Edge Wallet

All right, we're live. So GM, GA, GE everybody. Welcome to what's going to be another great DevNTell. If you didn't know, DevNTell is a 30-minute window for members of the DAO to showcase something they're passionate about or been working on. This can be an awesome project you've been working on, demonstrating unit testing best practices, automation goodies, smart contracts, how to structure a project, etc. Basically, if you've got a passion for something, this is your opportunity to share it with the community. And today I am happy to have on RJ from Edge Wallet who will be giving us an overview of Edge Wallet. So take it away RJ.

All right, thank you Narb. So yeah, my name is RJ. I am here at San Diego, Edge Wallet. I've been in crypto for about 10 years and then at Edge for over 8 years. At Edge I've done support, QA, and some crypto accounting. Right now I'm currently just mostly responsible for QA making sure bugs and whatnot gets fixed and passed to engineering. And what I have today is the Edge-Aave integration which I'm going to present. So I'll share my screen and then do a little video and then from there I'll be open to questions. Here we go. Let me know if you guys see this okay, my screen.

Clicking in the buttons. Yeah, we can see your screen.

Okay, so I'll just play this video. There's a link in YouTube. This was what was submitted to Polygon hackathon and also to Polygon DAO and Aave DAO. We did get approved for 2 out of 3 grants with this application for the grants. So here we go.

We don't hear the audio if there's supposed to be audio.

Oh, you don't hear? Yeah, I'll do that okay. Yeah, there's audio. Maybe I can just throw in the link at the same time here. I'm not sure if yeah, I can throw it in here and then maybe we can just play at the same time with the video I guess. Would you guys like to do that again? I'll click on it and then maybe you can play it in the background so then you can hear the music.

Oh I see. Yeah, we can hear the audio slightly now.

Yeah, I think it does get louder, it's part of the audio. (Video narration of Edge Aave loan demonstration plays). Yeah, so to talk about what was just seen in the video. So Edge is an open source wallet, private and I'm not sure if you guys are familiar with Aave, it's a way to take out loans on your crypto and our target here, our goal is to make loans a lot easier. So if you've done loans on Aave or other DeFi platforms, it's really confusing for a user to be able to do that. You have to connect with MetaMask, you might be on the wrong chain, you gotta add in the chain ID, you have to make sure you don't send to the wrong addresses and watch out for scams or sending to the wrong address or chain. So for that person that just commented towards the end, he's 77 years old, disabled veteran, and yeah it was challenging to try to get him to use Aave on MetaMask through the normal browser and what we're building is to try to simplify it where it's familiar to a user like a banking app and someone who's not technical would be able to take out a loan and that video showed where you could take out a loan and have USDC deposited but the goal is, it's still in the works, almost complete here, but you can have it deposited directly to your bank account if you wanted with our partner Wyre and just simplify the whole process that someone that's not technical could be able to do that in a few steps rather than so many steps, so many actions that you have to take if you were to take out a loan on Aave. Deposit the collateral, I mean first you gotta buy Bitcoin, convert the Bitcoin to wrapped Bitcoin or whatever collateral you wanted like Ethereum, deposit it, take out a loan and then convert that to cash. It's just too many steps that most, the average user would not be able to really get and I think by creating this we kind of simplify it and bring DeFi and loans more mainstream.

Yeah, yeah, 100%. The whole, I think a big goal for a lot of Web3 apps to really take off is to abstract away the actual Web3 part of it because like you said it's very challenging for a basically non-technical person and even a technical person sometimes to figure out how to use all these things and especially bunch of different protocols and whatnot together. So that's very awesome to see Edge Wallet is trying to push forward in that regard. I guess you mentioned that you started in crypto about 8-ish years ago. What kind of drew you, what was the allure that drew you in right towards the beginning I suppose?

Okay, yeah. So maybe like back in 2012 I was the type of person that's like you want to have like your own assets in control, so was maybe kind of like maybe if you wanted to group me like a gold bug or whatnot, that I want to have like my actual assets in control not where I have to go to a bank and I can't withdraw a thousand dollars or five thousand dollars because you have to you know get permission, talk to a branch manager and if you're trying to withdraw even larger amounts like say over twenty thousand dollars you might have to wait three days or a week. I actually did this, I had to schedule for a week. It wasn't until seven days later, like the following week then I could go into the branch and take out a large amount of cash. So it's not really like yours to begin with, you're basically asking permission. And that's how I pretty much got into Bitcoin because of that, where you hold your assets, you can send and receive anywhere in the world without anyone's permission and you always have access to it as long as you take care, be able to still have access to your keys and you don't get compromised, right? Yeah and so that was back in 2012 and then I was unemployed at the time, you know I was on food stamps, living paycheck to paycheck and later on in 2014 I saw a website called Coinality, I don't think it's around but that's where I met Paul, our CEO. I applied for a crypto job with Paul doing support and then later I branched off from support to QA, a little bit of accounting and then I grew the teams, I hired you know like several or so support people and QA people as well. Our bizdev Peter, trained him in support and now he's our head of business development. Michael, he's now our head of support and yeah trained one of our accountants in crypto accounting and yeah been with Edge ever since 2014. We were Airbits back in the day and we have a Bitcoin meetup group in San Diego that's been since our first Bitcoin meetup was in 2014 or maybe late 2013. So we've been hosting Bitcoin events in San Diego you know once or twice a month usually about 50 to 150 people show up in our offices especially since 2017 probably when it started to take off like the meetup events would be a lot more instead of just like 5 or 7 people. And yeah been QA ever since and yeah.

