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Spotlight

Plena Finance — Fantom Ecosystem Spotlight

Plena Finance — Fantom Ecosystem Spotlight

Welcome back to the Fantom Ecosystem Spotlight, where we present the many exciting projects on the Fantom platform. This time, we’re featuring Plena Finance!

Read about their use of account abstraction to offer a seamless wallet experience, their belief in a mobile-first approach, and some of the challenges they faced during development.

How would you explain Plena Finance to a stranger at a party?

Plena Finance is a self-custodial wallet, which means you always have complete control over your funds and assets at all times.

The cool thing is that Plena Finance allows users to pay transaction fees with any token they choose and perform complex blockchain actions with just a tap. This helps people use blockchain-based applications without having to learn the technical details of the actual technology.

Could you describe the main features of Plena?

Plena offers users a user-friendly interface to interact with any dApp effortlessly.

Users can purchase any token and receive the best exchange rate, easily provide liquidity to pools, and earn up to ~25% APR on stablecoins.

With our platform, users can also bridge their assets across various chains and trade crypto for fiat conveniently.

Our upcoming NFT marketplace will allow users to purchase their favorite NFTs using any token and use our chat and pay feature to communicate and make payments securely.

So why should a user choose Plena over other wallets?

Our wallet is the simplest and most user-friendly option for cryptocurrency enthusiasts. Unlike other wallets, our users do not have to purchase multiple blockchain native tokens to pay transaction fees or perform multiple transactions to execute simple actions.

This removes the need for our users to learn the ins and outs of blockchain technology just to use a self-custodial wallet or decentralized applications.

We use Account Abstraction to enable users to pay fees with any token.

What is Account Abstraction in this context?

With Account Abstraction, users can use smart contracts as their wallets instead of relying on EOAs or Externally Owned Accounts, the current standard for wallets. For example, your wallet in MetaMask is an EOA.

Account Abstraction allows users to pay transaction fees in any token they choose and simplifies the transaction process by enabling the batching of multiple transactions together, such as the swap between the user’s token and the chain’s native token before paying for the transaction fee, which is made possible since the user’s wallet is a smart contract.

And how are you using Account Abstraction to onboard users?

Account Abstraction has gained significant popularity recently, but Plena has been using this feature in their wallets for over two years. We recognized the challenges users face when performing transactions on the blockchain and understood the need to simplify the user experience while giving users complete custody of their funds.

We aimed to provide a user experience similar to centralized applications while retaining decentralized technology's benefits. We are pleased to see the wider community recognizing the importance of this feature and coming together to support its adoption.

Our user-friendly approach to self-custodial wallets has been so effective that some people doubt our self-custodial status. This approach has resulted in a surge in user activity, with our users performing over 3.1 million transactions in just one month, amounting to a total value of over $100 million. This success is a testament to our commitment to providing our customers with a simple yet secure user experience.

Let’s get into the story behind Plena. What are your core team members’ backgrounds?

Our team has a strong background in the blockchain industry. I, Sparsh, serve as the CEO and have over five years of experience as a blockchain consultant and architect. I also worked on Easyfi, the first lending protocol on Polygon, which reached a market cap of half a billion dollars. Additionally, I've assisted with the product development of more than 15 blockchain projects.

Yajash, our CTO, previously worked as a senior developer for several Indian unicorns. Tushant, our COO, has a background in data analysis and worked at Newgen before transitioning to marketing, where he's managed campaigns for over 10 crypto projects.

Sayuj, our Head of Operations, holds a degree in finance from the University of Indianapolis. He worked as a business development manager at Pandora Protocol in 2021, where he was an instrumental-deal team member and helped them raise $2.4 million from industry heavyweights. Our diverse backgrounds allow us to develop unique growth and user acquisition strategies.

Could you describe one of the biggest challenges you faced during development?

Throughout the development process, we encountered several challenges. In the initial stages, many of the libraries were non-functional.

Once we gained traction, we faced issues with some of the infrastructure projects whose services we were leveraging, as they were unable to handle the load.

