We recently sat down with Martin Maurer, stream lead at Chainsafe, to learn more about how his team is working to offer open-source solutions and protocols to improve the blockchain space – and his team’s experience using Cometh Connect in our recent GDC Lootbox collaboration.
Martin is a technical project manager at ChainSafe Systems working on the web3.unity SDK. He has been in the blockchain space since 2018 and is still learning new things every day.
ChainSafe is deeply invested in developing decentralized services to replace centralized ones. Our team focuses on creating open-source libraries to facilitate the development and implementation of Web3 capabilities for developers who are building dApps
We believe that blockchain protocols should not exist in silos, and we focus on encouraging and creating compatibility across protocols – to ensure that blockchain survives all the threats from centralized authorities.
One of our key projects is the Web3 Unity SDK, which integrates various tools and services to simplify the creation of blockchain-based applications.
From concept to launch, we only had a few months to work with, so we needed something that we could implement very quickly and that provided a super-fast solution for onboarding users to crypto.
We needed a solution that didn’t assume users had prior knowledge of crypto wallets. Implementing Cometh Connect allowed users to quickly create an account and wallet by scanning a barcode, which was crucial for us.
We also liked that Connect is self-custodial under the hood and lets people own their wallets. Connect offers an authentication method where the user owns the keys with an account recovery option.
Cometh’s API saved us from creating all of it on our own – the authentication and sponsored gas fees – which would have been too much work and taken too long.
It would have been nonsensical to try to build it all on our own.
“If I had to choose again, I would always choose Cometh Connect”
Read more about the Onchain Lootbox Scavenger Hunt built by ChainSafe for GDC conference.
The implementation was very simple and straightforward. We were up and running with the Cometh JS SDK in about three minutes. The support from the Cometh team was exceptional, allowing us to focus on the front-end aspects of our dApp.
Cometh Connect offers a self-custodial wallet feature, giving users control over their keys with the added security of biometric authentication.
Overall I would say that choosing Cometh was the best idea I’ve had as a project manager in a while. After it was all said and done, we really couldn’t have picked a better technology
“If I had to choose again, I wouldn’t go with anything other than Connect because of the API and the sponsored gas fees – which we don’t have to implement on our own”
Very positive. Very, very positive. New users who were unfamiliar with Web3 were able to onboard without fully realizing that they were setting up a crypto account. We had to tell them, ‘Hey, you are creating a wallet on chain right now,’ and because of the sponsored transactions, they didn’t even realize what was going on.
Those who were familiar with Web3 were shocked at the simplicity and speed of the onboarding process because they understood how much was happening in the background.
“Rapid onboarding is crucial. Basically, users need to be able to click a button and buy – put in a credit card and fund a wallet with more tokens. They shouldn’t need to know about blockchain.”
The Web3 community is still niche and a scientific bunch of academic folks. In terms of user adoption, it hasn’t changed significantly since 2018. The biggest challenge remains “fiddly wallets.” For adoption to accelerate, people must be able to ‘use crypto without thinking about it.’
This has been the elephant in the room for 6 years, and right now, many of our upcoming solutions are designed to let people use crypto without really thinking about it.
Our focus is on making the user experience as straightforward as possible, even down to purchasing in-game items like lootboxes, without users having to understand the underlying technology.
We have lootboxes and marketplaces delivered as vending machines on the internet – you need to be able to click a button and buy from a vending machine, but you don’t want to know or care about how this works.
What Connect does right now is in line with what we are trying to achieve with all of the consumer-facing dApps we create. Until now, we hadn’t found a solution that offers exactly what we need.
Connect allows users to interact with crypto more intuitively, using biometric features already built into most devices and it doesn’t come at the cost of being ‘fiddly.
Cometh Connect is an SDK and API for builders to easily embed self-custodial wallets with passkeys and gas-less transactions into Web3 games and DApps. Cometh is a blockchain industry leader and offers a Web3 development platform for brands to add Web3 capabilities to games and applications.