Epicenter - Learn about Crypto, Blockchain, Ethereum, Bitcoin and Distributed Technologies - Zeal: The Day-to-Day Crypto Wallet for EVM Chains - Hannes Graah

Episode Date: August 23, 2024

Self-custodial wallets often represent the first point of contact for crypto users that venture away from centralised exchanges. As a result, their security and user experience should be paramount. This often explained Metamask’s first mover advantage and the users’ reluctance to change. However, as infrastructure evolves, new wallets are equipped from the get-go with features that are designed for normie adoption, such as: account abstraction, gas fee abstraction, easier on- and off-ramp, etc. Zeal was envisioned as a day-to-day wallet solution, allowing users true freedom to transact, both on-chain, as well as off-chain (i.e. real world spendings).Topics covered in this episode:Hannes’ backgroundExisting wallet solutions and Zeal’s userbaseWallet UX, account abstraction and passkeysSecurity assumptions and passkey recoverySmart contract interactionsZeal’s mobile-first focusIBAN & Gnosis Pay integrationsCapturing market shareBanking the unbankedGas feesCross-chain interoperabilityDeFi & stakingMonetisationPrivacyZeal’s backendGrowth & business scaling in Web3Zealot recruitmentEpisode links:Hannes Graah on TwitterHannes Graah on LinkedInZeal on TwitterSponsors:Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.ioChorus One: Chorus One is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at - chorus.oneThis episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst.

But on the first principle basis, if you don't have custodians, if you don't have intermediaries, then there is more money to keep for yourself or barrier transacting with you refuse to pay. And if you look at the product market fit crypto's had so far, where is gas being spent on chain? Something like 80, 90% is being spent on the UNISFOT contracts. So the very clearest indication of private market fit currently today so far has been trading assets. but crypto hasn't really found for a market fit yet for daily payments, which is kind of ironic, since it was the little promise of Bitcoin 15 years ago to pay peer-to-peer to pool cash.

So that's what we're doing at zeal, is to take the assets you have on-chain and make them useful in the real world, being up to spend them in different places, and connecting the off-chain world with the on-chain world. So the on-chain wallet that's off-the-chain that you can use off-the-chain as well. Welcome to Appacenter, the show which talks about the technologies, projects and people driving decentralization in the blockchain revolution.

I'm Guedrika Ernst, and today I'm joined by Hannes Gray, who is one of the builders of Zeele, yet another wallet, and we will go into kind of why Hannes and his team are building another wallet and what sets them apart from the existing myriad of wallets. Before we talk with Hannes, let me tell you about our sponsors this week. This episode is proudly brought to you by Nosis, a vision, collective committed to fostering and expanding applications for a decentralized future. NOSIS is at the forefront of innovation with NOSIS pay, circles, and metri, revolutionizing open banking and creating a superior form of money. With Hashi and NOSIS VPN,

they are building a more resilient and privacy-focused open internet. Are you seeking a robust L1 to launch your project? Well, look no further than the NOSIS chain. Enjoy the same development environment as Ethereum, but with significantly lower transaction fees. and with a robust network of over 200,000 validators, nosis chain stands as a credibly neutral and resilient foundation for your application. Governance of NOSIS is driven by NOSIS DAO, where everyone has a voice in shaping the project's future. Join the NOSIS community today by participating in the NOSISDAO governance form. You can deploy your project on the EVM-compatible and highly decentralized Nosis chain

or help secure the network by running a validator with just a single GNO and low-cost hardware. Embark on your journey towards decentralization today at Nosis.io. Kars 1 is one of the biggest node operators globally and help you stake your tokens on 45 plus networks like Ethereum, Cosmos, Celestia and DYDX. More than 100,000 delegators stake with Kores1, including institutions like BitGo and Ledger. Staking with Kors 1 not only gets you the highest years, but also the most robust, security practices and infrastructure that are usually exclusive for institutions. You can stake directly to Quarice 1's public note from your wallet, set up a white table node or use the recently launched product, Opus, to stake up to 8,000 eth in a single transaction.

You can even offer high-yield staking to your own customers using their API. Your assets always remain in your custody, so you can have complete peace of mind. Startsaking today at Corus.1. Hi, Hannes. Thank you so much for joining me here today. Hi, Friedke. Greetings from Brussels. Yeah, you're at ECC, aren't you?

That's right. We're a couple of the builders here, experiencing ECC first hand. Super nice, super nice. Hans, you have a super fascinating background, and I think it's very emblematic of kind of like the changing landscape of builders in this space. tell us about what you've done before, where you've been before, and kind of why you embarked on a mission to kind of build Zeele. Prior adventures to Zeele was in retail or consumer experiences,

a long time in Spotify and in Revolut. Revolut is probably one that's the most relevant for building a wallet, with being a mobile bank. In fact, most of us at Zeele were a bunch of ex-revolutus So we spent a lot of time there reinventing the front end of banking, if you will, moving away from high street offices to mobile interface.

