Where does the crypto revolution begin? Not with a token. Not with hype. And not with another Vitalik post. It begins with pain. And in 2018, this pain had a name: "How do I connect my wallet to a dApp without breaking my brain and browser?"
👨💻 The MVP on his knee who changed the rules of the game
It all started with Pedro Gomes, an ordinary guy from Portugal, who at a hackathon wanted to solve a banal problem: connect a mobile wallet to a desktop dApp via... a QR code. No extensions, no custom APIs, no sacrificial ritual. That's how WalletConnect was born.
Version 1.0 was, to put it mildly, bumpy:
centralized relay servers,
no multichain support,
UX of the “survive it, you’ll be fine” level.
But it worked. Users could use Aave, Uniswap, and OpenSea from their phones for the first time with peace of mind. And it was magic. At that time, MetaMask was still rocking, and Phantom wasn’t even born.
🚀 The path to v2: from the swamp to a next-level protocol
And then the development began:
2021 — major WalletConnect v2 update
support for multichain sessions (now you can have Ethereum, Cosmos, and Solana in one session)
added Sign, Auth, Push, Chat
Work has begun on a decentralized network of relay servers (to avoid SPOF — Single Point of Failure)
Finally, a token model with WCT has appeared, which incentivizes infrastructure participants
From a three-button MVP to an infrastructure that is now used by over 500 wallets and tens of thousands of dApps, it wasn't a leap. It was, damn it, a marathon in an armored vehicle through a minefield.
🤯 Today's significance for Web3
WalletConnect is not another startup with a token and Discord. It is an infrastructure artery that provides Web3 circulation. Without it, we would still be logging into dApps through Google or a buggy MetaMask extension from 2019.
Even Solana projects are already integrating WalletConnect, because it is impossible to ignore an ecosystem that allows:
login without passwords (Auth),
signing transactions via multi-wallets (Sign),
Web3 messaging without email (Push),
decentralized chat between users (Chat).
⚠️ Problems? But what if we didn't have them...
Some wallets still integrate the protocol crookedly (we're looking at you, Gate Wallet).
Relay servers v2 are not yet 100% decentralized.
Tokenomics is just starting out — and without real stimulation of participants, the network may falter.
But... they're working on it. And their roadmap is not a PowerPoint presentation, but a real GitHub with commits every week.
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🧠 Summary (emotional as you like):
WalletConnect is that rare case where a Web3 startup isn't selling air, but actually filling a fundamental need. The story is simple: there was pain → MVP appeared → took off → continues to grow.
Today, it’s not just a “wallet connector.” It’s a framework for the future of Web3 UX. And who knows, maybe in a few years we’ll be connecting our wallet metaverse to a VR app via WalletConnect v5 — and still via the same QR code 😏
