Mass Token Adoption: Designing a Digital Wallet

Transcript

guys this next speaker he is going to talk about Mass token adoption designing a digital wallet put your hands together for Mel galman wardes Barcelona um it's good to see all of you guys here I actually used to live in Minorca so it's very nice to um present somewhere that is a little bit like home um so my name is Mel galman I am the um if this works goodness okay I'll just

click so my name is Mel galman I am the CEO of token.com uh previously um we built monolith which some of you might know it was one of the well it was the first non-custodial ethereum Visa debit card um I have in my wallet in my bag um I actually realized during making this presentation that this marks my 10th year in crypto and um that's quite a long time and uh I guess I wanted to say to all of you here now in the depths of a bare Market that um you should you know kind of applaud yourself because you know like only the people that you know like you guys are ultimately going

to be here when things get really good and you know most people give up in a bare market so keep going uh lots of people are building amazing stuff uh and including us which I'm going to talk about today so um one of the observations of having been in crypto so long is that um crypto ux for the mainstream really hasn't changed much in a decade right so um this still represents kind of the you know like whatever version of this I'm old school so this is coin Market capat but you know some people use coin gecko or coinbase or binance or whatever basically all the mass Market interfaces

that people are actually using that your friends not in crypto are actually using boil down to this right and this has basically stayed the same for a decade and this is just totally failing our industry right now because all of us here are working on the most amazing projects right you could be creating the most amazing Dow with your token and from a list like this not a single person out there would be able to tell the difference between some garbage like unop could be the most amazing project in the world but here it's just treated like another line item in a database and um like we we genuinely think that for

crypto to move out of the current bar Market it we cannot move out to the current bark Market until this is solved right so because if people were to come back today they'd just get the same experience um you know and nothing would change so so basically Mass Market crypto ux has failed to evolve in 10 years um this actually explains in a way the meme coin phenomena right where we all you know kind of laugh at the mainstream for buying mem coins but the reality is that for them to understand anything beyond just the meme coin they have to dedicate their life to it which is what all of us are doing you have to be all day on crypto Twitter and on Discord and whatever right reading

websites and white papers and this makes actual crypto inaccessible to 99.9% of people right we we represent an absolute minority here and um so we're going to try and change this so before I talk about that I just want to ask who here has seen the movie uh contact with jod Foster yes excellent excellent excellent the movie I don't know if you know but the movie was based on an event in 1977 in uh I think it's in California but the big ears tell well let me not follow this does anyone know who what this is does anyone recognize

this okay so no space lovers and any guess does anyone have a guess yes that's right so so in 1977 the um um the the big airs telescope or telescope array in California I think um made the wow signal Discovery right the the the scientists overseeing this wrote wow and each of these letters um each the numbers and the letters getting technical represent signal strength signal intensity and each number represents just one 10c frame so um over the course of this this is technically

uh 70 seconds because it took the computer two two uh seconds to process they saw a huge spike in intensity and just to quantify the intensity a one here represents the minimal level that they could measure a two represents one uh one uh statistical significance above what the like a it's not order of magnitude but it's almost and then one once they hit like nine they switch over to alpha numeric and it goes over into the alphabet and so you see that U there that represents such an intensely strong signal that um this was like to date this is still the best uh Discovery you know over the course of 70 seconds this

huge Spike and the reason I mentioned this is because um just like jod Foster we are also looking for a wow signal right like we think that for crypto um for the for for for crypto to again actually legitimately this time become interesting to the world out there some sort of ux Revolution needs to happen and um we think it should evoke a genuine wow like just blow people's minds that they instantly feel um like like we we actually want people to feel something and they interacts

with all the excellent work that people like you all are doing um and so like the the goal that we've set for token.com is you know we're on a quest to bring tokens to life bit like Jurassic Park right we're bringing tokens not dinosaurs to life and we want to leave people feeling captivated so with this in mind we set out to design an app right so token.com is just an Android or an i iOS app and um um like I I'm going to go in it in a second like what we're trying to do is not to sound too cocky but we're we're trying to build an experience that is

endgame right that you can just instantly recognize as like this is exactly how people want to experience crypto um but we're we're just getting started with this obviously and in doing so we've thrown out a lot of the the rule book we've thrown the rule book out the window so you're about to see a lot of things that like are a little controversial um and uh but we kind of love that so um with token.com we set out to build a snackable format a way for people to discover tokens in the most snackable way well um when we right when we started when we started building this about a year and a half ago we had one okr our first okr was let's build a format where people people can

