Kosala Hemachandra on MyEtherWallet's growth and the Ethereum 2.0 merge in 2022

0:00i'm ashton addison from block west capital for investmentpitch media and today on the Crypto Coin Show we have kasala himachandra ceo of myetherwallet cassella welcome to the show and thank you for taking the time thank you so much for having me ashton it's amazing to be here you're very welcome i appreciate you taking time out of your busy schedule at the nft nyc

0:22conference i'm curious to know how is it there you know despite the market conditions i feel like there's so many companies innovating in blockchain right now that hopefully it's unfazed yeah no i don't think like the price actually affecting anything that's happening over here there are massive and massive amounts of people coming in basically like time squad is

0:47filled with nfds every single screen that you look at it's some kind of nft or like some kind of nfd drop or a qr code something like something to do with nfc which is amazing yeah and i feel like nft is also something that is relatable to a lot of people so everyone's curious everyone's trying to get in everyone's asking hey like how do i do that how do i do this what is

1:10that what is that monkey looking nfp things like that you know it's it's it's fun it's fun to be here amazing yeah and if you were to tell me you know two three years ago that all of times square would be filled with nfts people would probably think you're crazy oh yeah like we've come so far in such a short amount of time and i feel like it's still at the beginning

1:33and you know i know that you and i have both been around since before nfts really existed i would love for you to give some background on you know just your your story in blockchain and sort of how that led up to my ether wallet yeah for sure so my story starts with when i was in engineering school so i got into bitcoin and i read about bitcoin during my senior year and

1:59then i realized oh this is cool like i really fell in love with the like the software side of things the architecture and all that and then around the same time i read the ethereum yellow paper and then i was like oh this is so much better than like what i just read about bitcoin so i got it yeah i got into ethereum during ethereum pre-sale and ever since then like

2:22basically like kind of like following like development cycles and like what's happening like i followed the testnet deployed my first smart contract there and eventually when italia mania came out there were so many people having issues on basically unlocking their wallet or even checking their balances sending transactions because it was just command

2:44line and a lot of people command line is very scary and i was able to put together a simple interface and ever since then we grew with ethereum and then now here we are my wallet which is whitewater.com and multiple other products under us amazing and thank you so much for creating that and you know even technical people and computer-savvy people that aren't

3:10programmers are all afraid of command line because it's very easy to have one semicolon turn into a colon and all of a sudden all your ether is gone forever oh yeah we do not want that and you know i know my ether wallet is helping like millions of people store all their assets maybe can talk about the journey of you know after you started it i'm sure

3:33there's been iterations as ethereum's continued to grow and then growing into other blockchains and now you can connect different networks and stuff as well oh yeah so definitely so the 2017 so like we released my wallet.com in 2015 august and ever since then we basically like grew with ethereum by the way back in the day ethereum was yes of course you can send

3:58it back and forth and then you can deploy smart contracts but like nothing was yet solidified about like no no yeah i see 20 tokens or like no no nfps for sure so 2017 ico boom kind of brought up this like whole erc 20 token concept and it became a huge thing and until to this date everyone knows oh yeah c20 oh oh we know that's a token right so like that's

4:26where we are at like ethereum so my wallet was like basically the only gateway back in the day that if you wanted to get into one of these ico so if you wanted to buy any of the tokens that was the only way and after that like 2018 january i believe when the ufc 721 token came out and then cryptokitties everyone was really happy or like really

4:52enthusiastic about cryptokitties and then they also worked on the usc 0.201 standard which later on now everyone knows that's nfts and yeah and then cryptokitties came that we went down and then i was like oh okay at some point this will become a big thing and i believe that's that's the point where we are right now and yeah we added nft support to

5:19My wallet as well so you can if whatever the nfts or like all the nfts that you have across all evm chains so that includes polygon ethereum you know binance smart chain and sorry if i'm like not remembering all the evm chains right now but yeah across all the evm chains all the nfts that you have that's something we display in your in your wallet

5:44and at the same time as my wallet we wanted to get into nfps as well so we were like okay as like leading original ethereum wallet interface what can we do to represent who we are and what ethereum is and then that's when basically we released our first nft collection which is called eat blocks so

6:10Any block that maybe could be like the block that included your first ethereum transaction or maybe it's like maybe when it was when when the day of your baby was born things like that so people people were really creative about like which blocks they want to meet and yeah they were able to mean like i it was all was amazing to see like what concepts they

