I would like to know a little bit about your life before crypto. What were you doing? You obviously studied physics and math, did some photography. I want to hear it from you. And then also who you were at that time, and what were you searching for that brought you into the fold?
Yeah, I mean, if we treat this as a therapy session, both of my parents are teachers. So the expectation to go to university was not a question. You have to do STEM topics. Science was very interesting to me, but I quickly found that science is hard because it's not something you can apply. You have to live in this full abstraction of 'this will help society one day.' We just don't know why, when, or how. That kind of daunted me. I saw a PhD student whose entire work was delayed because a cleaning lady moved a mirror. I thought, 'How does that impact someone's life?' It's so detached. That disillusioned me. At the same time, I had a strong passion for photography, which became an escapism, and I ended up dropping out of university. I went to London, tried photography, but it was mostly e-commerce. Then I realized the bar was so low for e-commerce websites that I could do it myself. That got me into coding with Shopify, Squarespace, Stripe, and PayPal. Then in 2016, I shifted from e-commerce to fintech and got a job at a fintech startup in London.
Interesting. What year is this?
2016. That's when I went into this shift from e-commerce to fintech. The EU had just passed a law that made it possible to launch a fintech in weeks. So we had many startups, and I was in one of them. It was a great experience even if the startup didn't succeed. It got me into finance, and I realized finance is just a database. The regulation part was daunting. It didn't allow for much imagination. I was disappointed again. Then someone told me about Ethereum. I had ignored Bitcoin before, but after working in fintech, I understood the value proposition. I got into it, started voicing opinions on Twitter, and got a DM from someone building a wallet. I joined Balance Wallet. It was not great. Disappointment number three. But this time, the industry was nascent, and the rules were still being written. So we wanted to change the rules: any wallet can connect to any app. We didn't know how, but I saw a QR code on WhatsApp and thought, 'If WhatsApp can do it, why can't I?' So I reverse-engineered it and WalletConnect was born. I tweeted it, and everyone went crazy. The Ethereum Foundation reached out and gave me a grant, with the condition that WalletConnect be independent. So I left Balance and started the foundation.
Fair. Okay, so that was a condition of the grant. So that's why you left Balance.
It went into this whole thing where you have to open a foundation. That was bad advice. You can't have a foundation without the participants. But it was also a time when people were thinking about public goods. There was a swing from public goods to business models. We have to find a balance.
What was the pendulum swing for WalletConnect when you got the grant and then it went boom? Were you prepared for how quickly it went boom?
No one is prepared for any of this. The Ethereum Foundation gave me the grant in ETH, and it was wiped out in three months because of the bear market. Then I got closer to ConsenSys and joined the Tachyon accelerator with a grant in dollars. By end of 2018, I had stability. I compiled feedback from developers and rewrote WalletConnect from scratch. The first version had too many assumptions from Balance Wallet. The new version was a universal protocol. The most exciting part was the greenfield project and being able to iterate with customers at conferences.
Was that exciting for you?
Yeah, it's the most exciting part because it's a greenfield project. We had a small industry, so you didn't have to find customers; they were there. You just go to conferences and get feedback.
So then as it grew and found success, how did that change your life? Any moments where you felt your whole life was this and nothing else?
Yeah, but I was already a workaholic. What changed was going from employee to founder. It was humbling. I realized how hard it is to be a founder. I think life is made of highs and lows.
Did you have it happen to you? Were people on your team like this?
Yeah, of course. But I took it as helpful feedback. Someone cares enough to tell you.
Interesting. Okay, I like that. And in terms of the evolution of the team, as you grew, did that affect your experience of leading the project?
WalletConnect had different seasons. First season was trying to be a foundation that wasn't really a foundation. It was open source with contributions from MetaMask and Trust Wallet. I was the core developer and coordinator. Then DeFi summer came and usage exploded. Things started to break, and I was the only node operator. I realized the foundation model wasn't sustainable. In 2021, I did a VC round and built a full business team. That's when WalletConnect went from sometimes works to always works. But then we started chasing business models, built many products like Chat and Push Notifications, and neglected the core. Then the market crashed, and we had to refocus. The core was interoperability and the network effect of using a universal protocol for transacting. The value was in financial markets. It's sobering and now I feel laser-focused on the core.
Do you feel responsible in that scenario?
Yeah, because I'm the CEO. It was my fault. When you have resources, you feel powerful and can do whatever. But you have to remember what made you successful. Under constrained budgets, you make better decisions.
Coming back to what you said about feeling powerful, when you have resources, do you think that makes you make wrong decisions?
It's simple: when you have a budget, you prioritize. Under constrained budgets, you make better decisions. It's not unique to startups. What caused the problem was that we convinced big brands like Porsche, Louis Vuitton, Facebook to integrate WalletConnect, and then they changed their minds and the world forgot about NFTs. But we had full production products, not pilots. The data became skewed. The NFT market 10x'd the volume of the earlier use cases. So who was wrong? As a leader, you have to follow the market.
Yeah. But the market was wrong.
