As you may have noticed, it’s been a bit quiet here. I and the other women involved with this project have put Girlfriend DAO things on the backburner as we go through other changes in our lives.
But when I saw that Boys Club was partnering with Stellar to offer a scholarship for the Meridian conference, I couldn’t help but throw my hat in the ring. Thank you to both teams for sponsoring my time in London to attend Meridian!
The most enlightening part of it all was simply being in a new ecosystem. I’ve spent a lot of time with folks building on Ethereum, and a little bit with Bitcoin folks, but otherwise, I’m not very familiar with other ecosystems.
I certainly learned a lot about building on Stellar, and it helped me understand a bit more about what it means to design a wallet—especially because it seems that’s all that anyone has built on Stellar. Understandably though since the network only launched smart contracts earlier this year.
For nearly a decade, Stellar was only a cryptocurrency, but with a distinct and forward-facing mission of adoption and real-world application. As a result, almost everyone was building a wallet.
I didn’t meet anyone building an NFT platform, a lending protocol, a social network, or anything else that veered into degen territory. However, Stellar introduced smart contracts on Soroban earlier this year, which will likely encourage a wider variety of apps and ways to interact with the network.
I imagine we’ll see a number of new products in the next couple years, especially considering how many non-technical folks I met at Meridian.
In fact, some of my favorite panels were with legal counsel and regulators—people who function as go-betweens in the industry. The journalists panel was informative as well, considering that many journalists reporting on the industry have no experience working in it.
However, one of the hard things about conferences is that content is often lukewarm and panders to the majority. In other words, I’m not really sure I heard any new opinions about crypto and how it’s used.
I certainly didn’t hear any hard-hitting questions or spicy conversations about regulation or adoption. Even though the conference seemed to be using Slido, I never saw the primary stages answer audience questions.
I will say though that the “brain dates” were easily the best space for learning. Brain dates were small roundtable sessions for either 30 or 60 minutes around any question or theme someone had. Anyone could create a brain date in the conference app, and a limited number of people could reserve their spots.
It was how I met a variety of different developers who answered my questions about building wallets on Stellar, as well as other creatives working in the crypto space.
It never really occurred to me that I’d have to build a wallet on a particular chain. I always figured it would be (could be) a multi-asset wallet. These conversations, however, did make me think more about what the priority is or should be with this wallet.
And since this wallet is meant to be marketed towards normie non-crypto folks (particularly women), the primary currency for it should be fiat. I want them to feel comfortable downloading the app and putting money in it.
I’d venture to guess that most non-crypto folks would be more likely to download an app that they can put dollars into, rather than an app that puts crypto at the forefront. That way, the wallet feels practical and they can use it right away.
So for now, I continue to see Venmo as the primary competitor for me in the US. The major feature they don’t have is a multisig component (most fiat apps don’t), and I want to figure out how we can implement the technology into a payment app people want to use.
Talking to people in person at a crypto conference really made me feel like I can build this thing. 10/10, highly recommend.
The motivation to start learning how to build the thing? A bit harder to find.
This time of year is usually packed with last-minute projects and final wrap-up before the holidays. Plus, I'm taking a sabbatical in Q1 2025. But I'm hoping to set aside time during that period to dig into some docs.
If you have any recommendations or suggestions for resources to build wallets, let me know!
Sterling Schuyler
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