stake the same amount of tokens for one week and one year, the person who staked
for one year has more influence into this voting than you have. And on top of that, like we've done
so many great campaigns with our partners that are related to voting and to staking and to
different educational campaigns. I think that you might have some cool surprises if you become
a stakeholder it's funny uh whale coin talk we we said we would never launch a token so
wct is not our token guys it's wallet connect so wallet connect token i you guys the total supply
is their max supply is a billion and you guys currently have about 186,000 in circulation.
Can you tell me really quick about the release schedule and how you guys are monitoring it in order to mitigate any sort of massive price drop or dilution?
Yeah, so it really depends.
I've got this question a lot um like wallet connect technically has existed for seven years so obviously as you can imagine we had a lot of
supporters and early backers and obviously many people were like hey are everyone like aligned
long term to hold these tokens or are they just going to dump it in the market?
And we actually took a very conservative approach here.
Traditionally in startups, people have to vest their tokens for four years.
And even though WalletMech has existed for seven years, we took the same approach.
So the actual vesting schedule is four years.
I've seen other projects that have
done only one year or two years, but we did not see this as a benefit for us because we really
want everyone to be around for longer. So that's one of the big portions of the supply is that
there's actually both the team members and early backers and core development team actually have a four-year unlock schedule that started in November 2024,
and it will end in November 2028.
And on top of that, we're doing seasonal airdrops.
So you will see that out of the 18.5% of airdrops,
we already distributed some of it.
But we will do these very much distributed along the time.
We're not expecting this to happen very aggressively
in the first years, because we really
want to make sure this is a very long-term distribution.
And the other 17.5% actually comes from the staking rewards that
also will follow a very similar three to five-year schedule for distributing rewards before we
actually activate fees. And the rest is actually in the Foundation Treasury, which we have used
for different partnerships. And we also will have grants.
But I believe that we have done a good job of taking a more conservative approach to protect the long-term alignment of the project.
Beautiful.
I want to circle back to the ETH conversation,
because I thought you had some interesting takes.
So, obviously, the, what's the word? The partitioning of the ecosystem, the EVM ecosystem has not been between L2s and the L1 are a big reason for each pitiful price action.
Basically, given the fact that a lot of these L2s keep most of the revenue for themselves and little to nothing, not nothing, but very little goes back to the actual L1.
What do you think about that?
I mean, I guess it really depends how you actually equate value accrual,
because I think too many times people...
Yes, that's a good point.
That is the literal definition.
the literal definition, but how does the number go up?
But how does the number go up?
I guess it's the biggest question.
I think the number doesn't go up just because the Ethereum mainnet
has more gas being spent.
I think that's just a very weird definition
because it almost kind of like undermines what ETH and Ethereum is like.
Like Ethereum are the rollups as well. Like, I really would challenge
anyone who would say that Ethereum is just Ethereum mainnet. And I'm not saying this just
because, oh, it inherits some security properties. One of the most important things about these
rollups, which I think many of us forget, is that they are actually asking their users
to pay gas in Ether as well.
So ETH is the actual gas token for these rollups.
If a rollup were to charge gas to their users
in a different currency,
then I would say that, yes,
they are kind of like eating up the value of ethereum
security by having their own token as the gas token that's correct but most of these big rollups
actually use eef as their gas token so i wouldn't say that's our actual problem. And why is it very valuable to have ETH as the gas token?
Because then other things are also valued in the same token.
Staking is valid in ETH.
Like depositing liquidity positions into DEXs is also valid in ETH.
Even NFTs are sold as ETH.
Now, content coins, they're also sold as ETH so the fact that ETH is used as a currency for
DeFi NFTs and different things in the roll-up only bring the value accrual even higher like gas
is just one of the functions of the asset so I I don't agree that the problem is that L2s are eating up the value
the problem is that users don't like the experience of rollups
and they don't want to use it
we may also make the argument that rollups don't particularly offer
anything more than let's say Solana does
what do you think about that?
well that is a very bold statement.
That is a very bold statement.
I am playing devil's advocate here a bit, but yeah, let's go with it, right?
So as an end user, when I log into my computer and I want to go trade with Photon,
trade with Photon. I go to
I go to Sol because the experience is fast, it's smooth.
Seoul because the experience is fast,
it's smooth. I don't
particularly find anything
faster or smoother.
I'm not saying it's less,
but from Arbitrum or Base
or Optimism. What do you think?
I really don't have any good arguments for that,
to be honest. You cannot
underestimate the amazing work
that the Solana team has done with SVM.
It is a very good virtual machine.
It does provide very good user experiences.
And that is the biggest threat to Ethereum,
is obviously the fragmentation of L2s
and the lack of a good bridging experience, but also the fact
that it doesn't actually have any competitive advantages in terms of the actual virtual
machine.
And I would be more concerned even when it comes to smart wallets, because I've been
using smart wallets both on Ethereum and Solana, and I have found that the features
are pretty much the same.
So where are the advantages of using an Ethereum wallet
versus a Solana wallet?
Yeah, I guess we mostly agree there, if not fully agree.
Pedro, I know you have to head out here in about a couple minutes.
I want to get some closing thoughts from you.
It was a pleasure
talking today, and we should have you on if you're available for more of these Wednesday shows. I'm
going to be in Dubai, as I mentioned at the beginning of the space, so if anyone from the
team is there, I'd love to connect. If anyone else in the audience is going to be there, I'd love to
connect. But the floor is yours. Closing thoughts, and we'll wrap things up.
closing thoughts and wrap things up.
Definitely.
Let's connect in Dubai next week when I'm there.
I mean, what are my closing thoughts?
WalletConnect is something that has been built for seven years.
And the reason it takes so long to build something like this
is because we're really an open network.
And when you try to build something with a thousand people at the same time,
there's a lot more noise and it's much harder to coordinate this. But that's also like the
big value propositions to the Wallachnet network. This is not like a project being built by just
like one company, like sit down in one room and then just like in an echo chamber. This is really taking like so many people to make into a reality.
And we cannot underestimate how much feedback we try to gather from everyone to actually
build a new feature or a new upgrade.
And the fact that we're even keeping up with all the innovations around smart wallets is
a big achievement because it would have been much easier to do this centralized but we try to do it decentralized because we understand the long-term
value we're just really happy about the launch of wct and the community support has been amazing
and i couldn't be more excited to see where this goes and hopefully will be one of the first like really monetizable projects that
it's not an l1 because that's a that's also another another badge to word brilliant i am
excited for you guys and disclaimer wct is wallet connect not whale coin talk as i mentioned several
years ago we will never launch a community token but thank you everyone for joining this special episode of the aquarium featuring wallet connect
remember that everything you hear on these broadcasts is meant for educational purposes
only nothing is financial advice so be safe out there and we will see you all in the next one soon
take care
