Latest / Monero Talk / 1 Million Downloads! Vik Sharma on Cake Wallet, Monero, and the Rise of “Privacy Coins” | EPI 367
Transcript
- Doug All righty, we are live live from where the Vik what's going on, man? Vik Hey, how you doing? Looks like you're in a really sunny place. Doug Yeah, this is, it's at the venue. Oh, yeah. Okay. Vik here there. Yeah, nice, nice. Hold on, let me... New York's pretty sunny right now too, see? Doug Oh, beautiful. What's what's the weather like? How warm is it? Vik I mean, it's cold. I mean, 56, not that I got. Doug Yeah, here it is. It's perfect right now. February, it should be even better. Should be even a little warmer in February in Mexico City. The nights always get a little cool, but I kinda like it, it's kinda nice. Which is nice. Vik which is nice, it's being built nice, perfect. The elevation now. Oh, yeah, man. The elevation started in the city. Yeah, it didn't bother me until somebody told me that it's high elevation then. I was like, okay. Doug Yeah, no wonder everything feels a little weird. Yeah, it takes a little getting the idea. Yeah, it's it's kind of throws you off a little bit, but you get over you get used to it. Yeah. Well, it's so great for me on this trip. I've acclimated very well and we actually we brought our our littlest one with us as well. He's been chilling too, man. She had a perfect living for this reason here. Yeah, but yeah, man, so I didn't realize that cake while it was approaching one million downloads. So that was that was big news to me to see that. And when I saw that, I was like, all right, this could be the perfect time to have it gone for a Monero talk. Yeah. Yeah. Vik Even if we tell you the truth, we were like, okay, you know, it's going on. Weren't really like, it's not like a number we had in mind. Like, oh my God, we gotta read this. Or imagine if one day we never, I never thought like that or talked like that. And nobody did in cake either. We just kind of just kept working. Um, and here we are, a million downloads. We, you know, sat the night checker to, you know, a couple of weeks, like 10 days ago or something, we're like, what? We're like, oh, we gotta, we gotta let everyone know this is, this is massive. So pretty exciting. I mean, I'm, uh, I'm blown away for, uh, as I say, for a project that just started, uh, for me to hold whenever we had my iPhone, not everybody's iPhone, you know, just my iPhone and, uh, now there's a million downloads, like 450,000 active, unique, active users a month. I mean, it's massive, um, massive for me. Doug Yeah, that's tremendous and not only in terms of Monero, right? Because I mean, CAKE has grown so far beyond that, right? Now it is, now it's the privacy coin wallet or the privacy wallet. And I'd say it's number one in that category as well. So obviously number one in Monero lands. Um, but I think overall in Frypto as the privacy coin wallet is CAKE. I think CAKE is number one, right? He is coin. Vik I think in the Bitcoin space, people just thought of us as a Monero wallet that also has Bitcoin, you know, but ever since we, I think it started with silent payments. That was really, what's the word, a shot in the Bitcoin world where they woke up, they're like, wait a minute, this wallet is doing some serious stuff. And then we put in Peijo in version two, then it was like, whoa, okay. So, I mean, I've been to a couple of Bitcoin events recently, and must be said, much respect, support for everything we know, thanks, Andres. Sorry, I was just reading them. But yeah, a lot of Bitcoin people are using it just as a Bitcoin wallet. And that's the great thing about cake wallet, right? You can use it just as a Monero wallet or just as a Bitcoin wallet, or you can just turn on those two and have a duo wallet. Get it? Doug Is that a dad joke? Is that a Manera dad joke? Vik It's a joke for Diego's, you know, do a wallet that he has, yeah. You can do that intake. You can just turn on Bitcoin and Monero, that's it, yeah. Basically, Bitcoin also, Litecoin, mWeb, they did that also, you know, just, you know, showed the industry that we're trying to, we are, we're just not talking. We're actually putting in and taking efforts, taking risks, putting in, being the first, you know, even some experimental lightning when we put it in was just, not sorry, lightning. You know, silent payments was just experimental, but we took the risk and did it, you know. It's fun when you're not profit motive, right? I mean, it's when you can, when you can do what you want. Doug Yeah. And you guys have obviously always stuck to your principles, right? Being open source and selecting the cryptos that are trying to be digital cash, right? Yeah. And then innovating and building the tech that's required to even help those projects, facilitate those goals. And so you guys have been very consistent with that. I think that's kind of what the value prop of Take Wallet is. When would you say it turned into that, right? Because initially it started off as a Monero-only wallet. When, at what point in the game where you're like, you know what? This is much more than a Monero wallet. This can be the fivesty wallet. Vik Yeah, but I mean, I guess it's been a slow process, right? Because