Web3 with Sam Kamani
349: Inside Openfort: Fixing Wallets, Crypto UX and Privacy, and the Road to 2026 with Guest Speaker Joan Alavedra
14 Jan 2026
Chapter 1: How did Joan Alavedra transition from VC to Web3 product building?
Hello, innovators, entrepreneurs and risk takers. Welcome to another episode of Web3 with Sam Kamani podcast. And today on this podcast episode, I'm interviewing Johan from OpenFort. And today we in this episode, we talk about risk. Crypto UX and how it is still broken, how wallet abstraction unlocks mass adoption, and most common mistakes teams make with wallet integration and management.
Johan also shares lessons from building OpenFort, how AI is changing the developer workflow, why stablecoins and privacy matter in fintech, and what their 2026 strategy looks like. So if you are a founder or a builder and intend to use any aspect of crypto or blockchain Web3, then this is the episode for you.
As always, nothing that we talk about in this episode should be taken as investment advice. And please like, share, subscribe and follow. With all that out of the way, let's get into it. Welcome to the show, John. It's great to have you here. And I am so looking forward to having this conversation with you about what you guys are building at OpenFoot.
But before we even get into it, how did you get involved in all things crypto? As I know you have a long experience in sort of startups as well.
Yeah, I mean, crypto has been a journey for us. We started Give or Take three years ago by... attending to as many crypto conferences as we can and potentially applying and building in as many crypto hackathons as we could.
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Chapter 2: Why is crypto user experience still considered broken?
So that was the way that we brute force and learn about the ins and outs of the industry and how to build products there.
That's fantastic. And were you a VC before or did you work at a VC? I saw something somewhere about that.
Yeah, I mean, that was during my gap year in the university. Yes. You know, the early Juan didn't know what to do with his life. So at that point, I was trying as many things as possible during my 20s. Um, so I worked in, um, the financial industry. I work in a VC in Berlin.
I then moved to, um, you know, product building within that VC because it had like a arm that they were like product builders. And so later on, it changed completely to, to startup and product.
Chapter 3: What is wallet abstraction and why is it important?
That's amazing. And tell me a bit more about OpenFord. What is the key problem that you guys are solving?
Yeah, I mean, OpenFord started three years ago with the premise that UX in crypto is holding back much of the interactions that are happening. We started under the hot narrative of Web3 gaming. So at the time, there was a lot of projects.
doing games under the thesis that many people would like to hold the assets of those games and they would like to participate in an open economy with marketplaces, et cetera, et cetera. Unfortunately, that narrative has not catalyzed yet, although there's solid games being currently active developing.
exactly but but like the thesis is still still the same there's still a lot of room to improve in terms of ux like ux is a very you know ux could mean many things so for some people it means having less clicks for other people means abstracting the management of private keys and seed phrases for wallets and for other people it means understanding the data that are like in explorers and like on blockchains for us
Wallets are the key component, like the key middleware that allows people to interact with blockchains and make cryptographic signatures. And so it's a relevant piece of technology that needs continuous exploration, development and maintenance. And that's why we focus a lot into making it smooth for developers to integrate and build great products on top.
Fantastic. I have lots of thoughts on that. I have worked in that industry, in the Web 2 and in the Web 3 space, worked with guilds, worked with DAOs, gaming DAOs, and worked with that thesis. The thesis only works if there are games that people are emotionally invested in.
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Chapter 4: What are common mistakes developers make with wallet integration?
They only get emotionally invested if the games are fun. And it takes sometimes even years or thousands of iterations to build, to get to that stage where it is fantastic. fun and sticky that people will play for years. And we'll get there.
I'm pretty sure we will get there because I've interviewed around 450 founders from some of the largest sort of not games, only games, but like L1s, L2s and protocols and as well as games and all different parts of Web3. And I know that there is so much still building in the background for the last three, four years, people who haven't
put all their money in just hiring KOLs and bots, but who are building the real products. So it is going to happen. It is only a matter of time. And I completely agree with the UX side of things that abstraction is... What does like bring in more people to the industry or makes it more accessible to everyone?
