From a passion project to a secure crypto wallet with 170k+ downloads! When Vacuumlabs developers created a web version of a crypto wallet for the Ada cryptocurrency — the currency associated to Cardano — in their free time, they had no idea about the success it would bring. After engineers from EMURGO discovered this wallet being created without any documentation, the collaboration between EMURGO and Vacuumlabs was started. Almost 3 years later, our podcast host, Marcel Klimo, had the pleasure to talk with Vicente Almonacid, one of the Yoroi wallet app engineers. Of course, they didn’t talk only about the success of the collaboration, but also about tech specifics of blockchain, its growth in the first months of 2021, and EMURGO’s future plans.

The beginning of Vicente’s career in EMURGO was immediately tied to Vacuumlabs: without any previous experience with similar jobs, Vicente learned how to design crypto wallets by studying the code written by Vacuumlabs engineers.

“As I was reviewing the code and getting familiar with it, I soon understood why EMURGO decided to work with you guys. I thought, yeah, these people know what they are doing. So when I took the lead of Yoroi mobile, I was already starting from a very good foundation, thanks to especially the collaboration that we had with Vacuumlabs.”

Building something on the blockchain is different work than building any other app, since it doesn’t use a traditional backend system, and it doesn’t have a regular database for storing information. You need to look at it differently, considering it’s a distributed system in a network. 

“One of the tricky things about it is that you need to think about, for instance, concurrent processes that are happening in the blockchain.”

Vicente believes that there has been a significant increase in an overall validation of cryptocurrencies and the ability to apply them not only in financial applications but also in many other aspects and industries.

“When you look into the projects that actually provide real innovation in the space, all these projects have a clear vision for both the future of their project, but also have a secure and decentralized network. In my opinion, this is the most important thing when we’re talking about public blockchains.”

As Vicente highlights, being open source is a critical point here, as it brings full transparency. And our partnership brought a lot into the industry.

“So here, I think that EMURGO and Vacuumlabs are a critical part of the infrastructure. Actually, we build the infrastructure that helps onboarding new users to set up a wallet very easily and quickly. We need companies with professionalism that Vacuumlabs and EMURGO provide in this area. We are open source and you can see exactly who was the developer that did this bit or that bit of the code.”

And what is the future according to Vicente?

“I’m very different compared to the average developer crypto enthusiasts in the sense that I would like to see blockchain technology help to fight problems like climate change. I think that the problem with climate change in general is a coordination problem, and blockchains help to solve coordination problems. So for me, it seems kind of natural that we’ll end up using this kind of technology to help.”

And of course, that’s not all there is to it. If you want to hear more about Yoroi, blockchain and its’ future, listen to our new Banking on Air podcast episode featuring Vicente Almonacid from EMURGO – Available on Apple Podcasts, Breaker, Google Podcasts, Overcast, Pocket Casts, Spotify or here:

Full transcript of this episode is available here.

Here’s a rundown of this episode:

• 00:30 What EMURGO and Yoroi are
• 05:35 Building blockchain – what does it bring?
• 09:30 What is the future of blockchain and EMURGO’s plans
• 17:25 Difference of blockchain from the rest of fintech industry
• 22:30 Wha Vicente would put on billboard in his hometown

With a background in communications systems engineering, Vicente Almonacid decided to switch his career and focus his work on decentralised technologies. He has been working in the blockchain space since early 2017, and joined Emurgo in 2019. From then, he’s been mostly leading the development of Yoroi mobile, one of Cardano’s official wallets. You can find him also on Twitter under v_almonacid!

‘Banking on Air’ is the official Vacuumlabs podcast covering the challenges, opportunities, perspectives and opinions that matter to you and to our community. In this podcast, we are looking under the hood of the changing face of tech: the acceleration in all things digital, the impact of regulation (and disruption), the need for genuine collaboration – and the specter of competitors old and new as it plays out in fintech and financial services around the world.

This podcast is brought to you by Vacuumlabs – and we’re sharing our experience and expertise in creating solutions for the digital journey for professionals, community banks, and fintechs. We believe that the future is in communities when it comes to digital transformation in financial services, and we invite you to join us and our guests over the coming weeks and months.