And now we're tackling a different type of reinvention here at Zeele. Yeah, super nice. And you guys, you actually pivoted quite markedly with your project, right? Kind of like when you started, Zeele was doing something else, right? I'm not sure we could pivot, but we have definitely gone from being broad to much more narrow

in that, as you said, there are a lot of wallets out there in this space. And so we started building quite broadly trying to appeal to a lot of different use cases. And we have built a lot of features that crosses the whole swath of things someone wants to do on chain, from route-optimized bridging to swapping to supporting every EVM under the sun. But we became more and more appears who built more and more was that there was a gap specifically on daily finals, the original promise of Bitcoin, if you will. Yeah, daily finance. That sounds good.

If you think about kind of the landscape of wallets that are out there, how do you classify them in your head? So kind of when you say there's kind of like this gap for daily finance, what do the others cover? So I think if you're a startup builder, you look for market opportunities and you see what problems people have. And if you look at the product market fit crypto's had so far, Where is gas being spent on chain?

Something like 80, 90% is being spent on the UNISWP contracts. So the very clearest indication of private market fit for crypto today so far has been trading assets. And so if you're building a wallet, you're like, okay, well, let's solve problems that are specifically on that use case, right? Let's make trading even better. And so we have a plethora of wallets that are really, really good at doing trading and moving tokens around.

But crypto hasn't really found product market fit yet for daily payment. payments, which is kind of ironic since it was the original promise of Bitcoin 15 years ago to peer-to-peer digital cash. Yet 15 years later, it still very hard to just send digital cash to someone to their email or to the phone number. Even crypto veterans are not asking people for a hex address to send over digital cash rate. And so the kind of counterintuitive opportunities to deliver the original promise of Bitcoin and make crypto useful in daily lives for normal, boring, if you will, finance use cases and not just trading. tokens. Don't get me wrong. Trading tokens also has the role in the world, but there's so much

more that people are doing out there with money than buying selling tokens. So when you think about your user, who is that person? So the first customer segment, the first group of users we are targeting are indeed the people who are in crypto, but specifically the ones that want to put crypto to use. So people who want to use crypto for more than buying selling tokens, like buying a paying their rent to use it in their day-to-day. And there are other people who are in crypto already and have assets there, that they're not, they're all for all the talk of increasingly quitted in the world by tokenizing assets.

They're still compartmentalized in the crypto system, right? They're not made liquid in the real world. But now we have various efforts that actually are making it possible to make them liquid in the real world, make them useful in the real world. And so that's what we're doing at zeal, is to take the assets you have on chain and make them useful in the real world, being up to start. spend them in different places and connecting the off-chain world with the on-chain world. So the on-chain wallet that's off-the-chain that you can use off-the-chain as well.

So when I think about wallets, often the user experience is pretty terrible. So kind of kind of it starts with these are your 24 words. Write them down, never lose them. Yeah. So basically, and then kind of you have to click on, you have to sign messages that you don't understand, you kind of, you don't know which sites you're connected to, which contracts you've given allowance to, and so on. In order to kind of roll this out to, well, quite frankly, even for the people who are in the space, now that would be nice, but to roll it out to even

more people, those are things that kind of you absolutely have to fix, right? So how do you think about those problems? Yeah, I think we are now at an inflection point. where a lot of the fundamental technologies have been put in place in the last 10 years to solve those technical problems, I would call them. We have been revealing the piping

of how the technology works to use this because there hasn't been a way to do it in a smooth way. So examples you mentioned, we now have the innovation of past keys combined with biometrics that can take seed phrases out of the picture, right? Seid faces the recurring pet issue

for everyone in crypto, or even the veterans, right? Where do you put your seat traces? Now, we can solve that with biometrics and pass keys and smart wallets or smart accounts, right? So there's a combination of these technologies that finally are reaching maturity, production readiness, if you will,

that allows us to solve a problem like that. Scalability is another one. We have a lot of scalability solutions in play, and now we are getting to the point where we can almost consider transaction cost roundable to zero. But it takes time to get there, right? traditional finance infrastructure has had 100 plus years to iterate on infrastructure and optimize it. And we only had 10 and 15 years to do so in crypto or defy.

Let's maybe dig into this. So tell us about the PASCI innovation for P's. How does that work? So for ZIL, we, Haskes are, Haskes cannot yet be validated on the base layer, right? So we have a smart contract that validates PASCkeys on chain. So that means that when you create a smart wallet, a safe with ZIL, we do two things. We create a PASCII validator contract that's unique to each user, which then creates a safe, which is the signer, the first signer and the deployer of the safe.

That allows us to have consistent address space because we're always using this PASCII validate the contract to deploy stage and new chains. and then we add on a second locally stored private key to do ongoing transactions which allows us to get the best of both worlds so the efficiencies of signing with a locally stored private key as well as the ability to use the pass key for a consistent address base as well as a recovery model that uses a cloud solution like Google or Apple

depending on where you store pass keys. So where do you store the private key, the locally stored one? Yeah, so the second private key. private key is stored locally in the application. So I assume it doesn't leave the device. That's right. It's locally encrypted storage and it doesn't leave the device.

In fact, we're also, we're basically not allowing people to export that private key at the moment because the private key is not meant to be exported. The private key, if you will, is a locally store private key, if you will, is a throwaway component of this model where the primary owner of the safes is the private key, the PASCII valid the contract. And so we then recover to new device, a new local, store private keys generated,

and then add into the safe for that device. Okay, tell us a bit more about PAS keys. So kind of like if, say, if I download ZLSM mobile wallet and kind of I are on board with PASKi, does this PASC keep port to other devices? So say I want to use it on my desktop? Yes, so as long as you have access

to the same cloud model, if you will, you can then recover it also. on the desktop. So indeed you can create it and you can create in your phone and then recover it in the desktop or vice versa. And there is not yet in production and interoperability between Apple and other ecosystems. So that's something that is not just an issue for PASC keys in crypto, but more broadly on how to create interoperability. But I would say here, the PASC key is a movement in Web 2 is something that's being adapted and adopted at scale right. So it's something that is undergoing a lot of scrutiny, security research, because it's securing a lot of value.

Not yet in crypto, but in Web 2. And so it's always good, of course, as we know in crypto to work with the larger trends that is getting the most scrutiny, because that's where we can also build up security or time. Also, one of the reasons why we're using the Safe Smart Contracts underlying for the Smart Wallet, they are the most battle tested at scale, securing the most value. Yeah, that makes sense. So coming back to the PASC keys, what's the underlying security model,

the security assumptions, kind of that, kind of, you say kind of like, part of it is synced via the cloud. So whom do I have to trust in order to use a PASCII? So for the recovery bottle, you do rely on the cloud that you have your PASC keys with

to be available. That's for the recovery. And for the ongoing transactions, because the PASCIS are validated, or the transaction validated locally or private key, you don't rely on that. So in a worst case scenario, if the cloud that you have your pass case in

would go down, say Google, Apple Cloud would go down, you still have the device that you have your local private key on. So you can still make transactions, and you could then replace that cloud and migrate over to somewhere else as a backup solution. So why it's just the same thing is the recovery from the cloud. And then, of course, the local device, which, depending on what kind of device,

what kind of secured the moment that has, right? If it's secured with usually biometrics, but could also be some other kind of set up depending on the device. Okay. So kind of, if you were to kind of think in an adversarial way, say the, for instance, Google or Apple are under an order to kind of rescind your Parsky and not let you access it anymore.

And for some reason, you kind of lost your phone with the local key on it. Is there anything you can do? If you lose both your phone and the cloud. Yeah. If you lose both your devices and the cloud, then there is difficult to do a recovery than this. But if you lose one of them, though,

then use to a lot of accessor. Can you add more signers? So could I kind of say, okay, I want to add a hardware water, say in NFC hardware, water that I kind of keep somewhere, you know, safe in a safe deposit box or so, that I can use to kind of reset or add a new key. So this is the great thing about using existing smart contract infrastructure like Safe, right,

that you have this ability to create a modular security model. Our first version that's Libin Pro today is a bit more opinionated. But we have the ability to add on indeed more signers. So you can indeed have your ledger, your trailer, or treasurer or whatever a hard wallet you prefer but also more advanced secured models outside of that so you can move over to a two out of three model for example where you have a guardian that to validate certain off-chain signals to do the second signature and allows a bit more flexibility so so there's a lot because of the nature of a smart account there's a lot more flexibility in creating

strong security models that are also easy to use because we really need both and this is kind of emblematic of a crypto that we can have build very strong security models but they can also be very hard to use right or you can have very simple secure models but then historically have not been the most secure right

and so finding the combination in both those worlds we have both strong security and ease of use is what is finally being enabled by a combination of smart accounts of some of these new technologies okay yeah that makes sense

so when you think about smart contract interactions I mean you said that you're using a safe as the underlying smart contract here. So how do you handle smart contract into actions? Because some of them are very opinionated about the fact that you should use them with an EOA rather than smart account. Yes.

So one challenge there in the broader defy space is the managing of signatures, right, and smart contract signatures. But as we're seeing smart wall has become more and more adopted. This is something that we expect DAPS, if they want to cater, to the new audience coming in, they will also have to adopt standards to manage smart contract signatures. So yeah, there's definitely challenges in there,

but if you look at the key daps out there, they do handle new standards for that. So if you also think about a new wave of people coming in, they probably won't start with the most exotic of daps, right? They will start with the dabs that do support smart wallet signatures. And also the smart wallet developers or builders like Zeal will obviously lead traffic to the applications and experience that do support those signatures

to not create broken user journeys, right? So I think it's another one of those small bumps on the road in terms of figuring out the infrastructure that has to be in place for us to create great experiences for people. Speaking of great experiences, I think it's very notable that the ZIL app

is very mobile, friendly slash caters ostensibly primarily to mobile users. How did you make that decision? So we built a driver with the mobile app first, and then a web app came second. When we went into Zeal, we built a browser extension. So Zeal is right now available both as a browse extension, as an iOS app and an Android app. And they look almost the same, to be honest, because the browse extension format is actually not that different from that of an iOS or an Android app. So it's a React, React Native application

that looks pretty similar across the different platforms. And we think that's a format that people are quite acquainted to use. And also because it is the same on all three, it means we can also have a very high rate of progress in development where we basically launched the same feature across three platforms at one go. So if you look at the feature set of Zeal, it's very advanced in multiple areas. ZELES the only wallet that has free instant bank transfers often on chain integrated deep into the wallet. Or NOSIS pay cards, right? So you can see in manager NOSIS pay card directly in there. Again, across three platforms in one go.