understand a token in under a minute so tokens today you know like you hear the story of like someone trying to discover Bitcoin and took them a whole week and then they were all in you know that is amazing but that also isn't scalable right like if there's going to be millions of tokens out there one day right if tokens are going to permeate Society you need to be able to understand a token in basically second so the goal we set is under a minute and um one of the so so I'm going to talk about the five five of the things that we're doing um that are you know like that are trying to solve some of the the big problems in the industry and um really the one I'm most excited

about is that we want to tell we want to allow tokens to tell their story so our interface um this is an like a mockup from from like I think late last year um you'll see the you know the current interface in a second like um today we're just showing the mission statements of of a of a token project because it's literally just version one um but this quarter we are going to add that token projects can upload short video so 60 seconds up to 60 seconds of short video so that as you go from token to token you can immerse yourself into the

visions that all of you people you know all the tokens that you people are creating have right like it it should be you can that you that you can immerse yourself in the Unis swap Vision right maybe it's Hayden on stage talking about Unis swap V4 right and why he's excited for it or you know you want to be able to go into the a world in seconds and so um basically we're trying to make a way for people to find token passion fit like um like Tinder right um and um yeah so because tokens you know like the industry has just failed to communicate itself you can't ask anyone on the streets you know in any detail what they know about a crypto Beyond just Bitcoin

or doggy coin or whatever and that just it's a failure from us so um then and here you can see the the current interface so then another thing we're tackling is like if people figured out well they like this token right if we're making that really easy um the next thing they're going to ask is okay well how much should I invest so you know we've rather than having them fill in the numbers or whatever right we want to make it so simple that it's almost equivalent to a like button so Facebook had their like button that was like the nominal way that anyone on the internet started to like interact for the first time really and um you know we we think that the

meaningful equivalent in the age of web 3 is that when you see something you like you don't just effing like it you invest in it right and um that's basically what we've done here right it's going to get a lot better still but this is how it is right now in the app as soon when you tap the button in fact you can do combo tabs right so so like it it it adds them up um um but as soon as you stop tapping it executes that transaction it hits four exchanges four centralized exchanges and one and it goes to arbitrum as well as the decks and then it hits all the exchanges on the decks the deck sorry all the all the deck is on arbitrum so that means basically for exchanges and unisoft in in practice and

then it just sources the best price um takes about 5 Seconds to complete the transaction this we've made it so simple that like even buying is theoretically accessible to to everyone and the idea is that as you go from token to token um you are um you know you're spreading out your money you're not putting all your money into Bitcoin which is kind of the current generation where you hear your friend has put all their little crypto money into Sheba or whatever no we want people to spread and invest it very easily into whatever excites them spreading the risk as well so um the other thing is that our experience is

personalized so we believe in a future where there will be millions of tokens and in that World um there are too many tokens for any of us to keep track of in fact I distinctly remember feeling that in 2020 in 20120 right during the pandemic we had defi summer and I was so stressed that as I was working as I was building stuff right with our company um there were so many other projects out there that I all wanted to be kept up to dat on and like invest in right that like and that was just 2020 when things get exciting again there will be a new amazing Venture token Venture every you know every every few hours potentially

right and so just like you know like Tik Tok or whatever um our system knows what tokens you've invested in what tokens you're interested in and it will show you the tokens most relevant to you so that you're not wasting your time if you're really into nfts it'll show you stuff related to nfts if you're really into like space exploration then maybe you know a few years from now you'll be able to very easily invest in the V ures that are you know enabling the moon base so um yes for fourthly crypto is so extremely lonely right and we are social beings and we invest together right so um I might be

very interested to know if one of my friends right has invested in a particular project right like I'm not investing by myself and so that is actually functionality um that we're also building so um I'll just go back for a second like one of the things we're going to be adding um this coming quarter is that at the bottom left of the card there of this like token card um it's going to show you know like vitalic eth owns this token or you know stan. e or or Griff lens or whatever um and so so this way there's some sort of social signal that you're getting if we want to make that if you that you can log in with lens and that you can actually see your lens friends directly

as well on the card so as you're swiping from card to card um you can get a sense of you know like what your your network is invested in um then finally what we will do and this is this is early concept from earlier this year uh but also in Q4 we will or in yeah in Q4 we will enable um people to post uh content themselves so let's say hypothetically and um this is what we're going to try and do we really want um like like a media partnership imagine a media partnership with bankless where they can post their content that you can you have a feed where you're seeing the latest token related content from creators that

you trust and believe in um and that you can directly invest from that experience right um yes we at at eth Prague two weeks ago we we um we participated in the lens hackathon on and we added the ability for people to see lens posts in our app so if someone on lens says you know mentions eth or arbitrum or whatever that'll tag the token on their Post in our app and you can directly invest from that post um and then finally like one of the last big things that we're we're doing this quarter is that um on our like safety is a real issue right right like

