Binance Blockchain Week 2023, which brought together the global cryptocurrency and blockchain communities in Istanbul, Turkey, was a clear indicator that the Web3 ecosystem continues to grow regardless of price movements.
Despite being a Binance event, the conference hosted several key players in the crypto industry.
Among them was Trust Wallet, a decentralized Web3 wallet provider acquired by Binance in 2018. Since its acquisition, Trust Wallet has been widely viewed as “the wallet arm of Binance.” That's why visitors to Binance Blockchain Week were caught off guard when the crypto exchange announced its own Web3 wallet.
Trust Wallet CEO Eowyn Chen, former vice president of Binance, clarified that “Binance focuses on centralized, while Trust Wallet works towards the decentralized ecosystem,” adding that Trust Wallet has a neutrality that can serve and partner with anyone in the crypto industry. .
“We believe that maintaining that independence and distance is the best way to keep the culture and talents working for their own mission.”
Trust Wallet was born in 2017 during the initial coin offering craze due to the need for an accessible mobile wallet, Chen said. “It was the only developer-focused extension wallet out there,” he added. The Web3 wallet focused on bringing users and developers into a decentralized blockchain world.
“Recently, we became a sister company of Binance instead of operating under Binance because we can have better playing conditions,” Chen explained. “We can still partner with each other and Binance Web3 Wallet is the result of a strategic partnership.”
“Scammers provide better customer service”
Compared to fixing the user experience, solving security issues in Web3 is more complicated, according to Chen. Unlike app-centric user experience, he noted that security vulnerabilities can occur in blockchains, decentralized applications, smart contracts, or even at the code level of a wallet.
Scammers account for the majority of security problems due to the social aspect of fraud, where social pressures can influence users to ignore security warnings and their better judgment.
Magazine: Real Cryptocurrency ai Use Cases – Cryptocurrency-Based ai Markets and ai Financial Analysis
Chen said Trust Wallet's security team has seen how scams have become much more sophisticated and has begun to provide a customer support experience that guides users who have fallen victim to scams.
Preventing scams and fraud is an incredibly difficult problem to solve: “It is a community issue; It is a people issue that requires education. Education requires time, it requires effort, an effort without return.” Chen added:
“It takes a community and the entire industry to figure out how to better educate people. That's the hard part. It is not a question of technology; “It is an operational problem.”
The smaller scale of Web3 startups also poses a security challenge for the industry, Chen said. “I was talking to a security expert yesterday and they told me that many new projects choose not to do security audits.” Even if small Web3 projects perform security audits, they tend to use less rigorous providers or choose the one with the lowest fee to avoid delays in implementation while saving money, according to Chen.
Web3 competition intensifies
In a keynote speech, Chen said: “Trust is the best user retention strategy in the bear market.”
User retention is more critical for Web3 due to the open nature of the ecosystem. “Competition has probably increased 10-fold because there are no barriers to abandoning a specific product or service.”
Users can simply take their private keys and transfer their funds or activity to another service.
However, user retention strategies should not depend on creating a closed ecosystem for fear of users leaving. Chen emphasized: “In fact, we build trust among users.”
The company's strategy has paid off. Chen said that even in the bear market, Trust Wallet has increased its total downloads by about 60% over the past two years, surpassing 70 million total downloads. Its market share for weekly hot wallet users also doubled from 20% to 40% on mobile.
“When things are sustained over time and the project and the team are able to show that they can handle challenges, they can handle mistakes and they make people feel comfortable moving forward.”
According to Chen, whether the Web3 industry is ready for the next billion users depends on the risk appetite and profile of Web3 companies. “Does Web3 offer enough utility scenarios and use cases that people are willing to try it?” she asked rhetorically, “That's the key question before bringing in the next billion.”
Blockchain as a universal value transfer system
When asked what he likes most about Web3, Chen said his attraction to Web3 is rooted in two main factors: The first is blockchain's potential to become the value transfer system for the Internet. While the Internet allows the free transfer of information, blockchain builds on that and allows the transfer of values.
Second, he believes in the idea of non-fungible tokens (NFTs), regardless of the market performance of individual collections. “We shouldn't be influenced by nft market price sentiment alone,” he said, adding: “Tokenization of property that gives access to more people is still something that could be valuable, and we can find a solution.” . best mechanism to do it.”
Chen said that innovation around NFTs and the use of blockchain as a value transfer system will create real value for society.