So embracing the mobile experiences and making that work across all three platforms is a decision that allows us to both deliver something that is accustomed to users and allows us to move fast. Yeah, talk about the IBAN and the NOSPACAD integrations. Yeah. So this is a key unlocker for us and for the industry more broadly, being able to use your crypto, right? One thing is being able to, I don't like the word, but often on RAMP, ramp implies that there's like a latitude or height difference shelf transfers more even, if you will. Bacrest is the first teacher we launched that allows people to not think of their crypto assets as locked

in a casino, but rather just another account, if you will, another bank account, another wallet. There should be seamless in moving between them. But still, it require people to move money from the chain wallet to their bank account in order to spend them. But now that we have cards that allow you to spend, not just crypto that you sold into Fiat, there are a lot of so-called crypto cards out there that aren't really crypto cards. They just allow you to very easily sell your crypto into a Fiat balance and then spend that. What the NOSIPPAY card does and with that deal is to spend your actual on-gen assets, right? So within Zeele on all three platforms, you can import either order a new NOSP pay card or import an existing one

and see all the card activities, see your card details, you can freeze the card if God forbid you lose it, or you can also very easily add more cash to the card by clicking a button doing a cross-chain top-up as well. So that's one of the key building blocks to make this feel more like a self-custodal bank, if you will. It's not a bank, obviously, but make it feel as an experience as broadly useful and applicable as a new bank would. So I'm super happy about having now those kind of key building blocks for the Zill experience that makes people be able to put their crypto to use. Yeah, super nice. And you initially said you're currently targeting mostly people who are already, in the space. So when you look at your users, what makes them swap? Is it kind of is which what makes

them swap to to see it? Because I mean obviously if you're a user you already have it wanted. So what makes them swap to see it? Is it kind of like this legacy integrations narrative that kind of you can use it as a bank account? You can top up from your bank account fairly seamlessly that you can spend the cash. What's the main value proposition for people who are switch. Yeah. It's interesting to see it's a it's a popular thing in crypto to complain about MetaMosk, yet it's by far the largest wallet that the WHOI uses, right? And there's a reason for that is because it's been around for a long time. People are are used to trusting it, right? So it's not enough to just build a wallet that's 10x better in terms of feature set versus Metamask, but it's

also important to bring something completely new to the place. So if you put Zil side by side with Metamask. Now we have routing across different exchanges, Xerox, 1 inch, doing route optimization across all the underlying markets. So you get the best rates. We have bridge optimization, sockets, so you can get the best possible route to wherever you want to move your assets. But all these things are not enough, if you will. And so what we're seeing now to be some of the most highly retentive use cases where people who once they try, they really, really stick around, or indeed there was that bridge between the real world finance and the on-change finance. So when we think about, I said that the target market,

we think there's probably somewhere around half a million people who are crypto-cryptan-native and want to use their crypto, on-chain crypto in real life today. It's a rough estimate, maybe it's a million, you know. But that point is that's still a very small market. In the grand scheme of things, it's a tiny market, considering especially it's a global tiny market. So that can really just be the starting point. but it's also a good starting point in terms of finding people who have zeal if you will who have passion or who are very interested in this and so if we can deliver the things that they

expect from a normal wallet even better like a metamask and they combine it with a very differentiated use case that they haven't been able to find anywhere else before which is free bank transfers and car payments in one place then we think and we see also for users who come in and try these features that that is what makes them really excited makes us still ground and continue to use zeal. And if you take a step back then, okay, so why does that matter when we have the next billion people or whatever Sunrite money is for that? It's because it's the people who are in the space today that will onboard the people that

come in tomorrow, whether they are sex converts or cryptocurrencies or sex as a centralized exchange, by the way, where are they coming in from, right? They will talk to you and to me and say, hey, what is this? What should I do? And so that's why it's important to have the trust and the usage of the existing people in the space, right? Because they are the ones that then will tell the next person coming, yes, you know, you should try out, use this step here. And then they will say, oh, okay, but how do you get my money in there? And instead of saying, here's a stack of five different solutions to get your money in there,

they can say, well, you know, before this is ways to create a wallet at the touch of a finger using zeal, on ramp within a minute without any fees and then you can use that app you can buy the token or even NFTs if it has a revival right whatever it is that you want the or suggesting that your friend to do they can do much easier there right

so that's why in the grand scheme of things well the total addressable market is much larger the first market is people who are in crypto today when you think about the totally addressable market right now we're talking about people who are

in no way under bank. So kind of like everyone who uses a Zeele wallet probably has three other bank accounts that have the functionality of a ZL wallet minus the on-chain stuff at also zero cost to them. I mean, coming from Revolution, I mean, I would say probably

at least in Europe, everyone under the age of 45 or so banks within your bank, right? So this is already what people kind of expect like a seamless app. that kind of allows you to spend and send. How do you think about the segment of the world population that is underbanked or unbanked? So actually we have a lot of use coming in from those markets.

