Competitors
As I was doing a bit of UI polish I wanted to check out how competitors handle UI/UX for token layout. I launched a Uniwap wallet. I was struck by number of things.
- It seems simple sliding sheet animation is somewhat troublesome for the team. This is not v1 either, app has been out for over six months. Basic sliding sheet animation not running at standard 60 fps.
- You can only have one mnemonic wallet at the time. If you want to import different mnemonic you have to delete current one.
- You can not create, add liquidity or even see your pool positions. I mean this is Uniwap wallet. If any wallet should be able to do that. It is Uniswap.
- Reliance on web2 APIs. This not surprising as just about every web3 wallet out there commits same sin. Disappointing nonetheless.
Compare that to web3wallet's v1.0 far more advanced crazy custom animations never dipping 60 fps. Ability to handle as many mnemonics users like. Soon to be released ability to create and manage LP pools as well governance. And not quite there yet, but no need to rely on any web2 APIs.
I am going to guesstimate Uniswap's wallet team has at the very least two devs (likely more), a designer, a product manager and some QA resource. I think conservative burn estimate is $1mil per year. They have basically infinite resources compering to our plucky little team. 10x larger team in terms of head count. I guess it took them about same time to get to 1.0. On paper there should be nothing we do better then them. I think there are many areas were our 1.0 is objectively better experience.
So Good They Can't Ignore You
We need to get to point where web3wallet is clearly far superior experience in most aspects of the product. At that point there will be myriad of opportunities on the table. I think these are the features needed to get us to "So good they can't ignore" (This is reference Cal Newport's excellent book):
- Deriving accounts at arbitrary paths (This is already supported in web3lib, needs UI only) & importing keys.
- Generic DAO governance support
- Ability to manage Uniswap pools (Create, Close, view etc)
- Alpha router without reliance on APIs (Half way done)
- ENS support
- Remove any and all traces of web2 APIs
- Further UI polish
Deriving accounts and importing keys is table stakes. Most of what is needed is already there, Just not exposed via UI. With support for generic DAO governance in apps. We can go to every DAO discord out there and post. Hey did you guys know you can read, vote on and create proposals directly from web3wallet ? How cool is that ?!
We want to be better Uniwap wallet then Uniswap wallet 🤣. I'm with Erik Voorhees that Hayden Adams (founder of Uniswap) deserves Nobel price in economics. He is a very bright and rational man. Perhaps there is a potential for white label deal somewhere down the line. Plan has always been to go down the list of all the blue chip DeFi & web3 dapps. Fact that we can credibly argue, look we have better Uniswap wallet than Uniswap wallet and we can do same for you, should be great selling point.
ENS support is table stakes and is not too difficult. We have to remove a few things we use web2 APIs for. That will make us only wallet on that market that does so. We can make a video looking at the requests MetaMask, Rainbow, Uniswaps wallets do and contrast it with platonic ideal of web3wallet. Could be good marketing.
Whenever you create something. You only sea its flaws. I'd argue we definitely need another UI pass. I think at that point we can begin to credibly argue we are the best web3 wallet out there.
Need For Speed
One thing I have been dissatisfied is the speed. Took far too long to get here. Partly because of troubles with Apple. Party due to the size of the team and amount of resources. Any time anyone from the team is working on promo videos, blog posts like one you are reading right now, web3 trenches podcast, clout goblin, marketing, updating website, answering questions in telegram, doing spaces, etc they are not working on the product. If I were to do one thing differently is to hold off work on those things. Everything is about tough trade offs.
Absolute priority is the product. Good news is we've had it right for couple of months now. Amount commits lately has been amazing. I mean we've released v1.0.1 even before we've published blog post about v1.0 launch.
All those other things are important as well. What we are doing is ruthlessly time boxing them. Only spending limited time window on those things each day. And they'll go out whenever they are ready. Clout Goblin could be a game changer. Showing off in apps Governance to every DAO out there could move the needle. Asking our friends to make videos demoing the wallet would surely help to spread the good word of web3wallet. I don't think anything will have as much impact getting the product to "So Good They Can't Ignore" state within next 3-6 months.
Closing
We would love you hear your thoughts and feedback. Best places are telegram (we may not answer straight away, but we do read everything) & web3dev's twitch streams.