6:37come up with to meet these blocks like for example the first tweet in ft that was minted was included in a blog and then someone minted that blog so and it was it's a generative art piece type of thing but it's yeah it was it was our way of getting into ethereum i mean getting like representing ethereum as an nfd which basically created all the nfds

7:02so yeah it's amazing we did it last year and we got a ton of people good really good feedback as well super cool and yeah in any way you can sort of add more functionality into a wallet make it like a one-stop shop i feel like adds a lot of value for the existing user base oh yeah for sure so that our goal is to be the nexus point in transacting in

7:26ethereum so any ethereum action that you can accomplish should we you should be able to accomplish using like mytholog.com or one of our products like we have our blockchain explorer which is ethm.com and mobile apps as well so and then we also have the education ring if you want to learn more about if you're like newcomer to either nfts or blockchain or

7:48even like ethereum you can yeah you can use mutopia.com to check that out as well i feel like a lot of new people that come in this space you know they start using my ether wallet but they also are seeing apps like these c5 apps and d5 apps and putting their coins into those platforms and you know for example in celsius and to get yields on them and

8:14then realizing that they're not able to withdraw in the case of celsius recently you know people's funds are in there for some you know there's no amount of time if they may never get them back hopefully they turn back on withdrawals and they are able to get them back but from what i understand if you're holding your coins in my ether wallet specifically there's no yields that can

8:37be made but you're the only one who has your keys is that correct yes so yes adjust to multiple things because yes we highly believe in non-custodial wallets so we want to make sure what decentralization is so decentralization is not like using a centralized authority so that means you have to be you have to own your own keys so if someone else has

9:05your wallet access to your wallet then that means someone else is controlling your case so that's a centralized like party that's controlling your funds your keys your wallet even your nfts if you have them stored in a centralized company and that means yes you are vulnerable to anything that happens with the company any hacks that happens to

9:25the company or like however they manage your funds so we want to make sure all of our wallets are non-custodial but that means you have to do some extra steps if you want to earn yield so our goal is to make it as simple as much as possible so if you're for example using either like our android app or our website you can earn yield by staking by yourself right you can use

9:51our might well.com website go to go and stake on the ethereum pos chain and then and yield from that or you can use the android wallet to earn yield through like year-end wallet for example and you can stake through like for example scale chain you can stick that so we give you all the tools that are necessary to accomplish all these tasks

10:16and which means you as the person or the user is responsible to learn about those tools and then invest your funds to earn a return that's good to know and yeah you mentioned there the android app and i know that you can also access my ether wallet front from the website is the security and the protection of users information the same accessing through both or is there a way

10:45that they're recommended to safely access their funds so the main reason that we decided okay we have to have mobile apps is like mainly if you look at the global global population most most of the users have mobile phones than actual computers so it's not possible for them to all like have computers or like even buy a hardware wallet right so it's like the

11:10accessibility brings a huge place a huge role in this space for example if the hardware wallet cost hundred and eighty dollars or somewhere around like it's every single good hardware wallet is like over a hundred dollars so that means that person should be able to afford a hundred dollars worth of like a hundred dollar harder wallet and at the same time also own a computer so that's

11:31a big gap and then we at the same time we realized most of the modern smartphones has this secure enclave which is identical to a hardware wallet like everything happens in that secure enclave is isolated from rest of the operating system so and then we can use that to store secure information like that's what like like for example android

11:55and apple use to save your like credit card information your biometrics to unlock your phone and all that so our what we were thinking is like okay if it's secure enough to store that kind of information it's definitely secure enough to stow a private key for your wallet and then just to just to be more secure we like double encrypted so even if like the your secure enclave for

12:20whatever reason hasn't been done yet in anywhere in the world get hacked they still need the pin code or the password that you put in to have access to the wallet itself so like yeah security is like one of the highest priorities in this industry and then we follow it as to the maximum as much as possible yeah that's good to know and i feel like

12:46you always have to be on top of it because hackers are always trying to find new ways to crack the system and at you know i saw recently in the ios there was some story of somebody's private keys was automatically backed up into their icloud and somehow they were fished through their icloud and that access their their app i'm curious you mentioned android app

13:13but is there also an ios app and i'm guessing that's not a problem for you guys if so yeah there's definitely and i yeah both android and ios app and then we do not believe in uploading to icloud it's not an option so only way to access your wallet is using the app itself so just in case if you lose let's say you lose your phone you can always