even in the beginning when we added Bitcoin, it wasn't to really just have a Bitcoin wallet. We were seeing that people were swapping Bitcoin to Monero, Bitcoin to Monero, and we're like, hey, why don't we just put a Bitcoin wallet in there so people don't have to juggle another wallet? I mean, that was the main reason at the beginning. So I wouldn't say it's, I mean, it started off as a privacy wallet, right? The way Workake wallet was built, self custody, choose your own nodes, blah, blah, blah, put in your own node. I think we did some things right from the beginning. And listen, it's been over seven years. Have we made mistakes? Yeah, we've made mistakes, you know? But I think we started off right, and you were there. You were there. You're the first person I spoke to in the Monero community. I love telling that story. Doug No, I witnessed it firsthand. Let me go talk to this guy, let me find out who this big guy is, and it's been a great ride ever since. I knew. I knew. I knew from the moment I met you when you had launch take that it was going places for sure. And you took Monero with it. Obviously, Monero on its own, the hope is would succeed one way or another, there'd be some other version of you that would pop up. But you certainly did, I think, help accelerate Monero's growth without without a doubt. I mean, there would be a huge vacuum there if they didn't come in, come into fruition when you did. Right. I don't know what would I I don't know what would have happened. Obviously, others would have stepped in others would have, you know. Vik Somebody was stepped in. I mean, I think, you know, I saw the hole, right? I saw the need for a Monero wallet on iOS and I'm like, okay, we got to get this out. And I think the community was backing another wallet back then. And I wasn't really involved in the Monero community. I mean, I was buying Monero, I was holding Monero, but I was really part of the community. Once in a while, I'd go on Reddit and look, see what's going on. There was some talk of another wallet. The community was funding. But I decided not to read about it. Speaker 2 Do you love coffee and Monero as much as we do? Consider making gratuitous.org your daily cup. Pay with Monero for premium fresh beans and if you like what you taste, send a digital cash tip directly to the farmers that made it possible. Proceeds help us grow this channel, gratuitous and Monero. Doug Yeah, I think one of the things you've done a great job with is, like I said, maintaining those principles and staying true to Monero and the Monero ecosystem. But then also balancing that against not being maxi, which I think has served Kate very well. The fact that you guys haven't been maximalists. You've been maximalists in your principles, but not in your coin choice. And I think that's really proven to work out very well. And not just for Cake Wallet, but for Monero as well, I think, because it's just raised more into the privacy gap. It just makes it a bigger tent for everyone. I think Cake has done a great job at actually implementing that. Because sometimes even in Monero land, it could be quite hard to do things as a company or an entity and deal with the community and deal with the maximalism. But I feel like Cake has done a great job navigating that. Vik Yeah. And you and I have talked about this before. I mean, live here many years ago, as well as privately many times, it just seems to be a vocal minority that is speaking out against cake. And I didn't realize that for a long time, and it would get me down. I mean, I spoke to you about it. But, you know, like the recent post I put about the one million downloads got such awesome response and appreciation for that, that it's quite humbling. So yeah, I mean, in some ways it's good, right? The community, we've always said this, right? The community keeps you honest. It's very demanding that you stay to your principles and you deliver a product that's honest and it's not fooling people. So in that way, it's good. Even the vocal minority deserve a purpose to keep everything aligned, for sure. And we've had our ups and downs with the community, but it's been good. In the end, it's well done. Doug definitely ups and downs, man. I recently have gotten put through the ringer with a certain section of the Monero community. And my lesson learned there was to just use the mute button on X. I always tried to be as open as possible. Like you, right? I was kind of thinking, like, I felt bad. Like, oh, why aren't these, like, what am I doing wrong here? That, you know, there's a subset. But you realize, you just can't. You can't feed the roles. You don't really know what the true motive is. Like, are they even actually, like, looking out for the best interests of Monero? Or are they just trying to throw things off? So lesson learned there for me. And don't be afraid of using the mute button on. Vik We've seen especially the Bitcoin space, right? I mean, for a lot of people, it's a vehicle to do something. It's a subject to talk about whether they want to do podcasts or be a public media figure, a public figure for media. So if it wasn't Bitcoin, it would have been something else. It would have been religion or