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Zeal: The Day-to-Day Crypto Wallet for EVM Chains - Hannes Graah

Episode Summary

We were joined by Hannes Graah, founder of Zeal, to discuss the challenges new wallet solutions have to face and what features they aim to implement in order to capture market share.

Episode Notes

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’ background
• Existing wallet solutions and Zeal’s userbase
• Wallet UX, account abstraction and passkeys
• Security assumptions and passkey recovery
• Smart contract interactions
• Zeal’s mobile-first focus
• IBAN & Gnosis Pay integrations
• Capturing market share
• Banking the unbanked
• Gas fees
• Cross-chain interoperability
• DeFi & staking
• Monetisation
• Privacy
• Zeal’s backend
• Growth & business scaling in Web3
• Zealot recruitment

Episode links:

• Hannes Graah on Twitter
• Hannes Graah on LinkedIn
• Zeal on Twitter

Sponsors:

• 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.io
• Chorus1: Chorus1 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.one

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst.