For the November edition of the Developer Spotlight article, we will interview Alessandro, the creator of the Nami Wallet, co-founder of SpaceBudz, and Cardano stake pool operator.
Hey Alessandro! Happy to connect today and learn more about the Nami Wallet project! Can you tell us more about the project and what is the problem that you were addressing?
Hey, for sure! Nami is a browser-based wallet extension with a focus on simplicity and a great user experience. While Nami seems minimal at first glance, it’s very powerful since you can connect the wallet to any website and let the user interact with decentralized applications (dApps). The problem we try to tackle here with Nami is to interact with Cardano in a broader way and onboard users that may not have been in crypto long.
What are the most important things about Nami Wallet?
As described, Nami can interact with websites, which is crucial and differentiates Nami from existing wallets in the ecosystem. It allows for smart contract interaction, multi signatures, signing arbitrary complex transactions, and signing messages to prove ownership. While all of this sounds confusing and complicated, it is very easy to interact with these kinds of transactions from an end-user perspective.
Going forward, how will Nami Wallet make an impact in the crypto space or on the world?
Nami was inspired by MetaMask. Generally speaking, these kinds of wallets will have a huge impact on the crypto space because they interact with Web3 in the way they should be. Wallets are not seen as normal wallets anymore but rather as accounts that authorize certain actions on the blockchain. Do I think a browser extension is a way for real mass adoption? No, actually not, but it is a very good start and gives you a feeling for what is possible.
The idea is brilliant, but it needs to get deeper into the system, rather on OS or hardware level, to make it available for applications outside the browser and universally accessible on any device.
What are your accomplishments so far, and what are you most proud of?
The reason I created Nami was because of the SpaceBudz marketplace. After the sale of SpaceBudz back in March, I directly thought about building a decentralized marketplace. It is all about decentralization and user experience, so I quickly understood I need a wallet that can handle this kind of interaction to make it easy for the end-user and have everything in a non-custodial way. This is how Nami was born. It took me 6-8 months to integrate all parts and have a seamless interaction between the wallet and the marketplace. It all worked out. This is what I’m most proud of.
What is the future of Nami Wallet? For example, what new things to come, and what will it mean for the overall project?
There is a lot that can be done. We don’t have a clear roadmap, but we always prioritize important features. For example, building a web3 library to make the developer experience easier, improving smart contract support, and finding new innovative ways of doing things. We attract more developers and users by building these tools and features, which helps grow Cardano and inspires others to build.
Tell us about your team. Who are the people behind Nami Wallet?
Sure, we are two developers working on Nami. Pascal, the co-pool operator of Berry, jumped on board after I, Alessandro, created a proof of concept version of Nami that I worked on for two months straight.
Which partnerships have you engaged so far, and which ones are the most impactful?
We don’t have partnerships and are not actively looking because there is still so much that has to be improved, and we want to focus on having a solid core before we even consider partnerships. But we have one partnership with ADA Handle, which helps with improving the user experience by replacing addresses with handles and usernames.
Thank you for your time! Do you have anything else to add?
Thank you for having me on the spotlight article; it was a pleasure! I want to say thank you to the whole community for always appreciating our work and supporting us!