politics or cars or who knows? I don't know, right? So they want to use to get famous or get attention. And I'm not saying that's everybody, right? I mean, I think a lot of the smaller people come up in Monero and I think their heart is in the right place. I think they want Monero to be recognized. They want it to be accepted. They want it to be used. They want it to be appreciated. It's fine. I mean, everyone has a different way of getting that across and some people are doing it differently. Doug It's all good. This is so diplomatic of you, right? I said it all right. Kevin Tipps, this is how he's gotten, as far as he's gotten, ladies and gentlemen. This is how he does it. Kevin Tipps, 0.0035XMR. Oh, this is nice. We finally have it showing. Then all money comes to me, right? Just making sure I have shit. This is going to us, but we could send you some. I can't, I'm gonna ask you to blow that score. Congrats, Cake Wallet. Your UI is really awesome. I hope to onboard more people to self-custody using Cake Wallet. Yeah, for sure. That's one of the standout features of Cake Wallet, is the true wallet. You hold your own keys. You don't sacrifice beaut keys, for sure. It's like, you know, it's the best way to onboard a new crypto, really. Yeah. Awesome, awesome. Yeah, so, you know, what else are we gonna talk about? I mean, what else is going on in the privacy scene? I guess not much, right? It's just Monero. There's really nothing else. Nothing. Everything else is irrelevant. I don't think else is. Everything else is irrelevant. Vik Relevant don't know of any other privacy coins Doug just Monero's holding stables there's really nothing else going on up there I mean shit like whatever 750 but irrelevant Vik It's 709. I mean, I was on the David Goksteins show a couple days ago. Doug Oh, I got to, I got to see that. That must've been, that must've. Vik Yeah, that's good, it's good. I mean, he wanted to talk about privacy coins and the attention they're getting now, like, you know, with the Z-Caches pump. And I was telling him that even if it's a pump, even if it's inorganic, right? It's okay. It's getting attention to privacy coins. Even if 90%, even if 99% of the people came because of the pump and 1% stayed because of the I think it's great. That's 1% of a huge population that we didn't have before in this space. Doug Yeah, I mean, it's definitely gonna serve Monero better than, you know, a Dogecoin pump, for example, would have served, right? So it's pulling the normies into the privacy points here. And those that aren't complete jackasses, that aren't literally just in it for pure, really speculative reasons, will start to learn about the tech and then start comparing them and be like, Oh, is this other thing that people are actually using more than Zcash? What's that all about? Why is it on the exchanges? Oh, they're getting bit of Italy. Why does it get delisted? But Zcash doesn't get delisted. And yeah, it will, Monero will better better that in that respect. Vik And that was the, I mean, you remember five years ago when the Zcash Foundation was giving us a grant to add Zcash, you remember that whole community blew up and it was pretty ugly. But that was the idea back then too, that people would come to Cake Wallet and be like, Kate, what is this Monero thing? Why is it at the top of the list when you create a new wallet on Cake Wallet? These privacy guys, why are they promoting, why is this coin number one? And hopefully that'd bring in more people to Monero. And of course, the Zcash people were using that as to kind of validate, to be in Cake to validate, you know, the Zcash tech and bring privacy users to Zcash. Who knows? I don't know, I can't read their mind. But overall, I think it's a good face. Yeah, that's true. Doug You know, it's obviously disappointing as a purely, you know, Monero person or Monero Matt, right? To see, finally, everything we've said is coming to fruition. It's just not Monero that's being, but you know, like, it's showcased, it's Zcash, right? But this concept of untraceable digital cash is a meme now in the broader market. People are like, oh, wow, there's real value there to be able to send without censorship, without surveillance. It's like Bitcoin, but untraceable. Yes. But now they're pumping Z, you know, they've managed to make Zcash the meme and not Monero for various reasons. Definitely the fact that they're VC connected, like the whole founding of Zcash, the people that were involved in it. And, you know, the LaCon Valley crowd, right? I mean, you know, it goes it goes deep over there. The Barry Silberts of the world, highly connected, managed to get Zcash and keep Zcash listed on all the exchanges and put a lot of effort and work towards doing that, but had the resources to do it and the means in terms of being more centralized where they were able to tap into those resources and do it without their community and be like, no, no, no, we don't negotiate with exchanges, which is what would happen in Monero land. Right. So all those things. But you can't you can't discount that, you know, that they were able to do that. And at the end of the day, Zcash does have good tech. It's not like they managed to pump