Know The Wallet: Cake Wallet Founder Vikrant Sharma
Hey there, and welcome to another episode of ChangeNOW’s Know The Wallet! Today’s guest is Vik Sharma, the Founder of Cake Wallet, the first open-source Monero wallet for XMR!
Hello Vik! Could you tell our readers a little bit about yourself and your background?
I have an electrical engineering degree and have always been in the steel industry. Did some coding in high school and at Case Western Reserve University. I grew up in Pittsburgh, PA.
What do you think about Monero’s state now as one of the most private cryptos in the world and in perspective?
Monero is the only coin that I know of that hides the sender’s address, the receiver’s address, and the amount transacted on all platforms. By platforms I mean desktop, mobile devices, and exchanges.
Could you explain Cake Wallet to our readers in a couple of sentences?
Cake Wallet is an XMR only wallet and was the first open source iOS wallet to hit Apple’s App Store. It allows you to store, send, receive and exchange XMR with other cryptocurrencies. Its simple to use for non-techie users yet provides advanced features for advanced users.
How is it different from other XMR wallets?
We are truly open source and all libraries can be audited in an uncompiled state on our github. Other wallets claiming that are not so. All of the user’s keys remain on your phone. Cake doesn’t “download” the whole blockchain to your device, it scans the blockchain. Cake was built as a native app for iOS. Also, Cake offers conversion to other cryptocurrencies within the app.
Is Cake Wallet your first crypto-related project?
Yes. Besides Bitcoin mining, if you want to call it a project.
How secure is Cake Wallet, as compared to other Monero wallets?
As stated above, all your keys remain on your wallet. iOS is a very secure OS. Cake Wallet is really a tool to access the Monero blockchain. The user controls their own keys and their own coins.
How did the idea of creating a light mobile wallet for Monero come to you? When did you start working on it?
The idea came in June 2017 when I came across Monero and found it intriguing, but then realized there was no way to use it on iPhone. So I decided to build it.
How many people are working on Cake Wallet right now?
2 full-time and 3 part-time employees.
Does Cake Wallet work only with XMR or does it also allow your users to have other coins’ wallets?
You can only store, send, and receive Monero.
I know that you’ve recently integrated ChangeNOW as an exchange feature, but how exactly would it work with Cake Wallet as a single-currency tool?
You can convert to and from Monero (and also to and from other currencies), by providing your own wallet address for non-XMR currencies.
Does Cake Wallet allow you to set up your own XMR node on your iOS device? If yes, how many of your users have actually done that, since Monero’s blockchain occupies quite a lot of space?
Monero and no other Monero mobile wallets allow you to RUN a node in the mobile device. What Cake Wallet does do is it allows you to CONNECT to your own node or node of choice.
Is there any chance of releasing Cake Wallet on other mobile operating systems, such as Android, for example?
Yes. No timetable, though.
Now, let’s talk about the market for a bit. Do you think the bull run is going to start soon?
I think we are always in a bull run, if you increase the time span that you are looking at!
Maybe you could throw in a little XMR price prediction?
When bitcoin was at $20,000, XMR was at $400, I think we can reach that again in the near future.
Speaking of the future, will we be able to see any Cake Wallet updates any time soon?
We are always updating and adding new features. Recently we had our biggest update in which we added changenow.io.
Thank you so much for your time! Is there anything you’d like to add?
Thank you for having me! You can follow Cake Wallet on Twitter - we post regular updates there.
Thank you so much for reading – stay tuned for more Know The Wallet episodes by ChangeNOW soon!
