Ask a simple question and many design choices fall into place: who should pay for the handshake. WalletConnect’s answer is principled and practical—businesses built atop the rail, not the humans just trying to connect. If fees are enabled, they’re envisioned on the app/SDK side and denominated in the network’s own token, while the act of connecting stays free for people. That’s not charity; it’s alignment. Companies can price connectivity, model demand, and optimize costs. Individuals cannot.
This arrangement produces incentives users can feel. No surprise tolls at the exact moment trust is being established. No “approve to approve” rituals that turn consent into a checkout page. The handshake remains a public good; monetization happens where value is actually captured—inside applications and services. Meanwhile, the entities paying have leverage to demand reliability and support from the rail. If performance sags, they are motivated and empowered to push for fixes. That pressure loops back into a sturdier user experience.
For developers, planning gets sane. Connectivity becomes a predictable line item, not an externalized annoyance. You can amortize it across high-value actions, bundle it into subscriptions, or negotiate tiers as traffic grows. Treating the rail as paid infrastructure for apps, not a coin slot for users, separates concerns cleanly. It also routes value to the right contributors: node operators, wallet teams, and community members who keep the commons working.
Users don’t need to read a memo to benefit. They just get a calmer flow. Click connect, get connected, do the thing. Money talk happens where it belongs—when the app delivers value, not when the protocol asks to say hello. That’s how you convert curiosity into trust and first-time users into regulars.
Economics are never neutral; they teach behavior. By putting fees where judgment lives—in the hands of the teams that can analyze and improve them—WalletConnect teaches products to respect human attention. The connect button becomes what it should have been all along: a door, not a turnstile.