We don't have bank transfers available yet in, you know, whether in Africa or Asia or Latin America. but we see a lot of interest in there, not just Zeele, but also other wallets. Some of that demand, if you will, is as simple as getting access to the dollar, which in its digital form, is in many places an easier form of dollar to access to escape the local fiat currents and get access to the dollar.

And so Zeele, adding on more territories with licensed use cases like bank transfers and cards, will also enable users, people, zealots, if you will, to get access to the dollar and also other financial services on chain. The overarching, I guess the question we're poking at here is like, why a wallet versus traditional financial services as well? Some places they're hard to get access to the dollar, but in some places they're actually, people do have financial services

and they're quite optimized financial services. And I think the overarching why here is, If you just think about first principles, we've been optimizing the DFI or OpenFi or Crypto stack for 10 years. And so we haven't optimized it down to its most efficient for it. We're getting there, right? We're getting much closer to it. But on the first principle basis, if you don't have custodians, if you don't have intermediaries, then there is more money to keep for yourself or whoever you're transacting with if you refuse to pay.

Treadfi has had 100 plus years to optimize that stack. And that's why in some cases you still see the fee structure being more compressed, being more efficient in Tradfai. But that's because we haven't had as much time. Now, I don't think we did 100 years to make it optimized in Defi. We're already getting to now where we have several places where it can basically round it off to zero. But on the first possible basis, we will be able to deliver more value for people with Defi and permission free finance, because there are fewer custodians intermediaries.

whether that's in Nigeria or Colombia or Sweden or Indonesia. How do you think about gas fees in the long run? Because earlier you said kind of like there are already used cases where kind of you can run down to zero. Do you think this is something that apps will abstract away from the user or is there something that's here to stay? The managing and infrastructure comes with cost strike. And so the question is just, well, first of how big is that? what's the magnitude of that cost and also who takes the cost. We're already seeing now a mixture of that.

So if you look at 4337, we see look at gas destruction and sponsorship, a large chunk, I think actually a majority of transactions are actually handled by gas sponsorships. And so you have, whether it's wallet specific use cases or DAPs that have a business model elsewhere, subsidizing those transactions. But then there will be transactions that are without any other application connected to it, where a user might pay for that transaction, albeit at a very extreme cost that is basically roundable to zero. So I don't think there's going to be one single dominant model on that,

and that's also not what we're seeing today. We actually are seeing a diversity of that, where both users and application developers are paying for it. Again, the parallel here is to traditional finance, if you will, where a normal institution or bank has to think about, okay, where do we make money and what's the profit center, what's the cost center? Now, where do we give value back to users

and where do we charge for users? And similar will happen, but in a more distributed and unbundled way in DeFi, where there are some places that money is made and there's some of the places where things cost. And this whole stack will like dynamically relocate depending on a use case between users paying for some stuff themselves and for debt developers for wallards,

wallet sort. Yeah, trumping it for look. Zien is on several chains and I think this is probably this evaluation probably would vary a lot kind of looking at different chains right kind of like say you want to

extract away gas on Ethereum that's harder to then say on base or noses chain just because you know the the margin is much yeah I mean you kind of have to have a much

better margin in order to be able to kind of abstracted the way on those chains. Do you see different models emerging that are kind of in keeping with the costs of transacting on different chains? Yeah. That's, I mean, that is what's happening, right? So the fee structure is very different.

We'll continue to see base layer optimizations that will drive down those costs, but we'll also continue, I think, to see more layers, maybe with slightly weaker security guarantees, but that allow other types of use cases where that is okay. And how those costs are paid, that will also vary. But we'll need to get to a place where, and whether this is a layer two or layer of three,

or whatever layer, where we can basically get to smaller transactions where the cost of the transaction is basically vulnerable to zero. We are in practice that that is, including losses chain, on several places today, a lot of time, right? that it's basically can be considered as nil. But people still are willing to make

transactions on Ethereum. Ultimately, the user is the one that decides whether they are either willing to pay for this themselves or whether they are wanting to use the value and pay for the value of an application that is subsidizing it. But ultimately, it's the user that decides on what they want to do, what they're willing to pay for,

either with attention or with money and through which path. And so I think what's very important for us is to build the things that people want, not just games, but also financial services that people want. And then we'll experiment with those different models, whether it is a transaction fee subsidized by a different part of an experience or whether it's the user themselves paying for transactions on a use experience. How can you handle interoperability? So say I have funds on one chain of food and I want to do something on another chain.

support, will you expose that to me or will you kind of just handle it under the hood? Yeah, so first the two is in networks. Seal is an EVM wallet. We support every EVM under the sun. There are some networks that we have stronger feature sets. So we have deep, deep-fired portfolio on 50 plus networks where you can see chamber world rewards. You can see your balance is just a silo drop. And then there's a smaller subset of 10 networks where we have safe support.

so we support smart wallets with a consistent address space. So one unlocker for the multi-chain experience of the smart wallets is to have a consistent address across all the networks. But ideally, and I think this is what we're getting to, a user shouldn't have to think about multiple networks. So what is the future of chain abstraction? There are multiple interesting attempts, I would say, now at this, where different builders are indeed creating harmonized balances,

universal balances of assets across different chains, intent protocols, you say I want to do this thing over here and then you can okay pull asset from different networks in an abstracted way. I think this is part where we don't have the solution yet. Or we might have the solution but it's not a prod if you will yet. But it's something that a lot of builders are very actively thinking about. Long term though, I don't know if we live in a world where all the non, if you think about not the first million people, but the next hundred.