something that's just completely broken and a fake version of it. Like it does it does work. It's not private by default. Right. That's the that's the primary difference between Monero and Zcash right now. It says the fact that Monero is private by default. Monero has better network level privacy, you know, with the underlying plus plus and things like that. There's more thought that's been put into Monero in that regard. And Monero scales differently with dynamic block size and tail emissions. So it arguably has kind of a different architecture for scalability and incentivizing security in the network. So, you know, if the thing it sounds like, you know, they each become a hedge in the space of digital cash. Vik Yeah. I mean, look, no, no, no cake wallet employee has said, Hey, pay me in Zcash now. You know, so, uh, the people that are getting paid in Monero are still getting paid in Monero, um, podcasts we do. And, uh, you look at cake pay for the debit cards, uh, credit, the gift cards that we do still like 90% is, is Monero based, uh, Monero still being used. And there's no doubt about that. Um, so, I mean, it's weird, right? I mean, Monero focused on usability, right? We go after vendors, we go, you know, proton pad, proton mail, proton pass and obscure, uh, and some other, you know, we're going after other people, VPN providers to take Monero. Um, I just think it's weird that the Zcash is not doing the same thing. Um, they have foundation, they have 20% dev tech money coming every day. They could be putting that money to a lot of use. Um, maybe I shouldn't give them ideas. Doug Well, yeah, it's just been a different strategy, right? They've been focusing... Really because they had to take that strategy because their tech was so clunky in the beginning. I mean, there was a reason why Zcash got ignored in the beginning. There wasn't a bunch of Monero people just being maxed. Monero really had the advantage in terms of tech and usability combined. Zcash, you had the trusted setup. That was a non-starter. Alright, so that took a couple of years off their life right there. They had to fix that issue. Vik Yeah, they fixed that, but I think the biggest thing they fixed is that this is Monero. The usability. Yeah. Yeah. The usability, right? I mean. Right. I downloaded Dash Wallet on my iPhone and sent a transaction, it's totally transparent. And they're like, hey, wait a minute. What's this about? Oh, no, you got to download the desktop app and this. Nobody does that anymore. It's a mobile world. So to call yourself a private coin and not being able to do that while on the go, I don't think it's a private coin, at least not a useful private coin. I can see Jove and the villains we are flipping out right now. Go ahead. My comments. Doug Well, he'll be able to slip out in person at Monero topia. He'll be he'll be there, by the way. Vik Good. I don't think Zcash had that same problem to it. I think with the Zashi, whatever their wallet name is, it made it just easier for people. And that's what, you know, they would argue that this is an organic pump because of the fixed, you know, trusted setup. They have a wallet where people can easily shield. Who knows? Who knows what the real answer is? Yeah, real reason is. But anyway, back to Monero. Full chain membership proofs. I mean, that's going to be a game changer. I'm excited about that. Because I understand that's also going to let you do light wallet server type stuff, which will be great. So Cake is looking to supporting that as well. I mean, we're looking at supporting light wallets right now, working on it now. So that should be good. Doug That would give users a more instantaneous feel like I mean we won't run my Monero experience the edge Experience but with less trust above or yeah, we won't run this Vik server. We'll put up a guide to show people how to run their own server like on digital ocean or you know I run a note on digital ocean for myself. Okay let me rephrase one of the guys set up a note for me. So that that'll be great and of course Sarai I hope that comes soon. Doug Oh my God, these are the critical things we need right now to stay ahead, to stay ahead of these forms of adoption. Vik that Eigen wallet guys I met them there in New York one time I met them for dinner you know they're keeping atomic swaps alive which is great you know and then you got a who you know I mean there's some good things happening in mineral work and good upcoming things so it's not a work so Doug Dortain adding, adding Monero. That seems very real right now. We'll see. No? Oh, we're doubting it? How many years ago? Dick's got his money on Sarai. All right. Vik I made a commitment to Luke that will be the first to implement Sarai and I will. Doug I'm hoping towards it. Yeah, I mean, I'm hoping like the war chain wanting to do this is also you know lighting a fire under Sarai, but I know I know they're already like full speed ahead and they don't want to make it Yeah, obviously, but there is competition which is good. It's good that Rigi set Razak's change to listen to Vik We're wrong. I hope, I hope Thorchain does it. Uh, and I'm not technical enough to know, you know, what the issues were. Um, they get adjusted