That's fantastic man. So you're basically like an OG OG Web3. It's kind of rare at least so far to see QA in a Web3 company but it's awesome to kind of get your perspective on that. So what's it like doing QA for a Web3 company with cryptocurrency versus something like the traditional QA you'd see in like a Web2 company?

Yeah, it's a lot more you got a lot more attention to detail because this is with money, right? So then if you have bugs, urgent bugs that you miss and that could result in loss of user funds or whatnot then it's yeah really you know nerve racking, right? So then we try our best to you know make sure that there's no bugs and we keep up with upgrades, you know like say like there's a Monero hard fork or Bitcoin fork that we have to upgrade and make sure that it's still good to go so that users can still see their funds or able to send. Every now and then there'll be some downtime like with Monero fork recently so then that took like maybe like a week to patch up but then user funds are still safe you just wouldn't be able to maybe sync properly or send for a little bit. But again it's non-custodial they have they still have access to their keys. Worst case scenario if an upgrade didn't make it in time on our end they could sweep their private key or send to another wallet that had implemented an upgrade in time. And more so than QA I would say support would be like the biggest you know contributing experience is because we've done phone support as a crypto wallet since 2014, right? And you know like we use Freshdesk and we recently transitioned to Zendesk but like I was look at my stats earlier I've had over like 10,000 phone calls with you know like users whether it be how to buy crypto or I sent you know I sent Ethereum Classic to the wrong chain, Binance Smart Chain I sent it to my Ethereum address, how to recover that or I sent BCH to my Bitcoin address, things like that. So with me answering phone calls and get into the mind of what users are trying to do like Aave loans for example like they'll have you'll ask me like how do I pay off my loan? I need to pay it or else I'm going to get liquidated, right? By creating this we make it easier so then if a user ever has issues then they could be just pay their loan simply inside the app rather than oh I forgot how to do that I have to do wallet connect or I have to go to MetaMask change my the chain ID from Polygon to Ethereum I don't see my balance because you're on the wrong chain, right? So all this little stuff that we could you know simplify and bring the phone back part once this Aave integration is live we will even have an Aave phone number you know like 1-800 like Aave or something like that. I think we have the number like 888 AAVE reserved once it's live.

And I kind of turn it back round to the audience, like what is your favorite wallet whether it be custodial something like Coinbase or Celsius, I hope not Celsius but or whether it's a non-custodial wallet like Mycelium or Bread Wallet, you know those other non-custodial wallets where you hold your keys. Have you guys ever had one where you had the phone support where you can talk to a person? I know Coinbase recently done it where it's like 20 or 30 dollars a month but does your favorite wallet support phones where you can actually talk to a human being?

I guess speaking for myself, I'm a fan of Rainbow wallet. I have not seen any phone number attached to that. And I also use yeah talk to human beings, yeah. Think of your favorite wallet that you use maybe daily or you know your go-to wallet or even hardware wallet that you use sparingly. Is there phone support if you need help like you just need to call someone how do I deposit more funds into my hardware wallet, how do I if I sent funds to the wrong chain or you need to pay off a loan on Aave because you're about to get liquidated. Does your wallet have phone support?

Yeah, yeah, I haven't seen phone support. It's rare like most support channels are either go to Discord, post something in Reddit or you're on your own.

Exactly, exactly. Yeah so I always ask that question kind of interested to see if there's anyone else out there doing that. I know now that Coinbase does it but it's a custodial wallet exchange service but then you also have to pay like 20 or 30 dollars a month for the premium but we've been doing it for free since 2014 answering phone calls and whether it's Aave, DeFi, like how do I LP stake on you know Uniswap or single staking, how do I do swaps, general questions or just issues with the wallet. Yeah we've had phone support you know just a general business like Monday to Friday 8 to 5 but once we expand we're hoping to have 24/7 phone support and you know where you can actually talk to a human being. Yeah so that's another plus.