million people if they actually will navigate across 10 different chains, whether in an abstracted or unabstracted way, I can very easily see that the future of connecting real world finders with on-chain finders will be a bit more opinionated and that it will be certain use cases that are very closely connected to one specific chain. And when a user, a person wants to go deeper, they can then decide if they want to experience a bit more of the chains depending on how abstract it is. So if I say that more concretely and tangibly, right, what's happening tomorrow or day. It's that a user who comes in and says, I want to

get an on-chain visa and start earning 10% of my deposits. They don't even need to know that that is happening in Osses chain unless they click advanced details and dig into it, right? But that does mean that they're not using a self-custodal wallet with on-chain assets fully

at their own, in their own control, right? And that's happening now. So chain abstraction is, I think, a mixture of both opinionated experiences per user actually doesn't need to know it. and then a bit further time frame when users do want to go across multiple chains that they don't even have to know

that they're going across multiple chains when they are with some of these efforts. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. When you think about kind of like DeFi protocols and say staking applications and so on and that people who use Zia want to use, is it something that you bring

into the wallet or do you make people kind of go? So kind of do you see the wallet kind of almost as a browser in terms of kind of like accessing these different applications or do you just make people connect to it and then handle those totally differently? So this is actually a superington question where to what degree do you select and curate and king make if you will certain applications

to what degree is it just an open buffet, an infinite buffet of different applications. And in Revolute land, in traditional finance land, you have monolithic companies that do a lot of the services in-house. There are business partnerships, but a lot of it is like a monolithic structure and not that much flexibility in selecting various permission-free services, whereas you have that flexibility in DFI.

At the same time, choice can be very overwhelming, right? So if a user comes in and says, I want to get the highest yield of my deposits. Then saying, okay, go and look at this catalog of thousand different services providers. That is not necessarily the best user experience, right? So striking the balance between how much is curated, how much is opinionated, and how much is the use of themselves exploring, is a fine balance. In Zeal today, we have a DAP browser, an explorer, if you will,

where you can see a catalog of all different categories. of apps coming from from DatRadars would be used to that catalog. But also there are certain experiences that are more opinionated where there is quick access to something. So it's a fine balance and we have an approach to that. I don't think we have found the right, the perfect approach to it yet either because it's important at the end of the day to have user choice in this. This is the promise of permission free finance, of open finance

is for people to be able to make their own choices, decide what they want to do, but not completely without some handholding and recommendation. So traditionally, this is kind of one of the areas where wallets try to monetize their product, right? Kind of like more or less kind of like selling preferential treatment within the app browser in some way or kind of setting things as default and so on.

How do you guys at Zia think about monetization. So today we have a number of different fund, money flows, if you will, or asset flows inside the product. None of them are charged with fees. So we do, we can swap inside Zeele, you can bring inside Zeele, you can pay your gas, you can pay for your gas and various tokens. There are all these different ways that assets are flowing through the product, which could theoretically have a fee attached to them. First off, we need to build experiences that people love. And really, the bigger picture here is not this first 500,000 customers.

The bigger picture is the next 10,000 billion billion people. And so the focus we do now, we think, should be on if you have the capital to manage a service like this, in the short term at least, to focus on delivering user value, to maximize user value. But if you look at business models and how these things can be monetized also in a permission-free environment with the user can do. side is to offer services that the user can decide and pay and opt into. But ultimately, the user is the one that decides. And in Tradfai, the fees are sometimes hidden, although regulations try to make them transparent, and they're kind of enforced, there's no way for you to avoid the, let's say, the FX fee on a bank, right? It's there. You don't really have a choice. In a self-custodial permission free wallet, there will be options for you as a user. And so you might be

willing to pay for the convenience of using an integrated swap, which we don't charge for. But in the future, maybe that could be something to charge for, right? But first off is to just deliver the best possible user experience and get a deal something extremely sticky and retentive. And then there are lots of business models that can be built on top of something that facilitates or enables people to manage their assets. do you allow integrations with external financial tools? So, for instance, can I build a tax reporting software portfolio tracker or something

and kind of plug it into Zeele? Since it's all, you know, untain wallets and assets, the switching costs or barriers are very low. You know, you have your wallets and you can obviously load them up into whatever accounting software. Zeele as a piece of software doesn't today have those. external APIs, if you will, that you can connect. But I think that's indeed, and now we're seeing some work with more modularity of smart accounts, 7579 being announced and some of these efforts, right, that are opening up the space, the design space for more financial modules that are more closer connected to the smart account.

So first off, we are very much focused on delivering the best possible user experience and use cases. And as we see those getting more and more volume and traction, then we can also look at opening up certain surfaces for an ecosystem of developers. But first, it really starts for the customer. We think there will be, and there is happening more innovation in the space with modularity. So why not eventually have a card where you can expose a DAP image, certain metadata, that can very easily be a surface to users who want to use a certain application? So creating more modular ways of integrating DAPs into a user-facing experience.

