Why go mobile first when crypto is such a desktop-centric industry?
Well, it’s easier, Zerion’s Alexander Guy told Decrypt.
“Basically, we thought it was a good opportunity to try there because the competition was rather low,” he said in an interview at this year’s NFC Lisbon.
Zerion, a Web3 wallet and portfolio management solution, had already built a functional portfolio tracker, and after that “kind of just baked it inside the wallet from then on.”
The project began life as a DeFi portfolio tracker integrated with ten different blockchains, offering access to most major decentralized exchanges (DEXs). It then added NFT support across those chains in mid-2021, enabling users to track their non-fungibles.
Launching the mobile crypto wallet last year was also out of security and, of course, ease-of-use considerations, too.
“But the other reason is that mobile wallets were really vulnerable. I don't know anyone who really likes to use their mobile wallet,” said Guy. “And with Web3, in general, becoming a more diverse ecosystem–people want to do things on the go—it makes no sense to have people be at their computer to do anything or not to miss an airdrop.
Zerion’s smart wallet came out first on mobile (iOS and Android) and wasn’t targeted at casual users so much as daily users of Web3’s decentralized applications (dApps), who interact with blockchains in many different ways, from DeFi and investing to collecting and gaming.
“We wanted to make a wallet that was specifically for a group of people we call 'Web3 citizens,'” he said. “Given the timing—this was sort of during the early days of the bear market—we launched our wallet.”
In other words, Zerion is for users already neck-deep in blockchain tech.
Can Zerion dethrone Metamask?
Guy also took aim at Metamask’s “painful user experience” and said that “a lot of times what I feel is a lack of control.”
This has prompted Zerion to build a product that makes the “user experience and the control the user feels pretty exceptional.”
Offering an example, he spoke of the experience of having multiple wallets engaged, going to a dApp “and all of a sudden they all start trying to open and fire at the same time, jostling for position.”
Zerion’s workaround allows users to set default wallets for their dApps on either a permanent or “day-by-day basis.”
Decrypt also asked Guy how Zerion hopes to loosen Metamask’s footing as the number one wallet for decentralized finance.
“The thing that was missing for us was the browser extension, right?” he said. “And this is actually in open beta. We announced it on Monday [June 5], actually.”
The onboarding process has been relatively exclusive, with only a few select communities being added as well as whitelisting addresses for specific NFT holders.