Building Secure Internet Money Infrastructure with Openfort

GM, GM. Welcome to what's going to be another fantastic episode of DevNTell. So if you didn't know, DevNTell is a 30-minute podcast held every week, allowing founders, hackers, and anyone in between the opportunity to come on the show and showcase what they've built. And today, I'm ecstatic to welcome Joan Alavedra, who is the co-founder of Openfort. So if you don't know, Openfort is building a secure wallet infrastructure to unlock better UX with internet money. So if you stick around for today's episode, you'll get to meet Joan, learn about Openfort, and how you can get started using them today. All right, let's get into it.

GM, GM. Welcome to the show, Joan. I'm so ecstatic to have you on today, man.

Hey, how you doing, Narb? Thanks for stopping by and inviting me.

Of course, of course. Likewise. Thank you for stopping by on the show as well. Um, yeah, man, I've been taking a look into Openfort, and it looks like you guys have built quite a suite of really useful tools for developers to basically get up and running with wallets. Um, but before we get into all of that, um, would you like to give an introduction about yourself for folks who aren't familiar?

Yeah, yeah, for sure. So yeah, for everyone that never heard of Openfort or ourselves, I'm Joan, one of the co-founders here. Basically, Openfort started a little more than three years ago within the gaming entertainment space in crypto, to later on realizing that there's more parts of the stack that could be improved in terms of private key management, sending transactions on the blockchain, etc. And so today we kind of like position ourselves as like an open-source wallet operating system. We can, you know, deep dive a little bit better on like what does it mean and what parts are, you know, working together to accomplish that. But yeah, very excited to be here.

Amazing. And yeah, really excited to have you here as well. Um, I guess just curious, how did you find yourself in the technology space, in crypto, and eventually becoming a co-founder?

It's a good question. Um, I started this venture with my brother and co-founder Jaume. Um, and before starting Openfort, we were actually doing other kind of like more traditional businesses. One of those back at the time when we had GPT-3, the predecessor of ChatGPT. And so we were building a lot in the kind of like indie hacker community, trying things out. Um, and then yeah, luckily we came across all the hackathons from ETHGlobal and like other smaller ones. And so we participated in some online, others in person. And then from there, you know, you start having a kind of like opinionated view of what a good solution could be, like what are the problems that the ecosystem face, etc. And that got us, you know, that got us straight into Openfort and like the whole wallet stack.

Yeah, that's amazing and I've heard some founders have a similar story but I don't think I've ever come across, at least not one that comes to mind, a company co-founded by a pair of brothers. I think that's really, I think it's really awesome. I mean, it lets you both be like completely and openly honest with each other at all times, right? It's a different dynamic than if you were with a non-family relative, hey?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You probably start from a trust, you know, from a trust place that is completely different from someone that you just met say six to 12 months in, right? Which is, which is good.

Yeah, 100%. 100%. Um, and yeah, I guess you kind of almost alluded to it but I guess while you were kind of building through those hackathons and whatnot, I'm sure you came across a slew of different problems in just the wallet usage domain and wallet infrastructure in itself. I guess for the audience today who might not be familiar or might be new to the space, um, what are some of the paramount problems, top of mind for you, relating to wallets and wallet management?