That doesn't require you to go off-site to a separate DAP page with its own context, but rather having it a much more integrated way. That's slightly opinionated, but still leaves a lot of room for expression for individual developers. How do you think about privacy? Because when I think about adoption for the next 100 million, and people also, that seems to be the biggest bluff at this point. So people rightfully expect privacy from financial applications. So kind of, I mean, when we talked about earlier that basically easier wallet can

more or less with everything that kind of a new bank, what it can do, this is true, but at the cost of exposing everything you do to the wider public. And it's very easy to kind of tag wallets and kind of info whose wallet is what. So kind of you can't even say, what does it say it's Friedrich's wallet? People will still know it's my wallet or people can find out it's my wallet. How do you think about that? Two aspects of privacy are first, just in terms of our thinking on privacy and then more broadly how to make finances private.

So Zeele, we are very strictly a software developer, so we don't have any customer relationships. And what I mean by that is we are not KYC in customers. We don't have any, we don't actually even have the addresses of our customers. We don't store the wallet addresses of who's using Zeele. So if you ask me which wallet addresses are using Zil today, I couldn't say that because we don't store that. And we don't want to store that. We are a piece of software. We're like a Louis Vuitton wallet except made out of leather.

out of bits and bytes. So that's in terms of like the privacy. And when it comes to transactions, they are, before they go to the RPC through Zeele, they're being relayed through our backend, which does not store any information about the user, right? So in one way, it's also almost kind of like an RPC VPN, if you will, or anonymizer.

Of course, the RPC will see that transaction came from the Zeele endpoint, from Zeele, but not more than that. So we take privacy and user information very very seriously. Then the kind of bigger topic which people coming into crypto might not realize is indeed like on-chain privacy. So if I do a peer-to-peer transfer to you, then that's on-chain, never like I see it. Same thing here. We're now, I think, getting to a point where there's a lot of infrastructure work and solutions that have been iterated and built on across the last couple of years. tornado cash had its complexities.

I'm personally very curious to see how the next iteration of privacy pools, so building off the learnings from tornado cash and making it compliant with proof of inclusion and proof of exclusion in privacy pools. I think that's quite an interesting approach. There are other builders as well that are doing things here. Of course, the lead topic here is how can you create privacy while at the same time reaching compliance for making it actually useful and viable, right? And I think that's what's really interesting

with the efforts of privisables. So when we bring on a lot more users that are not crypto-natives, they will take privacy for granted. They will just assume that when you make transfers or payments to your card, that's anonymous. And so it's more like they will not, saying that they're private,

those transactions will not be a value proposition for them. It's a hygiene thing. No one coming in from Web 2 and you tell them, oh, by the way, no one will know that you're making payments. That's like a hygiene thing. It's not really something that they will go like, oh, great, cool. Like this smoothly is without uranium.

Exactly, exactly, you know. And I think, when I said in the beginning, like we're reaching an infection point, this is, I think, exactly what's happening in multiple hours. We're reaching a point where some of the hygiene plumbing, if you will, can now get on the surface and we don't have to explain to people. Same thing when someone comes in, we shouldn't have to tell them. Or by the way, your transaction is not going to cost $10, and you're going to have to wait 50 minutes for the transaction to settle.

That's not the expectation in Web 2. And if you sell that, sell that to someone coming into Web 3, it's not really a selling point. So a lot of the infrastructure solutions are like the table stakes that we finally sorted. So now we have like solid legs under the table and an ice cloth, and now we need to cook a great meal on top of this table. We have the building box in place. Now let's make a fantastic meal that tastes really, really good.

And that point, that infection point is now. Now all those things are in place and we can start making some sushi or whatever's your food. Cool. Yeah, let's talk about kind of the backhand that kind of supports the CEO wallet. So kind of do you run your own nodes? Do you rely on that party providers? And how do you make that decision? So we don't run our own notes.

We work with a number of different node providers in the space. We have fallbacks. So we have, of course, everything goes if you're working with a, a network there we have direct support of it goes through through our back end and then to to kind of this skating waterfall of node providers so we work with with quick node alchemy infuriates etc the various node providers depending on the network because we support a very large range of networks and so we have a mix different node providers and also making sure that we give really strong performance for for gas obstruction and account obstruction for on the

on the transaction side we're kind of working with them by economy so when you're doing a bullet transaction that goes through by economy. Okay, and how do you store the local data? So say, for instance, I give my wallet names or kind of I attach a note to a transaction or so. Where's that stored? So kind of if I do that on my phone and I log on to my computer to the same account, we see it. I expect to also have that data available, right? So you don't.

So from that point of view, there's no concept of a Zeal account on our back end, every installation that you make of Zeal on any device is a local installation that you set up. And so when you do go cross device, you will then need to install that wallet, whatever wallets you had on one device also or on another device. We have no concept of combination of wallets that we can recover for you, which is a choice, right, is intentional. because you decide yourself where you want to have which wallet and what you want to get associated between your wallets. But can you let me think?

