Builders Highlights #1: Sezame Wallet
Alephium’s ecosystem thrives with developers building amazing stuff on top of Alephium (services, dApps, etc…) that deliver a unique experience and provide real utility for the users. In the Builders Highlight series, these builders will share more about their projects, and also their thoughts and insights on why building on Alephium!
Disclaimer: While Alephium is happy to support a growing developer community, it would like to make it clear that it does not endorse, audit, or review any software presented in this series, and encourages all users to make informed decisions and take personal responsibility for their actions.
The second builder in the series is the Sezame team, the developers behind the Sezame mobile wallet, available on the Google Play store and App Store:
Tell us a little bit about your project. What is it, what does it, and how does it interact with the Alephium blockchain?
We built the first mobile wallet designed specifically for the ALPH blockchain. In its initial stage, Sezame Wallet was offering cloud mining with GPUs in order to make ALPH available to all before its first exchange listing.
What motivated you to develop on Alephium blockchain, and what set it apart from other blockchain platforms?
We love the concept of ALPH : Mixing the decentralization resulting in proof of work with the endless possibilities offered by native smart contracts.
What tech stack did you use in your project? What did you consider when choosing the right tech stack for your project?
We used React native for our mobile app. We made this choice mainly because there was an Alephium SDK on node.js.
What features are you most proud of?
Initially, we were really thrilled to permit non-technical people to mine and own ALPH even before its initial listing on an exchange, as this is usually reserved only for the most expert crypto enthusiasts. We managed to secure over 1’000 GPUs for our clients in just a few weeks despite the global GPU shortage.
We are currently very proud to have built a multi-chain wallet with ALPH in the spotlight!
Could you tell us about some of the challenges you faced while building, and how you overcame them?
#1 Constant changes:
Everything was brand new. Every few days, there would be an update on the mining algo, performances would change, rewards would change, the hashrates would spike, and we had to understand what was happening. The only reason we could provide a good service to our users was thanks to the availability of the ALPH team to answer our questions and either patch or rapidly answer any issues we brought up.
#2 Competition with hashrate “whales”:
We were very proud to provide the ALPH community access to ALPH when it was only available to mining. We secured over 1’000 GPUs for our clients, but at one stage, when the hashrate “whales” joined the game with thousands of GPUs, we were no longer competitive. We had to stop all cloud mining operations with immediate effect, negotiate with our suppliers to end our contracts early with exit penalties, and refund all our clients.
We had to stop the mining on the wallet, and we had to make ourselves relevant for our users in a “post-mining” era of ALPH. That’s when we decided to go multi-network to remain relevant.
What has been the most rewarding part of developing your project, and why?
The collaboration with the ALPH team. They have been of great help at every step of our journey, both operationally and technically. They have proven to be a solid partner you can count on for every aspect of a project.
What do you think are some of the future potential use cases of Alephium that could be explored?
Everything is still to be done within the ALPH ecosystem: from NFTs, custom tokens creation, and DEX creation. We look forward to building one of these within the coming months.
Lastly, what advice would you give to someone looking to build on Alephium, based on your experience?
If you have an idea to build, but you’re not sure about all aspects: Ask the ALPH team! Their insight and help have been of immense help to us on every step of the journey!
Thanks, Sezame for your answers! Alephium is thrilled to have such talent builders in the community! You can find Sezame on the play store or the appstore!
Have you built something or have a nice idea and want to request a grant or reward? You can access the Alephium Community Grants & Reward Program page for more info!
If you need help or have extra questions, you are welcome to reach out on Discord or on the Alephium Telegram channel. Don’t forget to follow @alephium on Twitter to stay up-to-date.