Do you still feel like that is the biggest bottleneck for mass adoption or what is your personal sort of thesis?
Yeah, I think, I mean, this is like abstraction would be the term that we would use internally in order to, you know, get as many developers integrating a product and like understanding the ins and outs. I believe though that by, you know, for the end users, we shouldn't be talking as much of abstraction as utility for them.
And so people would come because of good value proposition, problem or a solution to their daily lives. In terms of gaming, that was a completely different paramount, right? Because in games, people don't come to games because they want to solve problems. you know, your day-to-day problems, but because they want to play something fun without having to care about crypto.
And that's why a lot of people talked about UX. Whereas, you know, whenever you look at the DeFi consumer products, you are changing the angle completely to start talking the language of enterprises and, you know, rationalizing saying, hey, you know, why would you use crypto? Why would you use a stable coins? Is it because you are becoming more cash efficient with your working capital?
Is it because you are cutting percentage points on the middlemen banks that are providing Forex for you? So I think crypto has matured to changing their scope and changing their terminology to the industry that is trying to cater for. And that's actually very important.
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Chapter 5: How is AI changing developer workflows in crypto?
yeah that is that is very true when i think of like why do i want to use stablecoin for the last four years i've been using is because stripe charges me 5.8 percent nearly 5.8 percent per transaction so which is insane so if someone's earning a hundred thousand five thousand eight hundred dollar goes to stripe because they charge three point overseas transaction then 2.1 percent for currency conversion which is
insane. So yeah, it is it is very, very painful to use non web three solutions or non blockchain based or crypto based solutions. And that's why I see a clear win. And when that happens, a lot more people will need wallets when everyone is is using that. Yes. What would you say is some of the most sort of common mistakes
You see teams make when choosing embedded wallet or just using wallets for their infrastructure.
So common mistakes for developers that are adopting a solution. Yes. I think for the most part, uh, um, You know, whenever you look at the lifecycle of like a developer exploring solutions, not only like in embedded wallets, but like in general for like a technology or like software solutions, the first level is having the discussion of whether you build it or you buy it.
And so some of the teams that we work have, you know, have had this question and we help them navigate the reasons of like why they should buy this type of solutions instead of like building it. Some teams see wallets as like a very easy implementation of a product that they can take care of, like handle and maintain.
And the reality is that wallets evolve so fast that like two years ago, we had like a, you know, first a smart contract wallet. Three years later, we have like completely different standards and that, you know, like the first iteration you'd have to upgrade it, then you have maintenance costs, security costs, et cetera, et cetera. And so that would be like the first level for many developers.
And yeah, when it comes to selecting the right provider, I think like everyone has...
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Chapter 6: What does Openfort's growth strategy look like for 2026?
There's pros and cons. From the open-source side, we've been for long pushing towards open-sourceness. Most of the stack that makes it vendor-lock-in. And so that's kind of like the angle where we try to educate developers towards, which is, hey, if you're building with a provider, make sure...
That that provider helps you answer the question, hey, what happened if you go under the bridge tomorrow? What happened if for whatever reasons I want to change providers, like how would it work? Right. I think like not enough people ask that question. And it's an important one for like the sustainability and long term projection of your project.
Yeah. When you look around and I'm sure you talk with a lot of potential clients as well as clients. What's like their biggest headache when it comes to wallets and wallet infrastructure that they're facing currently?
Yeah, I think for the most part, there's two things that still need some work in the industry. One is obviously like the way that you manage private keys. And so you need to understand, like there's a lot of, for a traditional full stack engineer, there's a lot of security for like security involved and security topics whenever you, you know, integrate with these solutions.