Excellent, love to hear it. Yeah I mean especially I don't know so much about the younger crowd if they're so hot on interacting with human beings. They're more I would say like chat oriented but yeah like the older generation who's looking to kind of get in they kind of like that personal touch with the phone support kind of thing and plus it's always nice to have that option available in like either age you are just to have options available. But yeah that's wonderful to hear.

Right, especially with that target market. I mean if you guys want to think about it like if we're all you know like think of it like every cryptocurrency type whether it's Litecoin, Binance, Bitcoin, you know even shitcoins. Like if the next billion users, like say the dollar collapses or fiat collapses and the next billion users are going to rush into crypto like is crypto in general prepared to handle like all the support is it streamlined and easy enough that you know the non-technical Joe or this you know your grandmother or this old person like the one that was mentioned in the video that I presented or you know just non-technical people that still want to talk to human being there's not a lot out there that we can help make onboarding easier if you know like the next billion users were to rush into crypto. Not yet anyways, that's how I feel.

Yeah, yeah at least I share the same sentiment. I don't think it's like ready for that kind of prime time yet. It still seems kind of niche but it's building enough momentum to kind of go in that direction. But the lot of the user experience is work in progress but yeah I'm hopeful at least this decade we'll kind of get past that and trend towards a greater adoption but yeah still still time time yet to for that to play out.

Yeah I think there's still plenty of time and yeah I think we're all going in the right direction. I mean like Coinbase is doing phone support now so hopefully more companies out there start to do that.

Yeah, 100%.

Yeah, any other questions? Have any of like I'm asking the audience have any of you guys taken out loans on Aave and maybe can compare or give a comment in regards to how you do it now like say if you're using MetaMask or Rabby or wallet connect you know on the web versus maybe compare to the video. Don't be shy but if you haven't that's totally fair too.

Yeah I'll jump in since we're talking about human interaction. I'll just jump in. Yeah I haven't done any loans or anything like that. Could you tell us a little bit more about so I don't have an experience to really talk about.

Okay, yeah I wish I have another video ready to go but if you were to take out like if you go on Aave and you were to take out the loan, it's yeah quite complicated if you're like a non-technical user. So for example you'd have to set up your MetaMask account like that's usually what's popular to connect with Aave and once you set up MetaMask you have it on your browser it's a browser extension that you install you know being a non-technical user you would be introduced with you have to write down these 12 or 24 words the seed for that your your wallet and then once you have that you might have to still add like the coins that you wanted to add like say USDC or whatever coins that you wanted to borrow on that platform. And then you also have to procure crypto like say Bitcoin or Ethereum to deposit as your collateral. So if you started off with like raw Bitcoin as a new user that's not into crypto you gotta figure out a way okay I need Bitcoin to become wrapped Bitcoin on my MetaMask wallet. Like where do I go, where do I swap, how do I make sure I'm not getting scammed? And then finally once you're able to swap or get Bitcoin into wrapped Bitcoin in your wallet you'll have to like figure out oh why isn't my wrapped Bitcoin showing on MetaMask for example? You might need to still add that contract address to make that token show, right? And then if you were to interact with Aave on a different chain like for example Polygon cause there's a lot cheaper fees compared to Ethereum. You know a couple years ago we saw Ethereum with $50, $100 even up to $1000 fees just to do an action on Aave. So I personally use Polygon a lot more just cause the fees are cheaper but then now if you're going to switch chains on MetaMask it doesn't automatically add Polygon or say Fantom or Binance Smart Chain you still have to look up the chain ID, right? And like the information RPC servers to add that network. So then now once you get that set up you have finally you have your MetaMask on Polygon but then now your wrapped Bitcoin might be on Ethereum so then now you gotta figure out I need to cross-wrap Bitcoin on Ethereum cross the bridge to get wrapped Bitcoin on Polygon and once you have that wrapped Bitcoin on Polygon then you can you know you still gotta figure out okay how do I connect to Aave? And then once you're able to figure that out connect, deposit the wrapped Bitcoin collateral and then there's all these permissions that you have to approve if it's your first time and let's say you get that deposited you'll have to borrow the funds and then convert all the way back say to a stablecoin and then convert it or send it off to your bank account. It just feels like there's a lot of steps I'm sure there's there might be a few videos if you look around in YouTube just in case you guys wanted to see a comparison of the video that I presented versus how it's done normally or if you guys already have Ethereum or MetaMask you could go in Aave and yeah just try to figure out how to take out a loan on there and that would be like the comparison to get that experience.

No you've sold me after after step 27 I was sold.

Yeah and Aave I don't believe Aave's team you know cause it's like a decentralized product platform there's no phone call like hey let's call Aave just like there is no like hey let's call the CEO of Bitcoin, right? So there's no platform I mean there's Aave technical support you know like through the tickets and whatnot Discord but like if you are more of a non-technical user or you know from the older crowd that kind of expects a service like hey I'm going to call my bank or my insurance or you know like my tow truck to get service, right? Then that market they would want you know like once crypto is mainstream to have someone to talk to. So that's when we kind of target also to be able to have that human interaction. Yeah, thanks for running through that.

