Earlier this year I joined the FWBuilders alpha cohort to work on the Sparkling Multisig aka Girl Wallet, now to be known as...well, something else soon. 

For those who have been here a minute, you know this idea has been a long time coming.

Disclaimer: I hit "Publish" way earlier than I used to because I have the most amazing baby girl, and I want to give her as much attention as possible. So are there typos? Don’t care. Are my thoughts not as cohesive as they could be? Oh well. I wrote enough to consider it done, and that’s good enough for me.

After publishing the Des Femmes DAO Experiment report in 2023, I fleshed out the concept for Girlfriend DAO: a space for women to enjoy life together, without being weird about money.

As you’ve seen from previous articles, the GirlfriendDAO experiment eventually evolved into the idea for a ✨sparkling multisig✨: a place for friends to escape ad-filled, shill-laced news feeds.

Just you, your friends, and the funds you want to spend.

My idea for the Sparkling Multisig laid idle for a bit, until I saw that Boys Club and Stellar were offering scholarships for people to attend Meridian.

So I shot my shot to learn more about the Stellar ecosystem and what it takes to actually build a multisig. The conference was inspiring, though I still didn’t have the guts to actually build the damn thing.

Fast forward to April 2025 when I came across the Friends with Builders alpha cohort announcement. Had another “shoot my shot” moment and applied, and I was invited to be part of the first edition of the program.

I’ve always had respect for folks who build apps, but now that I’ve glimpsed just a fraction of what it’s like to program something (while heavily relying on AI), I can say now that I have even greater respect for those who have that kind of patience and motivation.

The FWBuilders program was six weeks of workshops and accountability. I took more advantage of the latter than the former.

I showed up to the first workshop with Base and was completely lost. As soon as I had to ask “What is a terminal?” I felt like I was out of my depth.

But I persisted. Thanks to the folks in the cohort, as well as 0xDesigner’s magnificent guides, I built a janky prototype/mock-up that could demonstrate my vision:

• Create a group chat

• Make your plans

• Spin up a multisig wallet

• Do the thing and pay for it with the wallet

I made incredible progress on the concept, and no, you can’t test it yet.

I really want to have everything built in-house, but I’m not sure it’s the right move.

I want this app to be secure. That means non-custodial. It means end-to-end encryption. And I feel the only way I can possibly guarantee (or confidently assure) any of that is by not incorporating third parties, by having everything in my control.

However, third party integrations will make this app easier and faster to build. Plus, it means that I have a much lower overhead for compliance because the third parties are responsible for some of it (though again, there’s risk with that).

There’s also so much about building an app that I hadn’t considered. Take storage for example. It never occurred to me that my chat + wallet would need storage, but it does.

I finally figured out what vibe-coding is…and it’s not for me. AI has absolutely made coding more accessible for non-technical folks, and I can see how it’s faster for people who are already devs.

But now that the tools exist for me to tell Cursor or v0 in laymans terms what I want my app to do, I don’t ever want to do it. It’s too challenging and frustrating for me because I still don’t have the knowledge and vocabulary to build what I actually want.

I’d much rather just work with people.

Lastly, I want to change the name of the app.

I started the FWBuilders alpha cohort has Girl Wallet, and came out of it with a couple possible name changes.

This is for a couple different reasons. Part of it is because anyone can use this app, and I’m not just building for women. The “Girl” aspect of the wallet stemmed from the idea of Girlfriend DAO, but this concept is bigger than women doing girl math. No hate on girly products – women just don’t need things designed “for women”.

The product, ultimately, doesn’t lean on just women’s needs. There’s nothing about it that other folks can’t use. This Wallet is for everyone.

The other reason is that the product focus is on the chat aspect. It leans into that culture, that need. The wallet feature has been my primary focus, but if I want non-crypto people to use it, then its use case and functionality need to be more immediate.

So there’s a few things I’m marinating on to make the chat function especially fun.

If you want to help me bring a chat + wallet MVP to life, I’m looking for:

• devs who can actually code (because I can’t)

• other wallet builders to learn about their process

• UX/UI designers

Let’s chat.