Well, that’s extremely disappointing.
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I can understand much of the negative reaction here, and even share some of it, but I think we should all calm down a bit. Proton Wallet is in a very very early stage; at the time of release there weren’t even apps to download yet. From features to UI, everything feels really WIP and more like an alpha or beta imo.
As people here have already said, Proton Wallet is developed be a new, seperate team, so its existance doesn’t take anything away from other products. At least until prices go up, no one is really paying for something they don’t like. If they do change price policy in the future, which I expect, I agree there should be more modularity, not just because of Wallet, but because of a generally growing ecosystem. Finally, it’s not available to the vast majority of Proton users yet. Unless you’re a Visionary or Lifetime member, or have gotten an invite from one, you simply can’t use it right now. This also contributes a lot to the alpha/beta feel.
Proton has said, again and again, that they want to launch products early and rapidly to give themselves time and resources to grow, one of which is community feedback. It’s easy to be disappointed or angry because a product feels very unfinished in the beginning or because “Proton should focus on XYZ” and overlook what impact another method might have had, as we can’t know what didn’t happen because of that. I think that one of the best things about Proton is that they find a good balance between achieving their vision and a well-running company on one and the needs and wants of their community on the other side. This means that the community doesn’t always get what it wants; and sometimes gets things it doesn’t want, like it seems to be the case here. However, it also means that the community has a great amount of influence on the path Proton as a whole takes, and can shape the direction of development for individual Proton products a lot, especially after launch.
So, should Proton be criticized for this launch? Yes. I definitely think they could have handled it better. For example, calling this an “early test version” which will “only launch fully once it’s more complete” would’ve not only avoided some of the anger, but also been closer to reality imo. I understand the fairly obvious reasons for supporting Bitcoin first, but I strongly feel that for “full launch” (which I see as making it available to all Proton Unlimited members), Monero should be supported as well, as it actually is “private by default”. Our criticism is important, hopefully even wanted at Proton, because that’s exactly what they need to continue making products their community wants to use and pay for.
After that, I honestly see lots of potential for Proton Wallet. Not because I hope they will adopt every last shitcoin in existance, which they did already state they didn’t plant to. If it eventually becomes a private and secure alternative for Google Pay and Apple Pay, this would fill another gap in the ecosystem Proton will need in order to become the Google/etc-killer it’s designed to become. Should time prove me wrong, I’ll gladly join the peope that are outraged by this, but I think they more than deserve to be given exactly that: Time.
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What scares me about Proton is that, as well as releasing things that nobody asked for, Proton is planning to multiply its projects and is recruiting staff for that purpose.
Expect to see prices in general or Proton’s complete plan skyrocket, after having accustomed us to rather ‘reasonable’ prices, we’ll have to pay for optimal use and a multiplication of services, and not everyone will be able to afford that.
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I hope this is a lesson for the Proton team to be more pragmatic than political. Being political in support of privacy is good, but putting out nonsense like there being one asset to rule them all is silly and does nothing but distract from their core privacy mission.
Working with Bitcoin maxi consultants and adopting some of their claims at face value makes no sense. These are the same people who would have recommended (and probably did) to Proton to use CoinJoin coordinators like Samourai. The irony of saying saying a self-custody Monero wallet would be a massive compliance headache while declaring in code the intent to add Bitcoin CoinJoin shows that something isn’t being thought through.
All Proton needed to do was release a Bitcoin wallet, say that they released Bitcoin first because it’s well known and will hopefully help their strategic goals to increase the number of users of other Proton products, and say that they were open to adding other assets later. If they had just done that, then there would be nearly no controversy (except a few a comments from maxis of other assets, which could mostly be ignored).
Effectively every privacy expert (including Privacy Guides) aside from Bitcoin maxi privacy experts recommend the use of Monero instead of Bitcoin payments. These aren’t all Monero maxis; these endorsements are out of pragmatism for the privacy tool that Monero is. Proton staff need to take their heads out of the sand and talk to people to see why they are angy about their recent messaging.
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Thing is, I’ve been hearing the “nobody asked for this” argument for literally every product launch or major feature release since becoming aware of Proton. Usually accompanied by “just focus on XYZ”.
This isn’t to say it can’t ever be valid or isn’t here. But it is too simple. If you want a company that does exactly one thing and focusses all energy on this and this alone until it’s 100% perfect, Proton just isn’t for you, has never been, and, at least according to its vision, probably won’t be in the future as well. The explict goal is an ecosystem, which will hardly come about any other way than with many different projects. Pricing policy will need to reflect this, but as long as Proton offers everything for $8/month, I think they’re more than reasonable.
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Which VPN provider do you recommend for that?
https://xcancel.com/ProtonWallet/status/1825572321173631308#m
When cash was the primary way of doing business, a transaction could be considered purely peer-to-peer.
Today, digital payments allow banks & governments to see all of your transactions, doing away with financial privacy altogether.
Some banks even sell your financial data to advertisers & other third parties.
That’s why they made their Wallet support Bitcoin only and called other cryptocurrencies shitcoin, not only that but they are not planning on supporting the only private by default cryptocurrency Monero because it has “bad reputation” lmao.
Looks like Proton doesn’t understand how cryptocurrencies work (specifically Bitcoin) as everything on their blockchain is public and can be easily traced, which puts chain analysis companies like Chainalysis, TRM Labs etc in business.
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I got an early access invite but I don’t really have a use case for a crypto wallet. Anyway it says I am allowed 5 invites so I would be happy to give those away.
EDIT: never mind, the invite makes my email visible to the recipient. If someone knows away around this, let me know and I will send out invites.
I wouldn’t be opposed to an invite and would be willing to share one or two invites myself as well.
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I think the main discussion is somewhat over, so I hope it’s okay to share invites with community members here. If someone needs an invite drop me a DM with your email (1 left)