You want to understand who controls the private keys, how you can regenerate private keys, what like assumptions you need to make, like the correct implementations and stuff like that. So that would be like a first, you know, good angle for most developers to take good care on this.
Yes, yes, that does make sense. When it comes to developers or developer founders, what are some trends that you are seeing in the whole sort of the development lifecycle?
Yeah, I mean, I think there's been a huge shift from developers that integrate software products by reading at the docs and integrating it to developers that are by coding it and integrating it.
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Chapter 7: Why is privacy becoming essential in the crypto wallet landscape?
100%.
It's crazy how in a couple of years we've went to, you know, to like very junior developers integrating complex products and how you as a provider of infrastructure need to make sure to have like the most comprehensive and trained LLM of a specific product so that whenever they interact with, you know, a query or a question about your product, you get the best result.
That's kind of like the new North Star metric for most of solutions engineer or like people that are focusing on that aspect. I think that's a very important shift we've seen.
Yes, yes, absolutely. I would agree with that. It's like, I do not know any developer that is not using AI. I mean, who would have thought in just in two, three years, things are going to change so drastically. When you look ahead two, three years, how does the landscape look like to you?
In two, three years time, I mean, for sure, like for sure, it just kept getting better and better, right? Yes. And so, you know, a year ago, you couldn't build a product with one prompt. Now you can build a website with one prompt and almost like a fully fledged front end and back end with one prompt.
I think that in two or three years time, we would probably have platforms that are able to integrate multiple providers in one prompt. What I mean by that is if like a good enough prompt will give you a good authentication with a better off super base, et cetera, a good wallet infrastructure provider with open forward, a good indexing solution with Dune, et cetera, et cetera.
And the opportunity would be for those providers to position themselves as like a good recommendation solution for these LLMs.
That's that is so, so true. It's like not only for this, but pretty much anything that any any vendor, you know, selling any product everyone wants. It used to be that if you win Google organic, you win. Now it's like if you win an LLM SEO, if LLM starts.
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Chapter 8: What are the key insights from Joan's experience building Openfort?
recommending you, you have won. That is it. It's game over for everyone else. You know, just looking at and reading a bit more about OpenFoot, I found that you have like 50 plus like B2B customers and millions and millions of transactions. What has been your most successful channel or method of getting those 50 customers?
Yeah, I mean, for the most part, it's been through outreaching people, making a good product and ease integration for those people. And then these people being satisfied enough so that they want to talk about you with, you know, their peers. That has been, you know, what worked for us the most. Obviously, within this strategy, there's always niche opportunities. Yes.
So for instance, there's a lot of competition with like major blockchains. There's less competition with like niche blockchains that perhaps are not that well supported by other developer tooling. And so you need to identify those and then, you know, make a good enough support integration so that these chains are also recommending you.
For example, this has been like, I mean, I think like different providers have like different strategies there and each to its own, it works.
That's, yeah, yeah, that does make a lot of sense. I have quite a few or quite a few things I want to learn and understand about OpenFort as well. And one of that is how does your monetization model work? How do you guys make money?
Yeah, I mean, we, so OpenFort has like the key, the key value proposition for OpenFort is that it supports OpenSigner, which is self-host implementation of wallet key management. And so OpenFort is basically a cloud solution for OpenSigner.
And therefore it follows an open source business model where developers that are savvy enough or for whatever reason they want to self-host OpenSigner, they can do it and it's completely free for them to do so. But then those developers that perhaps are prioritizing shipping faster or
not taking care of like that part of the on hosting premise, et cetera, and they want to use OpenFOR directly, they then pay a monthly fee that is based on the active users that these wallets have to have the OpenFOR support on their platform.
Yeah. Looking forward to 2026, what's your key strategy? Do you want to place yourself in front of larger, more established teams? Do you want to go for more sort of indie hackers, vibe coders, that type of crowd, somewhere in between, some go to corporate, banking? Is there any particular sector like stablecoin, anything that you are targeting as
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