#48: Henri Stern, Co-Founder & CEO @ Privy | How they built a tool that brings web2-caliber UX to web3 products
Oct 27, 2023
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Henri Stern, Co-Founder & CEO @ Privy discusses the early MVPs of Privy, how they designed smooth UX, and the challenges of building wallets for web3. They also talk about user onboarding, privacy preservation, acquiring users, and the future of web3 technology.
Henry Stern emphasizes the need for better user experience (UX) and data privacy in Web 3 applications.
Privy offers privacy-preserving onboarding through challenge-response authentication and split-key encryption.
Privy focuses on progressive onboarding and introduces embedded wallets for a seamless ownership experience over data and assets on the web.
Deep dives
Building Privacy Infrastructure: Balancing UX and Data Privacy
The founder of Prevey, Henry Stern, discusses why he started working on Prevey and the challenges faced in the Web 3 space. He emphasizes the need for better user experience (UX) and data privacy in Web 3 applications. Stern highlights the importance of building privacy infrastructure that allows users to own their data while enabling developers to build innovative applications. He shares insights into the early iterations of Prevey, including the concept of data tokenization and the challenges faced in finding the right product-market fit. Stern also discusses the importance of having customer champions for each feature and the iterative process of refining the product based on user feedback.
Privacy-Preserving Onboarding and Key Storage
Henry Stern explains the privacy-preserving onboarding process offered by Prevey, focusing on the use of challenge-response authentication and split-key encryption. He describes the flow where users input their email address, receive a challenge code, and provide the response to authenticate themselves. Prevey then generates an embedded wallet with a private key split into three shards—the device shard, privy shard, and recovery shard. The device shard remains in the user's device, the privy shard is held by Prevey for off-gating, and the recovery shard can be stored with Prevey or by the user themselves. Stern highlights the importance of data self-sovereignty and the ability for users to recover their wallets even if Prevey were to go down.
Acquiring Users and Product Metrics
Stern discusses the process of acquiring users for Prevey, which involves reaching out to developers, showcasing demos, and building close relationships with partner projects. He emphasizes the importance of understanding the needs of developers and helping them improve their user experiences. Stern mentions the availability of an interactive demo to give users a hands-on experience with Prevey. While currently operating in a non-self-serve mode, the focus is on close collaboration with developers and gathering qualitative and quantitative metrics to enhance the product. Stern acknowledges the need to improve and expand the use of metrics in the product development process.
Progressive Onboarding and Delayed Education
Privy focuses on progressive onboarding, allowing users to engage with the product without having to learn everything about crypto upfront. Education about wallets, blockchains, and other technical aspects is delayed until it becomes necessary. This approach helps reduce initial friction and allows users to build familiarity and tolerance for more complex interactions over time.
Embedded Wallets and Hybrid App Ecosystem
Privy introduces embedded wallets as a way to lower the friction of transactions for users. Embedded wallets sit within the application and provide a self-custodial experience that feels natural and integrated. This approach allows users to engage with decentralized infrastructure without immediately needing a separate consumer wallet. The ideal vision for Privy is a future where hybrid apps, combining centralized and decentralized infrastructure, are ubiquitous, and users have a seamless ownership experience over their data and assets on the web.
Henri is an ex-research scientist at Protocol Labs. He Co-Founded Privy, which provides web3 projects such as Friend.tech, t2 & Shibuya with seamless onboarding & embedded wallets.
In this episode, we dive into the early MVPs of Privy, learn how it works under the hood, how they managed to design such as smooth UX & more.
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TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 A few words of intro
01:56: Why Henri started working on Privy
06:02 The early days of Privy
11:37 How have they built their MVP
13:15 Why did they make a pivot despite having an interest in their product
15:41 Which features helped them to tip the scales
22:34 How Privy works under the hood
34:04 Most wallets were built with L1s in mind
37:23 How do embedded wallets work
48:24 What would happen with wallets if Privy went out of business
50:36 How do they acquire their users
53:24 What kind of metrics do they follow
57:59 How does the world look like if Privy fulfilled its mission
1:04:25 Where people can learn more about Privy
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