Well, it's a very good question and it's unfortunately a place that there's still a lot of room to improve and to get a kind of like, you know, a consensus agreement of like what the end state of a UX and wallet should look like. There's been a lot of progress there, right? Like when we started people were literally managing wallets through Chrome extensions. Now we completely change paradigm to embedded wallets. I think like the next iteration will be probably around agentic wallets and how we manage security in those. But I think like some of the problems that we fortunately already solved is how we manage private keys, how to a certain extent we guarantee that who's the custodian of those private keys. We also solve, you know, the interactions that are happening in the blockchain meaning how do we send ERC-20 stablecoins without having to pay gas or how do we earn stablecoins from yield in a smooth and fast way. So all those parts are like are hopefully already solved within wallets. I think, you know, parts that are still not solved and probably require a little bit more digging if you look at specific ecosystems, for instance in Ethereum now you have a huge um, you know, let's say a huge conversation happening around okay, what's the next stage of account abstraction, how does it look like, do we implement a new standard called frame transactions, do we go for something more entrenched within the protocol, etc. Like all this is good because it basically means that there's good progress within the ecosystem and it kind of like resembles to like a v1, v2, v3 of normal software products. And so eventually it all means that, you know, you need to have less middleware to manage like a very good UX, you need to have less dependencies, you can be less vendor dependent. So it's actually, it's actually good progress there and I think for the most part any user product already has a good variation of UX solved. And I think like the next challenge as I was saying is like the agentic wallets and how do we manage those, how does it look like for us to incorporate permissions, automations, and all that type of stuff.

Yeah, and that's amazing to hear and I don't know if you caught it yesterday, but it was like all over my timeline. Somebody apparently swapped with a mobile wallet fifty million dollars of USDT to Aave and there was like basically 90% or more of slippage and they resulted in getting I don't know, like 40,000 or something like that. Some really low number. Yeah, I guess like when stuff like that happens, like as a founder trying to kind of better the wallet UX space and as a whole, what's your reaction to that?

Yeah, I had like confronting feelings I guess for one I was like okay, maybe he had like a very you know strong setup with like a bunch of I don't know passkey encrypted seed phrases with a multi-sig behind it, etc. Like he felt very secure to do that with the phone. We might be reaching to a point that yes, we actually can self-custody all that money but it also was very crazy to me like thinking that you can have that much slippage on chain even though they said that they had like the right, you know, cautionary banners to say like look, this is gonna be impact significantly like your the return of the transaction, etc. I think it's like overall I would say like this was like very responsible but it's good that this person was able to do that before getting hacked, I guess. Um, but yeah, it's kind of like an interesting event for sure.

Yeah, to say the least. Um, yeah, I guess to kind of segue from that, um, I'm really keen to kind of hear your side of the story of all things Openfort. So I guess um, like as a introduction, how would you describe Openfort to our audience who might not have heard of you guys before?

Yeah, Openfort is a wallet, I like to say that Openfort is a wallet operating system that helps developers plug the necessary abstractions for them to ship the right product at the right time. Right? So for some people that means abstracting the way that they, you know, think about custody. For others, it might think, it might be the just want a smooth um, you know, transaction orchestration. And so Openfort, like with this operating system analogy, we try to meet the developers and builders where they are and some they are building like a neobank from the scratch and then they might use fully Openfort plus other parts with like other parts of the infrastructure we have with partners like virtual accounts, etc. And others are like okay, I already have like most of the stack defined and I just need, you know, paymasters or I just need a great way to save the private key or like a permission. And that's kind of like the modularity of this operating system.

Amazing. And it's not just one or two different tools you have in the toolkit. There's multiple different things that you have available for developers to get up and running pretty quickly and easily. I guess from your perspective, what are some key highlights or product offerings of Openfort you'd like developers to hear about today?

Sure. I mean, one of the proudest parts of the product that we have and we've been developing for the past six months was the widget SDK. So basically what we did there, we took the great work that the team from family did with ConnectKit, and we fork it and give it like a longer and utile lifetime basically by adding you know emails, passkey, social logins that before this wallet kit was not able, it was just like functioning as a wallet library. And so that one that one is like one of the kind of like proudest products that we have out there and it's pretty cool because it's packed like you know as a developer you can literally just like do npm create-openfort and you have like a fully working version of like the whole authentication wallet creation and sending a transaction with a paymaster. And I feel like this is kind of a very interesting way to plug these different tools that Openfort offers in one uniform good UX. Yep.

Yeah, that's awesome man. And I recall you have some on-screen demos that you or on-screen content you want to showcase. So did you want to get into that now or?

