Building Self-Custody from Zero
Guarda Wallet began in 2017. Its first release was an Android Ethereum wallet, built from scratch as a non-custodial product. The team started without any existing infrastructure, product base, or outside funding.
In 2017, crypto adoption was moving fast, and the market was changing quickly. New users were entering the market, centralized exchanges were losing trust after major hacks, and regulation around custodial platforms was getting tighter. Self-custody was no longer just a technical preference. For many users, it became the safer way to hold assets.
The hardest part wasn't the entry product — it was trust. Guarda couldn't store private keys, backup files, or personal data on its servers. All sensitive information had to stay with the user. That made the architecture more demanding than a server-side wallet, especially for a self-funded team with limited resources.
Guarda's first wallet solved the entry problem for Ethereum users, and the work got early recognition from outside the company. The Ethereum Classic community noticed its Android Ethereum wallet, and Guarda later received a Zcash Foundation grant to build a lightweight Android wallet for ZEC.
But a separate wallet for every chain would not scale. Guarda needed one architecture that could absorb new use cases without turning the product into a collection of disconnected apps. The goal became clear: create a self-custody wallet that could grow with the market, support more assets, and keep user control at its core.
The Goal: Move Beyond Storage
The wallet needed to support more assets and networks, reach users in different settings, and allow financial actions within the app. Exchange, purchase, staking, and other features had to be part of the same user experience, without sending people to third-party services for every transaction.
The team made in-app exchange a main goal. If swaps happen outside the wallet, it loses activity, data, and chances to earn when users are ready to act. The wallet needed to become a full crypto management tool. Success meant growing asset and platform coverage, increasing exchange activity inside the wallet, and building user trust.
Each easier route carried a trade-off. A custodial or server-side model would have simplified engineering but given up self-custody. Staying mobile-only would have kept the product focused but ignored the other environments where people manage crypto. Outside capital could have sped up hiring and development but introduced new pressures. Guarda took the harder path: a self-funded wallet built to scale across platforms, assets, and services while keeping the trust model intact.
