Uniswap's Wallet Details with Callil Capuozzo, Design Lead at Uniswap Labs

Who do we have on and what are we discussing?

Uh, we are talking to Khalil Capuzo, who is the VP of design at Uniswap Labs. Uh, and a while ago I was uh meeting up with Hayden when I moved here, moved to New York, and he kind of just gave me a little bit of the alpha about what they were working on over at Uniswap. And this is one of the products that they've been working on for a very long time, and that they think that they can do better than the rest of the market. Of course they think that. Uh, so we're gonna unpack this. Uh, like what about the Uniswap wallet is so magical? And why is Uniswap of all orgs, uh Uniswap Labs, stepping into the world of the wallet game? Because that wallet game is very, very hot. Uh, one of the big themes of ETH Denver.

Is the wallets like uh ERC4337 is deployed to Ethereum, Xereon came out with a smart contract or uh Xereon came out with a browser extension. Yeah, just wallet. Oh, yeah, that's the other, yeah. So, like wallets as a subject was a very big part of ETH Denver, and this is one of the bigger announcements in ETH Denver. So, uh, to bring ETH Denver a little bit to the bankless listener, we're bringing one of the bigger announcements out of ETH Denver to the state of the nation today.

It's gonna be fun to talk about this. Uh, guys, before we get in, a few disclaimers. Number one, Uniswap is a current bankless sponsor. We thank them for that. We also hold some uni tokens from way back. You can see all of our disclosures at bankless.com/slash disclosures. And also uh the wallet at bankless.eth. You can always access that. Also, want to give a special shout out to our sponsor here, exploring the intricacies of the Uniswap wallet with Cal, who is the VP of design at Uniswap Labs. He's gonna tell us what Uniswap Labs is in a minute. Uh, but Uniswap has recently unveiled a brand new mobile app. We're gonna explore that today. We're gonna talk about Apple and uh the lengths it's taken. It's still a TBD on getting this across the finish line and approved via Tim Cook and the team at Apple to get this in the App Store. We're gonna talk all about that. Uh Cal, welcome to Bankless. How are you doing?

Great. Thanks. Thanks. Uh great to be here.

Been a long time uh listener, you know,

to the Bankless Nation.

You know what? We've been longtime users of uh Uniswap, the little app you guys helped build. And I understand Cal. Um, coming into this, I was like, hmm, we should look up Cal. Like, what's his background? He's never been on bank list. Uh somebody, somebody called you the Johnny Ive of crypto.

Okay, and for those not familiar, I said I said this to David. He was like, Who's Johnny Ive? I'm like, Johnny Ive, the guy who did this this phone thing that's in your hand, the iPhone, like all of these sleek designs in the early days. Because I understand, uh, Cal that you were employee number two, something like this, at Uniswap, and responsible for the design, the aesthetic, the simplicity of that original Uniswap app. Can you tell us a little bit uh about your story, how you got involved in Uniswap, and uh, you know, meeting Hayden and all of these things?

Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, that's very high praise. Uh, you know, I got a few more years to go. Maybe a lot, a lot more to be that. But yeah, but I'll tell you a little of the background. Um, so I've known Hayden for a long time.

Uh basically we we were we grew up together. Um, our families knew each other back back when we were little kids. Um, so it's been a long time.

My background is in design. You know, I went to a school for industrial design and then after that worked in the tech industry

doing like new and experimental products. And, you know, during that time, I was kind of seeing around me,

you know, the benefits and drawbacks of these

tech giants we know today, right? Um, and I was also seeing, you know, friends of mine that I knew from art school, from design school, who are trying to make a living, you know, expressing themselves on the platforms that these tech giants kind of uh had.

And I got started to get really interested in sort of questioning like,

Why is it that, you know, my friend who's making the most amazing, you know, paintings or like a really cool chair, why do they have to like post that work up for likes, right? Why is that the mechanism that they need to use to get exposure? So that's sort of what started my like, you know, questioning these systems. Um, and I started to look for things out in the world that sort of were starting to to to think about that. And so my first sort of touch point for for crypto wasn't really crypto, it was more about decentralized publishing, which um we today we know as like IPFS and things like Blue Sky and kind of more the social side of things. Um, but very quickly, sort of like those worlds started to merge, right? And uh

Hayden and I reconnected, you know, after we had both both done done our things done our careers at a meetup in New York City for NYC Mesh, which is like a community owned mesh networking uh ISP.