Yeah, we can showcase some cool stuff, for sure. Let me quickly share my screen here. Um, okay, is it showing now?

Yes sir. Yep. You're good.

Very cool. So I think, I mean, this is all can be found in like demo.openfort.io. This is just a work Arnau from the team did, it was it's really really cool. We basically try to you know build demos that resemble the user life cycle on UX within crypto. So we call it like stablecoin transfers here on the left, CFO approvals, x402 payments, etc. So just to show you like a couple of them that we think is really cool. One of it is called stealth addresses. So this is basically the ability to you know create addresses, send and receive money without actually being able like from external parties to track the address that receives the money. And so something that we created here, and these all these demos are like testnet. But like something that we've done here is kind of like okay, you know, we resemble like cool kind of like mobile UI and show you hey, this is how like you would receive money, this is how you would send money, etc. etc. So this is like a pretty you know cool demo. We also made you know a demo showcasing how you can actually pay transactions with any stablecoin that you want. So you can actually say hey, I want to pay you know transactions with DAI, I want to pay transactions with USDC, etc. etc. and it all works seamlessly either if you use you know a delegated account or if you use a smart account. Right? So if you use something like a Safe, like a multi-sig, or if you use an account that delegates to another one in order to make the transaction seamlessly, right? So this is kind of like the type of like demos that we look to offer and think of that are interesting within Openfort. We created another one with you know x402 where you have already like a very simple demonstration of an article that you want to read and with an x402 micro-payment you get the article unlocked. So these type of things are actually like you know we feel it demonstrates the power of crypto beyond perhaps the hyper-financialization of something and it's actually like more tangible to a role of a person within a company or within their day-to-day consumption if that makes sense.

It does. And yeah, this is pretty snazzy and yeah I've shared the the link in the comments below if anybody is interested watching us live today to poke around with and it would also be shared in the podcast description so you can check it out after the fact as well. Um, I guess in terms of the competition landscape like how would you or what would you say you guys do differently than some of the competition out there?

Yeah, I think wallet infrastructure is a very interesting space because it's one that if you do really well, you get to be in the middle of you know end users, companies interacting directly with the blockchains, right? For us, the thing that we you know the thing that we doubled down a lot um in the early beginnings is to have an open core that it's open source. Right? And we identify the way that private keys are managed and the way that private keys are created etc. etc. by being one of like these strong kind of like trusting assumptions that we do from a developer standpoint saying, yeah, I trust with this partner that they'll do the right thing, right? And it's fine like maybe you know 95% of the time like nothing happens but then if something happens ends up being like a catalyst black swan thing. And so what we ended up deciding building something we call OpenSigner, which is a self-hostable wallet key management solution. What it basically means with OpenSigner, it's basically the idea that any project can self-host their own wallet infrastructure if they want and be completely non-custodial towards their end users. Right? So it's very easy to actually create wallets and then be the custodian of that wallet of the private key by encrypting it etc. etc. But it comes with like a lot of regulatory burden, compliance, etc. And so with OpenSigner kind of like solve this paradigm by letting any developer actually you know make this part like this you know internalize this part of the stack themselves and as a result be able to create wallets without having these compliance burdens in a secure um but also you know very importantly easy way to recover the private keys if for whatever reason something wrong happens with those, like something wrong happens to the users, you know, managing those keys themselves.

Wow, that's amazing to hear that um you guys are taking open source so seriously. I guess um was there any particular moment during the company's founding or some event that kind of pushed you guys to say oh, we want to do something we want to do this differently, we want to make our stack open source?

I mean, it's a good question. There's definitely like a part of it you know that becomes um part of like business strategy and kind of like counter-positioning to whatever solutions we see in the market and like we think makes sense that there is a, you know, value proposition that is different for other types of like developers and companies. I think there's also an important fact here where you know a lot of setups that we saw back at the time were claiming that they were like non-custodial but it was actually not truly non-custodial because, you know, you could recover the private key via like an auth token that you can get from your authentication solution, right? Or vendor. Or you actually were back channeling some parts to like your server encrypted, etc. etc. So like all these things and like not having enough transparency on like how the system was designed were kind of like precipitated the idea of like, okay, we actually need to build something here that Openfort can kind of like cloud host for the clients but also anyone should be able to quickly round like run the Docker themselves and and you know and get it up to speed.

