Our Head of Design shares what makes the Sylo wallet different.

There’s perhaps no one better to answer what’s different about the Sylo wallet than its creator, our Head of Design, James ‘Jimmy’ Carolan.

Read on for his thoughts on all things regarding the Wallet in Sylo Beta.

Sylo Head of Design James ‘Jimmy’ Carolan shares his thoughts on the Sylo wallet.

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‘Design a crypto wallet they said, it will be fun,’ they said…

I jest, it actually was.

At Sylo we’re all about popularising crypto and the decentralised way of thinking.

We want these technologies to be useable by everyone, so to design and create the world’s simplest and most usable crypto wallet seemed like a good place to start!

Some of you might be asking: ‘What’s a crypto wallet?’

A quick google search defines it as this:

‘A cryptocurrency wallet is a device, physical medium, program or service which stores the public and/or private keys and can be used to track ownership, receive or spend cryptocurrencies. The cryptocurrency itself is not in the wallet.”

Say what now?

After reading that definition, I knew we needed to simplify the shit out of this topic! We decided to define our crypto wallet like this:

The Sylo crypto wallet is basically a bank account that you can create on your phone. But instead of money inside it, you have digital assets or cryptocurrencies. Whilst normal bank accounts allow you to transfer and receive fiat money, our crypto wallet will allow you to do the same, but with cryptocurrencies and digital assets.

Make a bit more sense?

With definitions out of the way, we began researching and comparing other wallets already in the market, like MetaMask, BRD, Splash, etc.

We found that functionality varied greatly — in short, no two wallets were the same. Whilst I suppose this is to be expected in such a new and in-flux space as we’re innovating in, we still found that the majority of wallets out there already were simply too restricted. For example:

Not able to import multiple wallets into it

Can’t import a wallet from another app

Not supporting multiple blockchains

Can’t add custom tokens

Some required a centralised signup

And the list goes on…

This research pointed out that was a great opportunity for us to make a wallet that has all the functionality the OG crypto community expect, while not scaring away newbies. Challenge accepted!

I decided the trick would be to start simple and tuck away potentially confusing features. For example, we decided to pre-populate the Sylo wallet with one address and one token (Ether). This doesn’t scare away a newbie and if a power user wants to import another wallet or add more tokens, they can easily peel back the layers and get all the functionality they need.

From the outside looking in, the Sylo wallet looks simple but it packs a punch — it has all the features you could ever ask for in a crypto wallet and more. So what makes it different you ask?

Well, first…

IT’S A SOCIAL WALLET

The main ‘thing’ that makes the Sylo wallet AWESOME and more useful than every other wallet in the market — is that you can seamlessly send to, and receive tokens from, any person you have as a contact in Sylo.

Then if you receive tokens from your mate in Sylo, it goes straight into your wallet and you can send any token from your wallet back to your friend.

If you receive a token that you didn’t have in your wallet, we automatically add it — simple.

No need to mess around with long addresses or QR codes — just let Sylo sort it for you in the background. ;)

Breathe easy when I say that — it’s fully private and decentralised, remember?

YOU CAN IMPORT EXISTING WALLETS

We don’t expect or want you to abandon any wallets that you may already have — instead we let you import them using their mnemonic phrases.

This has the added bonus that you can request and send tokens from your imported wallets, in the chat feed.

We also added a really cool feature which allows you to see what tokens are in particular addresses before you import, then we automatically add those tokens after you import.

This is particularly beneficial if you have multiple tokens in multiple addresses. (Most wallets lazily import the first address with zero tokens and expect users to add their tokens manually.)

When Scott imported his wallet into Sylo, he actually found out that he had a token that he’d forgotten about!

MULTIPLE BLOCKCHAIN SUPPORT

The Sylo app currently supports the Ethereum blockchain and all ERC-20 tokens. This is only a starting point however.

We want to support a wide variety of Blockchains and tokens, such as CENNZnet and Bitcoin.

Tell us in the comments which blockchain or token you want to see us supporting in the future!

THE FUTURE IS BRIGHT

We envisage great things for the Sylo wallet and believe that the future is bright for all digital assets, not just tokens.

I for one, want the Sylo wallet to become the ‘go-to’ wallet in the market.

Download Sylo and get involved — we want to know what you think!

Jimmy :)

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Got a question for Jimmy or another member of Team Sylo?

Drop us a line on Twitter or learn more about about the Sylo mission here.