Recently, Trust Wallet launched the Trade Menu, and the narrative of wallet + AI continues to heat up. The encrypted wallet track is undergoing a quiet yet profound paradigm shift. The battle of tools has evolved into a battle of experience and trust.
Odaily Planet Daily had the privilege of interviewing Trust Wallet's new CEO, Felix. The interview delved into topics such as Trust Wallet's product direction, AI-driven user interaction experience, the competitive and cooperative relationship with exchange wallets, and the ultimate state of encrypted wallets. As a veteran with over a decade of experience in the encryption and product fields, Felix provided clear and firm answers regarding product philosophy, growth paths, and judgments on the wallet endgame.
For clarity, Odaily Planet Daily has summarized the Q&A as follows~
On February 26th, Trust Wallet launched a new trading interface. What industry trends and user needs prompted this?
The market has undergone profound changes. Crypto traders are acting faster, and trading forms are becoming more diverse—spot, derivatives, prediction markets—and these operations are often completed on mobile devices. However, most wallets haven't kept up with this pace; their interfaces are still scattered across various tabs and nested menus, creating friction just when users need to act quickly.
The Trade Menu is our answer. It's an interface that integrates Swap, perpetual contracts, prediction markets, and popular Meme tokens. When you spot a market opportunity, you don't need to search for the corresponding function; you can just act directly.
Could you rank the most commonly used features by users in order?
Swap remains the core; the vast majority of trading activity is concentrated there. Beyond that, cross-chain operations and staking have maintained strong participation. As users become more familiar with mobile DeFi, the use of derivative protocols is also growing rapidly.
But honestly, the ranking itself isn't that important to me; what matters is the trend—users are increasing the depth of their behavior with each use. They aren't just doing a Swap and leaving; they are exploring, organizing strategies, and managing assets across chains. This is precisely the user behavior the Trade Menu is designed to support.
In January, Trust Wallet disclosed that global downloads have exceeded 220 million. Have you encountered a growth bottleneck? What is it, and how will you break through it next?
The real bottleneck isn't in user acquisition but in activating users and increasing their depth of participation. We have a massive installed base, but converting downloads into daily active users, into users who actually use the wallet for meaningful on-chain operations, is the harder problem to solve.
Two things can open up this situation. First, truly nailing the product experience—faster, simpler, reducing friction at every step. Second, giving users more reasons to stay: better trading tools and a continuous push towards third-party, AI-driven automation features. This is the growth flywheel we are building.
What kind of product will users need next? What forward-looking plans does the team have?
Users need a wallet that serves them, not a tool they have to struggle with. Currently, the demands cryptocurrencies place on users are still too high—choosing a public chain, setting slippage, confirming gas, jumping back and forth between menus. This friction shouldn't exist.
The direction we are exploring is "intent-driven user experience". Users no longer need to manually operate every step; instead, they express what they want to do, and the wallet automatically presents the optimal execution path. AI is the layer that enables this—but the user always remains in control, deciding what operations to approve and what can be executed.
What are wallets competing on? Can you rank them by importance?
Ranked according to what users truly care about, it should be:
First, Security. Always. If users can't trust you, nothing else matters. Security is a non-negotiable bottom line, a direction we continue to invest in, and the core of our brand identity.
Second, Experience. Processing speed, operational clarity, and a simple interface. A wallet shouldn't get in the way; it should allow users to interact on-chain smoothly.
Third, Functional Breadth. Users have a wide range of usage scenarios and functional needs. Can you meet them?
Fourth, Coverage of Public Chains and Assets. If you natively support a wide range of public chain ecosystems and can meet user needs, users have no reason to leave.
Functional competition is something everyone will eventually get drawn into, but the wallets that truly win long-term users will be the ones that excel in trust and user experience.
How do you view the competitive and cooperative relationship with exchange wallets? What adjustments and specific strategies will there be regarding traffic acquisition?
For now, I see it more as a complementary relationship rather than a competitive one. Centralized exchange wallets serve a specific group—users already within the parent platform's ecosystem. Their product decisions will always be constrained by the parent platform's interests; this is a structural limitation we don't have.
Trust Wallet's advantage lies in its independence. We can integrate the best liquidity from the entire market, not just resources from a single exchange. Trust Wallet isn't optimizing for any exchange's order book; we are optimizing for the user.
In terms of user acquisition strategy, the logic is simple: build the best product. The wallet with the best experience and performance will naturally win users. We will support this with targeted growth initiatives, but the product itself must provide the main pull.
What does the endgame for crypto wallets look like? Is there an existing Web2 product that can serve as a comparison, or will it develop a unique form?
The closest "Web2 analogy" is probably a super app, similar to WeChat Pay or Alipay. Users' financial operations are embedded into daily life, not isolated in a separate product. But this analogy isn't entirely accurate either, as those are centralized and permissioned.
Honestly, the end state of a crypto wallet should be something entirely—self-custodial, AI-driven, cross-chain, a functional layer capable of responding to user intent. The user fully owns and controls their assets and sets their own rules. No bank holds your funds, no exchange controls your assets, no middleman acts as a gatekeeper. This isn't a Web2 product; it's something the internet has never had before.
The CEO is new. Is there any story behind this that you can share?
The matter is actually quite simple. Trust Wallet is at an inflection point—220 million downloads, a huge active user base, and the product itself has enormous growth potential. This opportunity requires a product-oriented leader who can move quickly and has strong execution capabilities.
I have over a decade of deep experience in crypto and product, with a clear vision for where this product should go, and our team is fully prepared. The Trade Menu was launched within weeks, our AI developer tools are already live, and there will be many more launches to come. This isn't a story of transition; it's a story of growth.
