New wallet release and waitlist invites
Hey, the Linen App Community:
It has been a while since we’ve updated our community members. August and September have been eventful for us. Some of the things that happened on our end:
The Good:
New wallet is out. We built a new version of the user self-custody wallet where members store their crypto assets and earn yield on USDC using Compound. Our existing beta testers have been testing this wallet on iOS for over a month now.
This new wallet is the foundation for what is coming next. Using this wallet, members will be able to to store most of their crypto assets in one place and use this wallet with numerous DeFi platforms. You can also tap into yield and exchange pools that are integrated natively within Linen App.
For those who are more technical, the new wallet lives on the Ethereum blockchain and has more robust wallet recovery mechanisms as compared to the old version. Linen Wallet is based on Gnosis Safe smart contracts, which secure over $1 billion in crypto assets. Alex, the CTO of Linen App, has described our wallet design and security model assumptions in this write-up.
More invites coming. Within the next two weeks, we plan to extend invites to the broader group of our waitlisted early members on iOS. We will be going by your waitlist position.
External deposits of USDC are supported now. Community members can deposit and withdraw the stablecoin USDC to Compound directly to/from Linen Wallet to earn yield on Compound without relying on bank transfers.
About to launch an international iOS release. We have had many inquiries about Linen App from users in South America and Europe, where local currencies are either unstable or interest rates on savings are very low. An international release will support crypto deposits at first, and banking connections will be added later.
The Reality:
High Ethereum network fees. In August and September, Ethereum network fees were extremely high, which made small translations prohibitively expensive. The fees have come down since, but they still remain relatively high. This affects not only Linen App but the entire crypto-powered finance industry. Scalability solutions are expected to be implemented within 6 months.
Linen App is paying these network fees to deploy wallets to the blockchain for our users and to make deposits to Compound.
Android app development. We are focusing on building Linen App on iOS first and deprioritizing a fully functioning Android release. We came to this decision because a) the majority of our community members are on iOS devices, and 2) being a small team, it is hard to focus on both platforms at the same time while building, testing, and iterating. I hope our community members understand.
Lately, I have received an increased number of requests asking me to explain Decentralized Finance (DeFi), how it differs from traditional crypto exchanges like Coinbase and Binance, and why someone needs a crypto wallet. I describe all of that in simple words in this post. Hopefully, the 15 mins it takes to read this post will pay you off in the future multiple times.
Thank you for all your help and support,
Your Linen App Team
P.S. If you are an iOS user on the waiting list and and want to use Linen Wallet to make deposits to Compound today, ping me using in-app chat and I will take you off the waiting list.