Yeah, that all sounds very amazing to me. And yeah, I guess um are there any opportunities for people to get involved and contribute to the source code? Are there open issues or yeah, how can developers get involved if they want to help out?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we have a um yeah I mean there obviously like the repo's open. I think with we have a community on on Telegram of like some developers coming in and asking questions there of like, okay, what's the right setup that I should use or that I should create to offer this type of guarantees, how do I plug, you know, another authentication vendor like BetterAuth, Firebase, etc. And so like people are asking those questions on the community channels. We've got some you know PRs from people that you know were improving parts of like the documentation, were improving parts of the way that you would instantiate and run the the repo as well. So yeah, I mean, contributions are always open like we're always open for contributions if anyone sees anything as well obviously opens a issue and we try to be as timely as possible to reply back there.

Awesome. And yeah, we will have the GitHub repo as well in the product description so if anybody watching today is keen to contribute, definitely you'll have the opportunity to do so. And um I guess in terms of the long-term vision of Openfort, you kind of alluded to it early on where you're keen on exploring agentic payments and similar avenues. I guess from your standpoint, what's the long-term vision of Openfort and is there any alpha you can perhaps share about what you guys are working on this year?

Yeah, I mean for sure. Like so I think the like the core the core assumption that Openfort works on is the idea that we want to make it super easy for any developer to access financial products and access financial primitives without having to ask permission to do so. Right? And we should be able to, you know, as a community, as a group of builders, we should be able to access to like these primitives and build products that we think would benefit the like society and we think would benefit our countries, right? And so having I think like having this middleware that simplifies how you you know build your specialized neobank in Paraguay or you build your specific wealth manager in Uganda etc. It's all very powerful because before all these primitives were very very locked by you know regulation, by big players and all that all that mode around it. And so for us being able to offer this access regardless of the geography or ethnicity etc. It's like a very powerful very powerful mission. Um in terms of you know where are we going with a roadmap, where are we seeing more traction, more excitement from community etc. I mean the obviously like the current thing is all around AI agents and you know how you simplify I mean there's two points here in AI agents are interesting, right? Like one is how you simplify as much as possible for these agents to have access to financial rails so either through credit cards, through you know crypto wallets, etc. etc. But then the other important part is okay now that we have these agents you know with these endpoints with these capabilities, what services do they consume? Do they go to a normal e-commerce and like they buy us a you know a pair of Converse sneakers? Or you know we give them something that they couldn't access before such as like endpoints that before were extremely gated under like a very high-price SaaS offering, right? And so like if you start thinking towards the places where you know you couldn't you couldn't develop a product because it was very hard to do or it was nonexistent due to the system constraints, I think you get into a place where you either expand a lot towards paper usage, microtransactions or you you know eventually also expand a lot towards okay um do I you know do I need for instance if I want to make money and I'm just like a builder I have no idea you know what I need to do to register a company, what I need to do to earn money on internet, etc. etc. how do I make it easy for these people to actually earn money without having to ask permission to you know a bank or without having to ask permission to a government to do that right? And I think that that is like also something that is now very possible and has been unlocked because of AI agents and like all this AI building toolkit. And so this is kind of like the things that we are you know we are thinking a lot. As a matter of fact today, like literally, we also launching something very cool which is Openfort CLI. Um so basically is a very cool you know building block for any agent and human to interact with like all infrastructure of Openfort and you know get it up to speed in just a couple of minutes and do things like sending gaseous transactions on Ethereum, like making an investment on Solana, etc. etc. So it's all very very very cool.

