Happy Devs’ New Direction Last month, we released the HappyChain testnet and the Happy Wallet MVP. This was a bittersweet moment — both the culmination of a year of hard work, but also the exact week where funding ran out and I had to let the team go. They were all aware, and they all soldiered on until the end 🫡 — I feel blessed and honored to have been able to work with such outstanding and talented people. What happened? Long story short, “gaming L2” is the perfect incantation to make VCs run like you're coming after them with a machete. It's frustrating, but I understand the sentiment. The diplomatic way to put this is that the capital markets were not in a place where they were willing to make a long-term bet with long odds (or so it looks like!) but, in my humble opinion, incredible expected value. I love gaming, but it was always only the first step. I don't believe in “build it and they will come” and so gaming was a niche were I personally knew many builders that had problems that could be solved through technology — and I knew how to solve them. I still believe gaming has a bright future onchain. I think it's inevitable. I was just trying to pull the timelines forward and corner that market :) What's next? The gaming pitch was met with skepticism. There is something we built, however, that has garnered quite a bit of interest, and that's the Happy Wallet. While the wallet was meant to be HappyChain's secret sauce, there is nothing about the tech that is HappyChain specific. There are glaring gaps in the wallet market. Onboarding is very much unsolved. Concretely: why can't I go to any dapp, log in with a social account, put in my credit card number and start using the app? There is of course Privy and its numerous competitors, but none of those are truly secure: it's incredibly easy for any app to trick you out of your funds. For that reason, these wallets mostly adopt the “one wallet = one app” model — and those that don't do so at the expense of your security. The Happy Wallet can solve this today. There are many other issues: chain abstraction and gas abstraction (use tokens on any chain to transact and pay gas fees on any other chain) are hot topics, but I haven't yet seen a wallet that meets my quality bar on those. So that's the new direction: goodbye HappyChain (for now), engage thrusters on Happy Wallet. Personally speaking, I took a bit of rest after grinding insane hours for months on end. But now I'm itching to get back to building this thing. You can't keep the builder away for too long 😁 Something I regret from earlier is not writing much about the journey — I'll try to do a better job this time! To people who have engaged with the HappyChain testnet: I see you & I appreciate you 💖 I haven't engaged much as I knew this announcement was coming, but I will also do better once the future direction is set. A big thank you to everyone who has supported me so far, and will hopefully continue to do into the future, very much including our existing investors who have been nothing but awesome, and a special thank you to the incredible team (some of them might be looking to find new positions soon, DM me if you're interested in top talent with a demonstrable track record). Let's cook, and stay happy my friends! 🧑‍🍳✨

Curious about how secure Privy & co are? What does it take to secure embedded wallets? Catch my EthCC talk at 10:50 on the Hepburn Stage (4th Floor) to find out! "Moms ∩ Cypherpunks — Building an accessible yet secure wallet system."

@HappyChainDevs has both social & web3 wallet login, in a single account across the entire chain. Coming to you very soon! (We had to postpone a bit to rewrite all of 4337)

Going on a @HappyChainDevs speaking tour at EthCC! 🤠 Tue 4pm @ BGA x Cryptosquare connect (lu.ma/CSQxBGAConnects?tk=Dfl…) Wed 3:20pm @ EthCC Warcraft Stage Thu 3pm Komorebi's Hacker House (lu.ma/uhhqdjcu) Fri 4:20pm @ Modular Summit (eventbrite.be/e/modular-summ…)