night. Try to work with Thorchain for a year, like four years ago to try to get Monero on Thorchain and for some whatever reason didn't happen. Doug I remember Stau, you got to talk to the JP, I don't know if you ever... Vik I mean, I'll go ahead. That's during his vault. What is that called? Doug Oh, you did? Oh, I'll do it, yeah, yeah. Vik I'm great. Well, it's a lot of good things happening in Monero. More vendors. I was at Pubkey last night and the guy from Oskira stopped me. He's like, we did it. We added Monero. And I felt really bad. I recognized a face when I couldn't remember if he was from Oskira. I'm like, added Monero to what? So anyway, so that's good to see. Doug Yeah, I mean, so what else do you think Monero needs to be focused? Let's be honest, what does Monero need to be focused right now to stay ahead of Zcash? I think I see one of the ways Zcash is going to falter is there's going to be a big dump, right? It's going to be, it's like very volatile right now. So yeah, Monero is at a disadvantage and that it can't pump as much because it's not connected to all these exchanges. But that's also arguably an advantage in terms of its ability to kind of grow in adoption organically, right? So it's more steady growth based on real network effect. It doesn't have a lot of speculative element attached to the price. So that hurts a little going up, but it helps some going down, right? Keeps it more stable. So potentially that becoming an issue for Zcash right now, and then I'm just thinking big picture, what do you think Proofs that brings us essentially to parallel terms of privacy tech, scalability, I don't know, I think we're kind of currently on par with them. It just needs to be integrations, like you're saying, right? The integrations, Monero integrating into decentralized exchanges. But yeah, did the is that really the main... Vik I mean with everything we want to do in Monero exchanges delisting them as the consequence or the benefit you know how we want to look at it right and that's been the challenge if you go on r slash XMR trader for example the number one question there is how do you get Monero how do I get Monero does somebody wants to do it just online or with their bank account I guess they can go to Rito's swap which is basically built on Havana right again it's still it's still pretty techie and maybe that's okay maybe it maybe the Monero needs to grow this way just slow and steady and let let people discover it but does that mean will always remain with a just a small obscure tech crowd I don't know privacy oriented crowd I don't know it's Doug I'm not going for that, I'm going for op- Vik I'm not saying you will be, I'm just asking a question. I'm just asking a question. Doug Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you're being a stock piece. Yeah, I mean, listen, I mean, for me, the goal is basically XMR Bazaar, right? Being able to live off Monero peer-to-peer, whatever that is today. You could theoretically do that already on XMR Bazaar, but it'll be much better when there's a million people on XMR Bazaar and they're using Monero all around the world. Whenever the price of Monero is at that point, it wouldn't even matter. But for me, that's the goal, right? So whatever we need to do to bring in those people to where we get it to the point where you could effectively live off Monero peer-to-peer globally, the global community, that's what I see as the goal. And I see no reason why Monero can't achieve that just more effectively than any other crypto. I think you have an advantage there because you have traction in that because of the culture. Vik now he's going like this to me so Doug Oh, no. Okay. Yeah. This is it. Half hours. What do you think? Yeah. I mean, I'm the first time we got around. Okay. I got to run. But if you're a... Vik are you going to do this tomorrow too? Doug We'll have the Monerotopia tomorrow, we'll have the Monerotopia show. Vik So maybe hop on at that time and the guests and the. Yeah. Doug community whatever section. I do want to you know officially thank you again Vik for sponsoring Monero Topia. We'll full speed ahead on getting the conference together. It's gonna be kick ass since February. Welcome. Awesome. Vik is saying questions first please group we are okay one question real quick Doug um i don't see any all right here we go what's this way hello the first stone tip point one xmr sup guys good to see you both a hug for you both manero should primarily focus on full chain member ship proofs plus plus second pool based dexes yes like surai but we need more third circular economy educate ordinary people about xmr uh yeah for sure for sure not really a question all right Vikk we're gonna we're gonna we're gonna let you go thank you everybody that they all tuned in today and Vikk maybe we'll see you tomorrow i'm in ariptopia Speaker 2 Hi, Monero Land, thank you for joining us on this week's episode. We release new episodes every week. You can find and subscribe to our show on YouTube, Odyssey, iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Go to MoneroTalk.live for a full list of places where you can watch and listen. 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