Author : Yoo Minho, Chief Strategy Officer (https://www.linkedin.com/in/minho-yoo/)
[TL;DR]
- Wepin is a WaaS (Wallet as a Service) created for companies trying to incorporate blockchain into their services.
- The most important concept of Wepin is that it allows wallet integration into services without significant resource investment through widgets.
- Beyond widgets, various features are incorporated to lower the cost of wallet integration.
- Wepin is expanding its scope beyond a simple wallet service to become a marketing tool that helps grow the services that adopt it.
A question I often receive when talking about Wepin
When I meet many people and talk about the Wepin wallet, there's a question I often receive from industry professionals: "IoTrust is already servicing the D'CENT wallet, so why did you create the Wepin wallet?" While wallets are diverse in nature, it's an area that's difficult to understand without close examination. So today, I'd like to share the story of how we started creating Wepin and the considerations we had while developing it.
Discovering the needs and problems of many companies trying to adopt blockchain
From 2021, as NFTs began to gain a lot of attention, many companies started to emerge trying to incorporate blockchain or NFTs into their services. Some were trying to introduce blockchain to existing services, while others were planning new services utilizing blockchain.
As is well known, wallets are essential for utilizing blockchain in services. Thanks to this, we were able to meet many teams. Meeting these teams, we discovered that there was a common need among teams planning services.
That was, "We want to build-in the wallet inside the service we're trying to create."
Along with this need, almost all companies had similar difficulties. It was "lack of resources." Especially, there was often a lack of development resources to handle blockchain or wallets. Needless to say, time was also limited.
Problems that couldn't be solved with app-based wallets or direct construction
We considered many ways to create synergy with our existing D'CENT wallet service, but ultimately it wasn't easy. The biggest reason was that D'CENT was an app-based wallet. Not just D'CENT, but many wallets at the time were mobile app or browser extension-based wallet services. In the end, "installation" of an app was necessary to use the wallet.
Let's say we need a chat function in our service when we're creating it. We don't ask users to install a separate chat app like KakaoTalk or Telegram during the service registration process, but implement the chat function within the service, right? The same goes for wallets. We couldn't ask users to install another wallet app when a wallet is needed within the service. Many users would drop off during the process of asking them to install another wallet app, and naturally, the user experience would deteriorate.
If we can't utilize an app-based wallet, there's also the option of building a wallet for the service in-house. As those who have experience in directly building wallet services understand well, building a wallet directly takes that much time and cost. Understanding of blockchain technology is also needed. Security issues can't be overlooked either, as wallets handle users' assets. We end up in a situation where we have to build a wallet just to create a service, where the tail wags the dog.
New problems require new solutions. IoTrust's WaaS, Wepin wallet
What's needed in this situation are SaaS-type solutions. In Web3 wallets, it's called WaaS (Wallet as a Service). We judged that it would be more appropriate to solve new problems with new solutions. So we created the Wepin wallet, a new wallet service and WaaS. Wepin was created with the goal of helping companies trying to introduce blockchain, NFTs, and tokenomics into their services.
Wepin's most important concept = A wallet built into services in widget form
If there's one area we paid the most attention to while preparing the Wepin wallet, it was minimizing the resources needed for wallet integration from the service's perspective. So we set the basic concept as allowing wallet integration in widget form. We thought it would be good if wallets could be integrated in the same way as attaching a chatbot to a service, where you can attach a chatbot with just a few settings without much coding.
By utilizing Wepin's widget, you can integrate a wallet into your service without much consideration of the wallet's UI and UX. Since basic wallet integration is completed by embedding the Wepin widget in the service, wallet adoption becomes possible with minimal resources.
Now that the basic concept is set, it's necessary to incorporate functions that companies need one by one into the wallet. While the Wepin wallet has various characteristics and functions, let's look at just a few key ones.
User onboarding is always important = Social login
There are various factors that make wallets difficult, but one of the most representative is recovery phrase management. It's also called a mnemonic code or seed phrase. While it's essential for ensuring compatibility between wallets or when you need to recover your wallet, it's clear that recovery phrase management is a very painful process for users.
The Wepin wallet is structured with existing key architecture to ensure compatibility with other wallets, but it's designed so that users don't have to directly manage the recovery phrase they find inconvenient. More precisely, it has a structure where recovery phrase management is layered with social login. Through this, users of services integrated with the Wepin wallet can use the wallet without separate recovery phrase management. Of course, when users want to move their wallet key to another wallet, a menu is prepared where they can use the recovery phrase.
As each service requires different types of social login, it's possible for companies creating services to specify which type of social login to use within the widget. If it's a social login not yet supported by Wepin, our team can extend it without additional cost.
Also, it's possible to separate service login and wallet login, or unify them as a single login. It's possible to choose according to the direction the service wants.
Customizing wallet widget UI for each service = Widget customization
As the Wepin wallet is a built-in type of wallet for services, it's important that it can be customized to fit each service. From lightly choosing which social login to use, to setting the wallet UI to match the tone and manner of the service brand, to choosing which crypto assets to show in the wallet, everything can be customized.
Services utilizing blockchain often provide different functions by region. Wepin allows for this as well. It's possible to set up and link separate widgets, for example, showing only NFTs in Korea and showing both NFTs and cryptocurrencies overseas.
Of course, a lot of coding work shouldn't be required for these widget customization settings. We provide a widget setting wizard to allow widget configuration while minimizing separate coding work. As it's configured in a no-coding way, it's possible to change widget settings even without a developer's work.
Other traces to enable wallet integration with minimal resources
이Besides these, Wepin contains various efforts to make integration easy. For example, a mainnet node is needed to incorporate blockchain into a service, but even without operating a separate node, providing information on the blockchain through the Wepin wallet API is one such effort.
There's also a standardized interface SDK for teams with experience integrating other wallets. For instance, if you've already integrated MetaMask into your service, we provide an SDK that allows you to integrate the Wepin wallet by adding just a few lines of code.
Providing development freedom is also important = Widget vs. API
While the Wepin wallet pursues an integration method centered on widgets, there are also companies that want to create and use their own wallet UI/UX. They need development freedom. Wepin supports both widget-based integration and API-based integration. You can use the widget integration method for quick development and integration, and the API integration method for integration that's more absorbed into your service.
Or, it's also possible to use widgets for basic wallet functions and implement additional wallet functions with APIs.
Focus on creating value for your service. Wepin will solve the wallet for you.
Wepin aims to help connect wallets to services with just a few lines of coding and a few hours of testing. Even at this moment, we're striving to get a little closer to that goal. If you're considering introducing blockchain, NFTs, tokenomics, etc. to your service, please feel free to contact us anytime.
Thank you.
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