Wallets are the single most important tool when operating on-chain, yet they’re usually not well understood which leads to participants compromising on security and putting their assets (cryptocurrency, NFTs, deployed IP, etc) at great risk. My goal for Part 1 of this note is to clarify what a “wallet” really is. Part 2 will communicate why it is important to focus on “wallet” security. For simplicity purposes all the concepts described here refer to Ethereum and EVM chains.

The current state of NFTs feels like the era right between the times of the Walkman and the Discman, somewhere around the early 1980s. For those of you who remember, as innovative as it was back then to be able to carry your music with you, the experience was quite clunky and expensive compared to our current days of unlimited streaming on our mobile phones. Buying, carrying, and even rewinding cassettes were only party of the battle. Artist discoverability depended on radio stations and bootleg recordings were rampant across many markets. One could buy blank tapes and “right-click-save” music straight off the radio! These potential headwinds, however, were not enough to stop the portable music revolution and forever change the composition of modern culture.

It had been a few weeks into my new job in blockchain infrastructure in July 2021 and I was feeling great. Life was good, summer days are amazing in NYC where sunlight is plentiful from before 6am and well into the evening. The city tends to empty out during this time as everyone rushes “out East” or down the Shore but with Covid panic in the rear-view mirror, and networking events back in fashion, it was an incredible time to have made the move into crypto. Many people who had left the city for warmer climates during the pandemic moved back and I quickly found myself meeting all kinds of folks in the industry, from college dropouts who were now founders of new protocols, to other reformed TradFi folks putting their experience to better use helping build a new financial system.

Spoiler alert: QBR doesn’t always mean Quarterback Rating.

Today marks my 13th month working in the blockchain industry… what a ride it has been. After spending 12 years on trading desks at Goldman Sachs and Barclays I really had no idea what to expect on my first day at Fireblocks last June. Honestly I kind of barely understood the technology that powers our solution, but I knew that we were onto something big and I was excited to get to work. I was so excited, in fact, that I asked Barclays to please give me the shortest garden leave possible. So, two weeks after walking out of the trading floor for the last time, I woke up to my usual 5:55am alarm and sat on my bed wondering what to do with the extra 2 hours in my new mornings as the newest minted ‘guy in crypto’.