So, for instance, say I get a new phone. Can I kind of just somehow transfer that information? I mean, without kind of like passing it to you, just kind of passing it between my own devices. The smoothest transfer right now, and you can experience this if you just install Zialis, the smart wallets. So you install that, you set it up with biometrics, you do the setup cloud recovery with your PASC solution, and then delete the wallet, and then you can install it on another device

and then do recovery, and you'll get that smart wallet recovered with, again, just a touch of a finger or a face on the next device. Exporting your whole wallet setup and if you have multiple wallets added, we don't have any easy exporting like that. We definitely don't want to do it on our back end and store that state and have that be exported. portable. But if that's something that users want, the zealots, if people want that,

that's something that we could build right. The very short term, we think it's not going to be, if users are using Confidelity Finance, probably won't have 20 wallets in there. So we're recovering a new dive-bys. Primarily, we think we'd be recovering your smart wallet and then add a couple of other wallace that you have stuff on. And so we haven't facilitated any to export experience with that right now. But if people want that, yeah, or We're listening extremely closely as we're a wallet that launched a month ago. We are listening very closely to users to hear what people want and really doubling down on their asks. So now I know there's at least one users that want an easy export mode.

I do, I do. So what's your, I mean, kind of you come from a very growth-heavy background. So tell us about kind of your insights into growth and skating on Web 3. What are the tactics that you will. use for Z. That's a very broad subject area. It's very broad. Yeah, absolutely.

Two thoughts. Well, as a new builder, product market fit is the number one thing to focus on right to make sure that you build something that people love. And so that's what we are obsessing about now is to listen to what people want and really doubling down on that and building more of what people are saying that they want and eradicating any pain points that they might have.

So things that they're not liking. And I think, crypto tradition last couple of years. You know, product market fit has often been obscured by tokens. Distributing a token is not equivalent to part market fit, but that's quite often been the case of intermingling those two. And the first thing is really to make sure that people love what you're offering without any additional incentives.

So that's first of what we're doing. But then indeed, there are lots of incentives that are voting around. And I think the crypto space is also the one that's been done a lot. of actually innovative experiments as well with incentives in various chip-chan forms because of the liquid nature of assets in our industry right so i think there are some very interesting things to do also in crypto using incentives especially we tap into kind of these semi-offchain use cases that are card is k-yc'd right so already there you have some civil protection and so you can work with some of the mechanics that have been experimented with a lot in in crypto in a more even efficient way

when you also add in some of the the traditional finance use cases. But first off is just build something people love and listen very closely to what they don't club about what you're building. And so that's what we're obsessing about now. So when you think about five years into the future, so very long time by kind of like crypto standards, where do you see Zedat? So, Zeal will be one of the drivers of making crypto useful. And finally delivering has said on the real promise of digital cash, making crypto useful in the daily life. People will be able to think of cash, not just as this forgotten thing when the fiscal

cash was to be eradicated, but have digital cash side by side with their centrally costed assets. We're not by any means like decentralization maximalists that think that the whole world will become tokenized and decentralized. Yes, we do believe in that, that a lot of things will be tokenized and decentralized, but not everything. We think five years out,

these worlds will go side by side and users will be able to choose what delivers the most value for them. And so, if you will, it's kind of like open fire, the connection of traditional finance and decentralized finance in a more integrated world. So five years out,

I see people having some of their assets on a centralized custoding because they don't want to have that responsibility or take care of that. And some assets they will use in a more permission-free way. And they will work with, they don't realize this protocol because they won't call it a protocol anymore. But they will work with a savings account or an early account always. But it will be very natural. It will not be a, oh, yeah, I'm into crypto.

It won't be that. It'll just be like, oh, yeah, I'm using zeal. and I have some stuff in this wallet and some stuff in this other wallet. Oh, it's a bank account. Yeah, they're kind of side by side. One is self-custed and another one is central-custed it. Yeah, I mean, people also don't say, I'm into internet backing, right? I mean, this would be...

Exactly. People don't say, yeah, I think Revolut has really good AWS solution. Yeah, it's fantastic. It's really good. You can barely... Yeah, I know. Yeah, I totally hear you here. So say people want to try out, where do they go, how do they inform your product roadmap by giving you feedback?

And how do you generally interact with the users? We zeal.app, Z-E, not zeal-like the animal, but zeal has been passionate for costs. So z-e-a-l.ab, and that's our own page or zeal wallet.com or zeal wallet on Twitter. any of those you can find Zeal and we have most of our our Zealot interaction are happening on Discord and so Discord.zeal.com

also linked from any of the power platforms I mentioned where we do very regular interviews testing sessions often several times per day we'd love to chat with you with you or anyone else who wants to try Zeal

and we often do like a half an hour chat where you can try Zeal elastic is if you haven't already, but also prototypes of things that are coming. And so we try new prototypes every day. This is what we've been doing here at Brussels and needs to see is to show our prototype a new build and have people click on it and see when they smile and when they cry. So far, no one crying, so that's a good thing. And then just hit me up on a DM.

I'm gradient, G-R-A-A-D-I-E-N-T. Maybe it's going to be in the notes. Also very happy to do over DMs or video. telegram, Twitter, Discord, any of the above. You're the boss, if you're the customer. You're the boss. You decide. And so we'll listen to you wherever you want to talk to us.

Perfect. Thank you, Hannes. Thank you so much for coming on. Thanks, sir. Having us, Fredericke and Deb Center.