Elevating the Developer Experience: Trust Wallet's Open Collaboration for Standardized Infrastructure

The crypto market of 2022 was marked by a high level of volatility and uncertainty, as market participants faced a range of challenges and disruptions. 

This included a series of high-profile hacks and scams, regulatory changes, and a general sense of confusion and mistrust among investors. 

In this climate, the security of crypto wallets became a critical issue, as investors sought ways to protect their assets from theft and fraud. 

10 Million Active Users

One company that has seen significant growth is Trust Wallet, a wallet that allows users to store and manage their digital assets in a secure and private way. The company has seen a three-fold increase in its team size over the past year, and now serves over 10 million active users.

Despite the bear market conditions that have characterized the crypto industry in recent months, Trust Wallet has been able to attract top talent and focus on building a solid infrastructure that will be able to scale up to serve even more users in the future.

The company is focused on preparing for the next round of mass adoption, and is already looking ahead to the time when it will be serving 100 million or even 1 billion users.

In an interview with UNLOCK Blockchain, Eowyn Chen, CEO of Trust Wallet, explained that in the last 60 days, around $13 billion worth of assets have left Binance, and it is unclear whether these users have moved to Trust Wallet or to other platforms, as Trust Wallet puts a strong emphasis on privacy protection, so it is difficult to track the movements of users on-chain.

Due to privacy protection mechanisms, the sources of a lot of funds are unknown. As a result, it is difficult to feature data on the topic. 

The speaker noted that many people may not be aware that their company is a Binance portfolio company, as they have always operated independently. Eowyn also emphasized on the importance of self-custody and how users can access their assets using any product UI, as long as they have the private key and on-chain addresses. 

Eowyn also mentioned that the recent incidents at FTX have led more people to move towards decentralization, but education is still lacking in the industry. She suggested using gamification and AI capabilities such as GPT to raise awareness and educate people about web 3.0 and wallet usage.

In fact, the Trust Wallet team has proposed such initiatives, but are still thinking about the right way to execute them without distracting users from the main purpose of the product.

In addition to that, Eowyn discussed the security of different types of wallets, including cold wallets, mobile wallets, and extension wallets. She mentioned that cold wallets are the most secure, but they are not as easily accessible as mobile and extension ones. 

Cold Wallets can co-exist with mobile wallets

On one hand, cold wallets are best for users who want to hold the majority of their assets in self-custody and don't need to access them frequently. On the other hand, hot wallets (mobile and extension) are more accessible and have more exposure to the internet, making them more vulnerable to attacks. 

For this reason, the CEO suggests that a combination of cold and hot wallets is the best for user experience, as they focus on providing users with access to as many tokens and innovations as possible, even if it means slower speeds and lower security than cold wallets. She explained that the trade-off decisions in the future will be between simplicity, security, and openness in the wallet experience.