13:36You always have to write down the mnemonic phrase like any other wallet even for hardware while you can use the mnemonic face to restore it so that's why we don't believe in oh why do we have to upload to icloud the moment you upload to another centralized party that means you are introducing these new attack vectors so it's not something that

13:57we believe in and then i don't think we will ever implement that kind of feature you know good to know and let's just jump back over to you know the growth of ethereum there was quite a few updates that were amazing last year with the eip 1559 burn that started making ethereum more deflationary i know you have a lot more information on where

14:25ethereum is at right now and where they're going than i do and i'd love to hear your insights about you know this year and in the coming summer months here there's supposed to be a merge and eventually ethereum's moving to the proof of stake which has you know been delayed many times and as with all blockchain development that's pretty normal but do you have insight on

14:46on where exactly ethereum's at and how you're following it with your team yeah so ethereum is definitely on its own track to completely move to pos this year so there's an one hot folk one last hard book coming up that'll delay in italian we have this thing called time bomb nothing to worry about it's not an actual bomb but it's supposed to

15:13it's a way of making sure all the ethereum clients will eventually move to pos but it was initially set to two years from italian main net release but as we all know the pos did not happen in two weeks after 2015 august so two years after 2015 august and then it kept it kept getting postponed and postponed and postponed because of like the development delays and like all the

15:38other stuff and it's getting delayed one last time actually next week and this it's only getting delayed by a couple of months so by q4 the current estimate is by q4 of this year italian mainnet will be completely switched to pos that means there won't be any mining rewards so yes like just like how eip 1559 helped us

16:07and made it like more deflationary this will make it even more deflationary because right now we are paying both minus and the validators at the same time and then that mining rewards will completely disappear and at the same time because there are no miners we don't have to use as much energy so like the energy consumption of ethereum blockchain will go down by like

16:3499 or something and even like a little small computer will be able to do the validation process with pos so it's a big step it's a huge step that was promised in the yellow paper and like at the beginning of ethereum launch so finally we are achieving that and then once we achieve that step everything else is peel like

17:01advancements to the space so i'm really excited for this year yeah so it's going to be amazing that's great to hear that it's finally finally coming and you know we've been waiting for quite a while and i'm i'm interested to see how it all plays out and how the price action as well reflects you know in ether as it happens and you know i was just seeing some some

17:29talk about how ethereum's price right now is below where it was at the all-time high five years ago but now there's there's nfts there's d5 there's you know just the bigger communities higher wallets everything and yet it seems like it's quite a good deal right now to be getting it in retrospect so i'm looking forward to seeing

17:55What will happen and now i'm curious because i don't know exactly how there's a lot of debate back and forth of the bitcoin proof of work maxies that really like how proof of work secures the bitcoin network and then how people prefer proof of stake and the energy consumptions of it and then actually making the transition in midair you know they say like if

18:19ethereum is a jumbo jet we're going to take out the engine and put in you know a battery in midair while it's flying and hopefully the plane doesn't crash so we'll see hopefully nothing goes wrong but barring the energy consumption side of it with the deflationary nature of not having to give out mining rewards there's still the you know you mentioned

18:44the beginning about like putting staking your ether to get for the proof of stake so there will still be rewards coming from that and is that coming out of the you know out of new newly circulated ether yeah it is it'll be new limited either but it'll be different from the current form because like we released beacon chain like i believe a year ago

19:08or so right now all the validators are getting new limited ether and then at the same time all the miners are getting new limited either so it's like it's giving a lot of ether right now so like the mining side of things will go away but yeah some of the people are still like oh no now the only the wealth can all people people who are wealthy can

19:30mine or like my in a way like steak either because like you need at least 30 to eat and then 32 eat this even if it's like eat these thousand dollars at 32 000 not that everyone can afford that i disagree with those people because there are other protocols like lido and stakewise is trying to bring create like these pools to state so you can right now stake with any amount even

19:58if you have point zero zero one eat you can convert that to either acid or like st eat i believe and then start earning like four percent interest on it and i mean that's something for something that like for your wallet if you have even like point one either you should like earn interest on it while you have it and then at the same time you don't have

20:22there's no locking period there's no unstaking period the moment that you want to make it liquid you can just convert it back to it and then get it up so yeah there are these like other developments that will make it so that everyone can participate in this taking process rather than just the wealthy and is there any advantage to people who have like a million ether and

20:45they're staking versus somebody who has 32 ether or is it just level playing field so i mean yes because like the person who with like million either they can create million divided by 32 number of validators and then the person who has 32 it only can create one validator meaning the even though the chances of each validator being picked is equal