Yeah, no problem. Cool.

Anyone else with you know like their that wants to mention like their experiences with loans Aave platform or even just like the customer support part.

Hi, I have a question like what would be the collateral if such a user comes?

Yeah, so in if you're using Aave itself, right? The amount that you can borrow is it depends on what collateral deposit. So if it's with Ethereum it's 82.5% so that means for every thousand dollars of Ethereum that you deposit you can borrow up to like $825 of say stablecoin, right? USDC. If it's with Bitcoin I believe it's 75% the LTV ratio, right? So that means if you deposit a thousand dollars of wrapped Bitcoin you could borrow $750 of Bitcoin stablecoin or whatever asset but with that ratio. If the price falls though then that's where you have to worry about liquidation. So for example if you borrow to the maximum and then Bitcoin crashes down that such that your deposit collateral is a lot lower than you know what you borrowed then you're going to get liquidated and usually it's used to pay off the loan at a shit price so basically you're forced to sell some of your collateral Bitcoin to pay off the loan at the lower price cause it crashed. And then on top of that there's anywhere from I believe a 5 to 10% liquidation fee. So you gotta be careful with you know taking out too much of a loan that you get liquidated and you end up paying more in fees. But taking out a loan or doing Aave loans is pretty useful because like for example here at Edge we've all been paid in Bitcoin since 2014 and a lot of us just wants to hold Bitcoin and then pay you know try to not spend as much and pay the bills. And now ever since Aave came out like back in 2020 I could get paid say I get paid $2000 in Bitcoin. I want to keep it in Bitcoin cause I think the price is going to go up. Well I deposit my Bitcoin in Aave and borrow say maybe like say 50% to be safe of liquidations. And then I borrow a thousand dollars of USDC that I deposit to Coinbase or whatnot or to my bank account and then I pay off bills but I still have that $2000 worth of Bitcoin, right? If Bitcoin doubles or triples well then my my Bitcoin holdings get higher, right? So now I have if it triples I have $6000 worth of Bitcoin on Aave and I didn't have to sell it because I you know borrowed off of it, right? So that you get what I'm saying. But likewise it could be dangerous if you borrow too much that you get liquidated and you end up basically the same thing you get liquidated completely it's you pay off the the loan but it's as if you sold your Bitcoin at a far lower price.

Yep, did that kind of answer your question on on the loan part at least?

Yeah I mean what is Edge like for Edge what is the case like what the what are you taking as collateral? I mean I know what Aave is doing I'm asking in the case of Edge.

Oh okay, for Edge yeah to be to make it safe we do by default 50% even though you could do say up to 75% or 82.5% with Ethereum. Because while we want users to be able to borrow up to the maximum, when you take out the loan for the first time it's set at 50% but after that if a user wanted to borrow you know closer to the maximum where they might get liquidated they wanted to take a risk they could borrow up to that amount but like on the borrow more portion. So it's just for the initial loan when they started off it's 50%.

Cool cool. Yeah, great questions here gang. We have about a minute or so left. Are there any final questions for RJ?

If not, I I got one final one. If people want to get involved and continue to help build out Edge Wallet, you mentioned it was open source but are there also opportunities for full-time roles people might be interested in?

Yeah so we have openings every now and then for engineering and mostly engineering, right? So just I'll put a email over here info@edge.app. Yeah just send our email if you're interested in helping contribute. We're also open source if you just want to maybe like you want to add your own service in there or your own you know like platform on there. For example we have exchanges like you know like DEXs like TombSwap or coins that you wanted to get added like say your your own asset, you could build and add on top of that or even fork Edge and become make its own different wallet. So we have like white label solutions also too as well. I put the GitHub tag there that you can see and check out for github.com/edgeapp and then the the email if anyone's interested. And then if anyone's in San Diego, yeah we have one to two monthly Bitcoin crypto currency crypto meetups usually about 50 to 150 people show up at our office in San Diego. We have free pizza and free beer, so excellent, can't go wrong.

Awesome, awesome. Thank you so much RJ, really appreciate you coming on and giving us this awesome overview and yeah here's to building a more accessible Web3 going forward. My pleasure, my pleasure. And yeah thank you everyone. You guys all have a good day, take care. Yeah you too. Gang stay tuned, there is a POAP link that I'll be dropping in the developers-voice chat here and in the general for you to claim your POAPs. RJ you also have a special mint kudos that I will share to you via DM. But yeah with that wish everybody a happy Friday, happy weekend and we'll catch you back here next week. Thanks guys, see you everyone. See ya.