However, the most critical challenge was to minimize transaction costs and optimize the code to ensure that our users pay the lowest possible fees for their transactions.

Choosing not to launch on Ethereum was a challenging decision, but we made it because we aimed to provide new users with an opportunity to experience blockchain technology and decentralized applications without paying crazy high transaction fees.

We do plan to launch on Ethereum when the transaction fees on the network become more reasonable.

And after you launched, what were your strategies to onboard more users?

We experimented with various strategies, such as airdrops, ask-me-anything sessions in different communities and with our partners, social media advertising, and educating our community through blog posts and videos.

However, we gained the most traction when large centralized entities like FTX experienced crashes, and people began recognizing the significance of self-custody. Our blogs and videos caught their attention, and they began downloading our application and inquiring about our app's features.

Through this journey of developing Plena, what has been your most memorable moment?

One of the most unforgettable moments was when I began presenting the MVP to investors and VCs; their reactions were priceless. They were shocked and impressed by the platform's functionality and often asked, "it's a centralized application, right? How are you guys doing that?"

This reaction was a clear indication that we were on the right path and building something that would transform the industry. Today, everyone believes that account abstraction technology will revolutionize the industry.

Since Plena is available on mobile only, what do you believe is the importance of mobile-first?

According to recent studies, 94% of crypto owners are Millennials and Gen Z. These two groups heavily rely on mobile apps for various tasks. I also prefer using Binance's mobile app over its desktop version because of its accessibility, convenience, and superior user experience.

These same factors were the driving force behind our decision to launch a mobile app only and not a desktop app.

With a mobile app, users can access our platform anytime and anywhere, making it more convenient and practical for our target audience.

Why did you decide to integrate Fantom?

We chose to add Fantom to our application for several reasons.

One of the key factors was the relatively low transaction fees compared to other chains we were considering. Additionally, the block time on Fantom was relatively short, which was also a deciding factor. Fantom also already had a diverse selection of dApps available, which our users could easily access and use within our application.

Overall, the combination of low transaction fees, fast block times, and a thriving dApp ecosystem made Fantom an excellent choice for our platform.

And how have your users responded to the integration of Fantom?

Our community has shown a lot of enthusiasm for Fantom since it offers access to all the major protocols, and they can save a significant amount on transaction fees compared to other chains.

Furthermore, we are collaborating with the Fantom Foundation to organize additional activities and campaigns to encourage our users to bridge their assets to the Fantom chain and experience it for themselves.

We are confident that this partnership will provide our users with a valuable and cost-effective blockchain experience, further strengthening our relationship with the community.

Given the recent state of smart contract security, does Plena have audits?

At our company, security is of utmost importance to us, which is why we have taken several measures to ensure the safety of our users' assets. We engaged CertiK, one of the top auditing firms in the industry, to audit all of our smart contracts.

Furthermore, when a user creates an account or imports an existing one into our app, we encrypt the private key or seed phrase for added protection. To ensure that transactions are signed securely, we only decrypt the encrypted keys with biometric verification locally on the user’s device.

With these robust security measures in place, our users can trust Plena to keep their assets safe and secure.

What does the future look like for Plena?

Our team is excited to announce that we will be launching several innovative features in our mobile application that have the potential to revolutionize various sectors of the blockchain industry. Stay tuned for that!

We will soon introduce Plena Connect, which is our software development kit (SDK) that can be integrated into any decentralized application (dApp). By incorporating Plena Connect, dApps can offer their users a seamless and user-friendly experience similar to our own application. This integration will also provide the dApps' tokens with additional utility as users can utilize them to pay transaction fees.

Finally, we have launched our refer and earn program, allowing users to earn up to $1 million by referring their friends to download our application and perform transactions on the Fantom network. This program presents a fantastic opportunity for the Fantom community to try out our application and earn some extra cash.

With these developments, we are committed to enhancing the overall blockchain experience for our users and further contributing to the growth and success of the industry.

Thanks for all the great information! Where can we find you?

Engage with us here:

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