21:13but like the chances for that person with like a million eight getting picked is more than the person just has one validated but over time the interest rate that they all gain will be the same based on the amount that they put in i think at the end of the day that's how like even like if you look at a bank right like the centralized exchange or

21:34like anything that's how it works the more the more you put in the more you get out but there's no special advantage over someone with a million eid okay good to know and i know it's probably complicated to explain you know the entire differences in proof of work and proof of stake but you know in

22:01with proof of work you do have to purchase hardware and put in some kind of computational work to be rewarded with the bitcoin and with staking you really just have to do one click and your ether is locked into the contract where does the you know inherent value that we see in the proof of work of bitcoin translate into securing the network with ethereum by by

22:26staking the ether a couple of ways because like when you state you're basically locking the in that funds so that means like right now people locked in i didn't check the last time but like a lot of it locked in for staking process and then at the same time they want to make sure that network is valid because if like for example a bad actor a bad

22:51stake i tried to input a invalid transaction or try to withdrawals like funds from somewhere they'll get this the this slashing process will happen so that means they'll the amount of the e that they put in like the 32 will get reduced slashed by a certain amount so like they are not incentivized to do bad things so which means everyone is more incentivized to

23:18do good things so they can earn more interest so that's the way of staking works only difference with ethereum is that like sticking already exists with like a lot of other chains but like the difference with ethereum is that it's not limited to certain number of people like i mentioned even if you have 0.18 you can just use one of the protocols that i

23:43mentioned before and then state that and then earn interest on that versus like there are a lot of other blockchains out there that says oh no you have to do this you have to have this much it's like and then you have you still have a computer that runs like all the time so it's it's a very complicated process to stake on those chains so this is also why i love

24:07ethereum so much just like how ethereum introduced smart contracts or logic to blockchain before that it was just bitcoin clones right like all you can do is to transfer values back and forth and then ethereum came on board and the ethereum was like oh no we can do much more we can use blockchain for a lot more things than just sending value and introduce smart contracts

24:28now everyone's in a way copying the smart contract capability and then trying to add that to their chain so this is exactly what's going to happen after ethereum goes pos excuse me proof of stake everyone will start copying that and then add that to the blockchain so i'm 100 sure that's that's good yeah yeah and i'm sure they'll do it a lot faster you know that all that

24:54ethereum did all the hard work especially they'll just like copy clone boom proof of stake we've all implemented it the next day yeah i think that part about open source software is it's easy to copy you know just like uniswap and all of these other decentralized exchanges made it way easier for them to just make a clone of it but you know the original still remains the big

25:20the leader and has the network effect so exactly yeah now with all of these updates happening is there anything that my ether wallet has to do or is preparing for to sort of move along with the growth of ethereum and the transition yeah so my wallet itself like mightwell.com or any of our android app doesn't have to worry about anything because the transition will be

25:43very seamless from basically from a user perspective no one has to even know about this transition because everything is supposed to be seamless and very straightforward but like for our e3m.com which is our blockchain explorer we have to yes we have to recode or reconfigure some of the architecture and infrastructure to support this new transition support like

26:07the proof-of-stake mechanism and all that so we are almost done with it so we are we're willing to test it out and then the good news is drops then for the for those who are not familiar with dropshipping which is the test net for ethereum that's where all the testing happens it's completely transition transition to proof of stake already so and it's

26:32running so it's it's so that's like and the next step is to transition all the other test nets as well there's like girly kowan and all these other ones and then once that's done final step will be main net transition so you're looking forward for it and then yeah our devs are working like each vmws i'm working hard on to make sure like the ethereum.com

26:55transition will go smoothly as well amazing looking forward to it and great to hear that the test net is already moved over thank you for all these insights kasala about just where ethereum's going i'm there's so many people that want to stay in the loop and don't really have time to read the yellow paper and technical updates and you know so and thank you

27:17where can people follow more of your work and my ether wallet as well yeah so main way of getting in touch with us is by either like replying to or contacting us through twitter at my wallet make sure you see the verified sign or you can always write to us support mythwallet.com as well so i would say those two are the best ways to contact us or like

27:44keep in touch with us so just follow us on my wallet on twitter and then we'll up we'll we usually put all the updates over there sounds great thank you so much kasala all the best with everything with my ether wallet and let's follow up in the near future yeah thank you so much for having me ashton it was great