And he showed me the first prototype of what Uniswap would become, which you should all look up, by the way. It's on a blog post that we have. It's like this amazing

blue unifying unicorn crazy site. Can we find that?

So look up the Uniswap blog, look up the like story of Uniswap. There's one that's like our history. You can probably search like Uniswap history blog

and uh scroll a little bit down, and there's a picture of that first site

online.

I'm thinking I'm finding it here. A short history

swap.

Yes, exactly. Yep, that's it. Oh

I remember that.

Dude, I don't remember this.

Oh, I remember that. That's

this is OG.

neon text. Yeah.

Yeah. So little so this is the the first little uh history is that Hayden. This is the pre Johnny Ive. The pre Johnny Ive. Okay. Really the Hayton was the first Uniswap designer, you know, in addition to being the he was he was the first of everything. Um

But you know, in a lot of funny ways, like the the ethos and like the spirit of Uniswap here, you know, that's what we tried to bring. It's similar vibe.

Like, yeah, similar vibe.

Unicorn you have the kind of the f the funky like neon, the pinks, the the use of these uh like unicor like colors. Uh it's similar vibe

Yeah. And and you know, I'll be honest with you, when I first saw this, oh, yeah, this is also so another thing to kind of note at the time is that this was what the standard experience for exchanging tokens was, right?

this.

So for the podcast listeners, we are now looking at the infamous Ether Delta, which much more looks like a traditional centralized exchange with uh a terrible UX UI. But if for those that didn't actually use Ether Delta on chain, it was the worst UX I have ever experienced

I barely functional. It was like three transactions to get your assets just loaded up, available to trade.

And it was it was if you ever traded on ether delta, you probably deserve a poet.

You were unequivocally early AF

Yeah, what do you deserve? You're an OG. If you were if you know this, you know you knew you're OJ OG Ethereum for sure.

Truly, truly OG. And I think, you know, Hayden's genius in a way is that he recognized how crappy that was, right? Like, not only did he have the awareness to like, you know, go read Vitalik's post, think really deeply about exchange, but also had the awareness to be like, wow, this UX sucks. This is terrible. Um,

so so yeah, to continue the story, like this is this was the context that we started talking. And um

we, you know, I offered to help. It was very casual. I I barely understood it, to be honest with you. Um

And initially we built, yeah, you can keep scrolling a little bit to get to that first UI. I think uh keep going a little bit. Uh yeah, keep going. It's very long here. We got shirts. We got a lot, there's a lot of history, you know, yada yada yada.

He works he works at Optimism. Uh that's

his Kelvin, yeah.

above and hidden down below. Yeah.

We're going, we're speaking

Speedrun of the history.

uniswap.

Speedrun of the history. I love it. I love it.

This is a long

Long, long, long. It's not here. Oh, it's not here. Um I'm trying to think. There

is an old version online. Uh

Which we'll f I'll find some point. You guys can actually search probably V1 Uniswap in Google, and I'm sure it'll it'll come up. All right, I'll uh if you want to be for you. Cool.

Sure, sure. Yeah. So so yeah, those early days, you know, it was very casual and and uh we were just kind of experimenting. And the way we worked together was that, you know, I had a studio a lot like the one I'm sitting in now, maker studio kind of vibes, and I was doing some freelance work and some other Ethereum things. And at, you know, here and there over text and Hayden would come over at at like late at night, and we just like jammed for hours, honestly, uh make you know, developing what we know as like the swap UI today. And it took a long time. And I think.

The initial innovation, you know, like I said, design is this kind of iterative thing. You really have to like throw things at the wall and explore.

But there are like core sort of ideas that you're trying to kind of uh shape, right? So there's a notion in design of this idea of like a mental model, right? I'm sure you all know what that means, but it's really important when you're doing design work to be giving people a mental model that's very clear. If you look back at that ether delta image, you know, there's a lot of different input boxes. There isn't like a framework for thinking about something. The innovation of the swap UI is the input-output, right? It sounds kind of dumb and simple, but really having that mental model of like give this, get that, um, wasn't obvious at the time. Um, and it was only through some sort of experimentation that we kind of uh landed on that and constraint, right? We were me and Hayden, and then eventually a few uh a contractor we hired to do development, and then eventually NOAA, and then you know, Uniswap team. But it was really a small team in those early days. Um, and that's what drove the constraint as well to get to the simplicity.