“Let’s build our own wallet infra. How hard can it be?”
That sentence aged like milk.
We thought a custom in-house wallet would give us full control, better UX, and a nice “we built everything ourselves” ego boost. Instead, we got fire drills, sleepless on-calls, and a backlog held hostage by key management.
Phase 1: The DIY Wallet Fantasy 🛠️
On the whiteboard everything looked clean:
- user → create wallet
- store keys “securely”
- sign transactions
- done ✅
In reality we hit:
- Key management hell - HSMs, KMS, backups, rotation, access policies
- Regulatory fun - audits, logs, incident procedures, custody questions
- Ops overload - node outages, chain forks, fee spikes, monitoring all of it
Every “simple” feature (“add one more chain”, “add spending limits”, “support sub-accounts”) meant ripping into the core. Product velocity slowly died under “infra first” tasks.
Phase 2: WaaS Enters the Chat ☁️
Eventually we asked the obvious question way too late:
“Why are we reinventing what Wallet-as-a-Service providers already solved?”
Moving to WaaS wasn’t magic, but it was directionally correct:
- We stopped touching raw keys and focused on business logic
- New assets became config + integration, not 3-month projects
- On-call shifted from “did we just lose funds?” to “did our webhook fail?”
Looking at real products like WhiteBIT WaaS and Coinbase’s Wallet-as-a-Service made it painfully clear: we were competing with infra teams whose full-time job is not losing sleep (and funds) over custody.
You still own auth, risk logic, limits, and UX - but you’re no longer secretly running a mini-custody startup inside your app.
What I’d Do Differently Next Time 🧠
If I had to restart:
- Prototype on WaaS first, justify in-house only if scale/regulation truly demands it
- Architect the app so the wallet layer is swappable
- Track engineer-hours + audit stress from day zero, not just infra bills
Owning everything sounds powerful.
Shipping faster and actually sleeping at night is more powerful. 😏
🔗 If you’re curious how Wallet-as-a-Service really saves time and money vs rolling your own, I break that down in more detail in this article.
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