even for us um you know we don't like the amount of token projects out there is booming and it's extremely hard to get a sense of which which are any good at all and so we want to introduce slightly controversially um a um a token quality score basically like a Rotten Tomatoes for tokens so at the top left of each card we're probably going to add a little percentage with an emoji right that'll give you some level of indication as to whether this Project's garbage or not right because even between the list of things we're seeing there there's huge differences and an ordinary person can't tell so we think that's what people want people want it that simple just a percentage right the

methodology behind it could get really complex over time and I really wanted to ask for help if there's anyone in the audience here that knows um if there's some sort of protocol that's already doing some sort of rating system system that we can just use their API and plug the number in that would be amazing uh because it saves us some work and uh you know like we we really want that in fact we might aggregate yes I see some shaking some nodding head so thank you um and then yeah so so just rounding up there like um we have early Whispers of product Market fits right and with that

I mean like for example um you know people lose their mind when there's like a little bug in the app and when you know when like some something is broken for a little bit right we get so many so many messages from people um we sorry we went live in Brazil 6 months ago um so I'll get that yeah so we have 90k users in Brazil kyc users um of which about 5 6K are daily active meaning they're buying and selling every day and our and our app is extremely basic today right like it's literally just version one there's so much we we have yet to build um yeah and and like I said if we turn off the marketing hypothetically these users stay so this is you know early product Market fit your your your usage

doesn't drop off a cliff if you stop bringing in new users so we're extremely excited about that our app store rating is going up I don't know the latest this is uh from two weeks ago um yes then um I just wanted to point out that like um your you're seeing an extremely simple ux but um making things simple is actually extremely extremely hard right like probably the best example that we all like is like apple right Apple goes to extreme lengths to make the experience something that anyone can use but that requires you know to you know in a lot of ways the greatest uh

engineering efforts as well and um and I want to give full credit to my team so this is about half the team last week in uh in London we had our uh you know our summer party um full credit our team for actually get building all of this and um yeah like uh really amazing so um yeah we are our plan here is we're doing a seed round right now um we are um um planning to have our app in absolute top shape by the time things start to get interesting again which you know if you

gauge the average Twitter Vibe it's people saying 2 years right like we're going to be ready way before that um with a much much better alternative to coinbase right like we don't want people to experience the coinbase thing again right like that limits the potential of our industry because none of the value ultimately gets expressed they just see the numbers people just see numbers instead we think it's all about story about you know the social behind it investing in the things that you actually believe in so we're rolling it out to basically the rest of the world including the EU this was supposed to happen uh this week um it has been it's in Dev in a bunch of countries um uh but um joining our wait list is probably

going to be the the best idea um yes and then basically just like jod Foster we're trying to build a machine here a machine here not just for us but for the whole industry and for Humanity because if we build something you know if we get this right we actually might be able to um you know just like Jodie Foster you know go into like extend across space right like um like transcend into the next era of our society here that the the promise that tokens hold um you know if we can solve the accessibility that problem

that tokens have today then um you know we make all the things that the industry is producing all the stuff that you guys are producing we make it instantly accessible to everyone and that's really what we we believe in yes so thank you very much um again we have a website and we have a stand please get a demo from our team we have a stand um you can follow me down here Mel galman or token.com um and yes do I have time for questions I think I have a few a little time for questions microphone is coming I like the UI very nice um we recently saw like people like influencers and stuff get

really burnt by talking about crypto Co coins so I was interested to hear about your social feed and kind of where you see that going like is that going to be a huge legal problem in the future thanks um that that honestly is a very tricky one yeah so I guess um ultimately um it might be very jurisdiction dependent right where is the influencer um ultimately though Nothing is Stopping people today already from posting their thoughts on Twitter from people having YouTube channels right like it's it's like the people who kind of consciously are promoting terrible

projects that are getting the most in trouble right um and um ultimately from a from a principal level um we believe that the reason I got into ethereum was because I saw um I saw uh Alexander sander U talk on stage about Mist browser right back in 2015 and um um that was a vision such an amazing vision of the future the way we get into stuff is by human contact is by telling each other what we're excited about right and there might be bad actors um we're trying to build a platform where it's very easy to spot the Bad actors because imagine we can actually track the performance of our

influencers so if an influencer like buy this token we can see that oh people investing in this guy typically lose all their money right or don't perform nearly as well as someone who might actually be a genius strategist here in the crowd but never actually talks right but like just might you know open up what they're investing in right like um we think we can build a dedicated tool for people to do crypto and social together that actually solves the problems rather than you know amplifies the problems of of like using the wrong tools like Twitter Twitter's not built for our industry um so yeah but good question and you know we we you know we're trying to figure that out as well yeah anyone else are there were there any questions

on the board there were two I think but um yeah no one's dragging me off stage all good thank you guys very [Applause] much