What does WonderFi Labs hope to bring to the Web3 Community?

TL;DR

Mass adoption.

That’s it, that’s the answer.

We want people to use blockchain technology, not because it’s fancy or the latest fad. We want people to leverage blockchain technology because it solves unique problems in very innovative ways.

For example, you want to send funds to a friend. You want to do it cheap, fast and globally - however most current options fall into the 'pick 2' of this iron triangle of financial transactions.

We're in Canada, so we have access to Interac, a lightning fast system that's also generally free. The catch is it's not global. For global transactions, you could use something like Paypal, but that requires an account beyond your basic bank account. You also must move funds into your PayPal account, and the fees are high. Astronomically high if you are sending smaller amounts. So we've got global and fast, but it's not cheap. Finally, there's the traditional banking system. It’s certainly an option, but it will take several business days, going through multiple banks along the way. You have no visibility on the path your funds are taking and neither does the person you’re sending to and it’s also costly as well. This option only has global as an advantage.

Sending funds is one of the places that blockchain technology shines. You can send funds to your friend directly, with the path the funds take being 100% visible to both of you. The whole process takes under minute and with Layer 2 technology the costs are low. You've broken the triangle and picked cheap, fast and global.

Great, right? We think so.

We also think that you shouldn’t need to have a technical background, a very patient technical friend, or oodles of time to watch YouTube videos to know how it all works. We want using the blockchain to be as easy as driving a car.

Let me explain.

The average car owner learns the basics on how to drive. That’s it. You don’t know exactly how the car works. You know how to use its features, and make it work for you, but at the end of the day knowing how the car works is the mechanic’s job. We want you to be able to just open your WonderFi Wallet and use its features, just like you do with a car (only with less oil changes).

So, how do we enable people to leverage this technology without knowing what a blockchain is and how it works? First, we want to address the problems of the past. The things that you’ve heard are reasons to avoid the blockchain.

Security. Transaction speed. Transaction costs.

Let’s start with security. There’s been huge improvements over the last few years. We’re a long way from your crypto being stored on paper. You’ve now got hardware wallets. Easy to use to store your crypto securely offline and less susceptible to your dog eating it. How to articles everywhere so you can easily send transactions while knowing what to watch out for, just like you would with your traditional banking transactions Finally, MPC wallets using social log ins so you can use your Google account, or Facebook account to sign in. This allows you to rely on third parties with robust security practices to manage your account keys. This splits your account security across multiple parties, meaning that there’s no single point of failure that would compromise your account.

Next, there’s transaction speed. By implementing Layer 2 networks on the chain, transactions speeds have been reduced as the onus for the main network to process all transactions has been moved to these secondary layers. In some cases we’ve seen transactions per second increase from 15 to 2-4k.

Finally, transaction costs. Just like transaction speed, layer 2 networks have helped reduce costs (gas) per transaction. In some cases, dropping costs for a single transaction to under a cent. In certain cases, additional network improvements have allowed for completely gasless transactions.

As you can see, the solution to a lot of the issues have been solved with Layer 2 networks. However, this has presented new problems in the form of barriers that prevent easy access to Layer 2.

This is where WonderFi Labs comes in.

We want to remove those barriers. And do it in such a way that you can onboard easily and start leveraging blockchain technology on any level without needing to know the details around how it works. Our initial goal is to bring decentralized wallets to WonderFi as a whole. Allowing you to access popular dApps (like Uniswap, Opensea, etc) and new coins, all while staying in full control of your own assets. Once we’ve completed this step, we’ll be looking to the future of innovation in the Layer 2 space. More to come on this soon, so sign up for our newsletter and watch this space for updates as Labs hits the on ramp to blockchain innovation!