Again, another sobering season for everyone. Everything evaporates overnight and you go back to the core and you realize that the number one thing that if you had to make WalletConnect better, you had to make it more globally distributed, more performant, more reliable. Again, go back to the basics. You know, like if someone is in Australia, are they having a good WalletConnect experience? If someone is an institutional partner, do they have the exact features that they need for their WalletConnect experience compared to the retail user. You know, all of a sudden you go back to the basics, which is like, can you make this a stress-free experience for all users across all regions, across all segments, and all of a sudden we start distributing our nodes. We're everywhere. We start partnering with other partners to run our nodes, and then we actually launch a decentralized network instead of like what I now think was essentially building more products, but not with a better core. Like the core was the same core.
That before.
It was still the same fickle and unreliable core, but with more products.
Instead we have one product, but with a stronger core.
That is truly a decentralized network available everywhere. We reduce latencies. There were people complaining about three-second connections, and they were like, 'Yeah, because we're operating our nodes close to our home.'
You know, and now everyone has sub-second connections, you know?
Everyone has 99% connectivity. Now WalletConnect actually works for everyone globally.
Where are you in the journey now?
So this is 2023. This is post-FTX, post-Terra Luna. So we're really in the mode of try to fix the core and only do the core.
And this means that we essentially have to think about not multiple products, but multiple consumer profiles. So it's the same product, but it is different for someone in Latin America, Europe, or Australia. It's also different if you are a whale or a small player. It's also different if you're a mobile user or you're using like a safe desktop application. So then we just have to think a little bit more broadly and try to make sure that everyone is having the best possible experience and cater to everyone.
We also realized that there were some low-hanging fruits that we hadn't done before. Like, for example, everyone complained there was a little bit of a variance. Like, there is 700 different wallets, but some wallets work better than others. Why is that?
In permission systems, there are certain rules, again, the regulators. They say, 'You have to do this, this, and this, and this.'
But WalletConnect is permissionless. So, anyone can just join the network and do whatever they want.
But we don't want to make it permissioned. So, instead of using a stick, we use a carrot.
And we create a certified program. We say, 'In order to be certified and be ranked on the top wallets, you must do this and this and this.' You can choose not to, but you're not going to be recommended.
And these kind of low-hanging fruits were being tackled now because we weren't distracted by the markets. We were focusing on the core.
And there were certain things that we could have done better. And that certified only launched in 2024.
Yes. We now take it for granted, but
Yes, I know. That's why when you say 2024, I'm like, 'Wow. Okay.'
Like, even domain verification was 2023.
Like, we were connecting our wallets without even knowing if the URL was actually the correct URL.
Like, why? Because we were chasing the markets. And this is why it's really humbling to think that no matter— I look back at when I was in university, I would listen to this YC podcast, and they always say, like, 'Do one thing, but do one thing right.' And be like, 'That makes sense. When I launch a startup, I'm going to do exactly that.' And then I see myself not doing that.
Human nature, though. It's easy to get distracted.
Do you think that is something that we as humans, particularly in maybe not necessarily particularly in this space, but because there's so much to get distracted by, we just like veer off what we're supposed to be doing?
I think I would simplify it like the same thing that you would hear a podcast from Y Combinator saying do one thing and do one thing right. They also say like follow the data. So, we were also following the data. Like, you know, but crypto markets are extremely volatile. And it is very easy to kind of fall in this like, oh, the data said this. But like this is why now I like looking at charts like 6 months. Because even quarterly, I think it can be too little. Like a quarter could say this is the truth. But was it the truth last quarter? You know? Like even 3 months is not enough to get the real picture, right? You know? Like looking really wide is really important because the data can distract you very easily. And obviously like there's also the problem of brand awareness, right? You know? If Facebook calls, are you not going to take that call? If Louis Vuitton calls, are you not going to take that call?
You're definitely taking the call.
You're going to take the call. But one thing that I've learned is you take the call, but you still have your team taking care of the core. What was the core? The core— always protect the core. Like that core is important. Why did WalletConnect come into existence? Always protect that. Always. Always. Always.
How has protecting the core— since we're 2026? Where are you now in your journey with WalletConnect?
So, now we have gone through the hype cycles. We've gone through the decentralization network, making sure it's available globally.
And now we've gone through probably one of the weirdest bear markets in existence because from everything that we wished for was for crypto to— sometimes people say crypto is not legal, but actually what the correct word is like crypto is no longer ambiguous. Like crypto is now clear-cut, like a framework for finance to operate. And therefore, every institution on Earth wants to do crypto. Amazing. We won, right? It should feel like that. But it doesn't feel like that because we actually haven't built our own rules. And now they are essentially imposing their rules, right? And this is the part that is super tricky, right? Because we have to welcome the adoption, but still be able to make the rules. And this is what we're trying to achieve with WalletConnect, which is protect the core.
And what is our core? Our existence has always been about interoperability, making sure diversity of wallets and permissionless of all wallets to participate in this network, make sure that it's globally accessible, and make sure the user experience is as simple as possible.
And these three things are non-negotiable.