Indeed very cool and yeah we've seen this this rise in popularity of CLIs again just because a lot of people are a lot of people are finding out the the MCP side of the of the story um is actually eating up a lot of context in in your AI agents so people are shifting gears in the in the yeah, 100%. Yeah, it's crazy. I mean, it's cool. It kind of it's basically in my opinion it's all going to be um APIs and CLIs from from here on out. Um any website that doesn't have a API will eventually have one just because this is the way agents will be consuming data until somebody else comes up with another protocol to to do so, right? And absolutely the whole API-fication of of software it's like super interesting. And if you start thinking on you know like a very simple API would be hey give me like this premium data and then I return you the premium data um and like how you actually are able to abstract very complex systems under like one single API and then maybe price this API or give it for free under some conditions etc. Like this is obviously like super super exciting and then the question becomes how do you find the right APIs and like how do you vet that those are like the right ones? Maybe someone ends up building like a Google algorithm for this, who knows?

Yeah, discovery will be huge. Um and just like the verification um of these APIs as well. I mean we saw with OpenCloud um recently like a lot of a lot of these skills like the people didn't know any better and then they were consuming some skills or APIs that were malicious and ended up getting hacked. So definitely solving for that solving for that is a business in itself so anybody watching today free free startup idea for you. Go build that. Are you using a lot the OpenCloud and stuff and stuff like this? You set your own OpenCloud and and things like that as well, Narb? I I went down the rabbit hole to explore it. Um I didn't get too far past like the initial setup because I was kind of put off by how open it was so it was like ah maybe I'll let the technology mature a little bit before I step back in but um yeah, seems like everybody is everybody is digging in there. Um and Mac minis for whatever reason at Apple are back in vogue too. Definitely put it on a old device. Like don't put it in your current device, that's for sure. Yeah, 100%. Um but yeah, 100% is very it's a very interesting space and yeah, it's really exciting to see it kind of grow out. Um and I guess as we're coming to time here, um I mentioned it, there might be some aspiring founders watching the show today who might want to start building their own their own project. I guess as a co-founder yourself, um is there any advice that um maybe you'd want to give to founders watching today or or maybe it's some some advice you'd want to give to your younger self before starting Openfort?

I think, I mean for sure, I think yeah if I had to give myself like a good advice would be to just you know build things with people that you're having fun with for the most part, at least initially. I feel like I was talking actually to a bunch of friends that they were approaching, you know, company building and like starting their own ventures in a very rigorous and like methodical way which makes sense. There's no right or wrong. But I always found like you know the passion and like the kind of like intensity of trying to do something and surround yourself with people with the same level of intensity to be the kind of you know the part that replenishes me the most and so that would be like the advice kind of like find people that you know fills you with energy and like have a common passion for a problem and then doing doing it right going all all in on on that.

Well said. And yeah, I I agree. Surrounding yourself with the right type of people really does make a difference, it's very subtle but yeah. Great advice and yeah, I guess as we conclude, um what's the best way for people to keep up to tabs keep up to date sorry with all things Openfort?

Yeah, I mean like follow I think like on Twitter like X, sorry, you can you can follow us there. We try to be as as active as we can with the the different things that we ship. Um and if you like you know you want to try parts of the product, just you know going to the docs and you will see like a chat widget there. If you talk there, it's me answering back. So I'll be the one answering back like any questions that you might have, any ideas, etc. So feel free feel free to ping me there as well.

Amazing. Yeah and we'll have that we'll have that contact info um down in the description below so if you're interested in Openfort, asking questions or how you can get involved definitely reach out to Joan. And with that, thank you so much Joan for taking the time out of your busy day to come chat with us today. It was really amazing learn about Openfort and getting to learn a bit more about you.

No, all good. It was a pleasure being here. Thanks for inviting us.

Of course, of course. My pleasure. And um with that just want to wish everybody a very happy Friday, happy weekend wherever you may be and we will catch you here next week for another great episode of DevNTell. Till then, have a good one folks. Cheers.