Interview with Mathieu Geukens, Developer of the First Web Wallet with CashTokens Support

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_Bringing Bitcoin Cash to Africa | content creator[just me carrying the world].

1 year ago

Topics: Bitcoin Cash, CASHTOKENS, Mathieu Geukens CashTokens Web wallet, Prominent figures on BCH Interview

Overview

Bitcoin Cash (BCH) is taking a bold step forward in terms of innovation with the introduction of CashTokens, a new standard that allows for the creation of smart contract-based tokens on the BCH blockchain.

As the first web wallet with support for CashTokens, the CashTokens web wallet (in testnet) is a significant development in the BCH ecosystem. Developed by Mathieu Geukens an independent developer, the web wallet allows users to create, send, and receive CashTokens, including fungible tokens, immutable NFTs, and mintable NFTs.

In this article, I will be Interviewing Mathieu, to take a closer look at the CashTokens web wallet, how it works, its features, and its potential impact on the BCH ecosystem.

Review Mathieu's bio to understand his background and expertise before our interview

Mathieu Geukens is a libertarian who advocates for peer-to-peer cash, also believes in the principles of individual freedom and limited government intervention in economic matters. He's also a Bitcoin Cash smart contract developer, which means that he works on top of Bitcoin Cash to create self-executing contracts that run directly and natively on the Bitcoin Cash blockchain.

Additionally, Mathieu Geukens is a graduated with a master's degree in economics which indicates a strong understanding of economics theory and principles. Overall, he has knowledgeable in both technical and theoretical aspects of Bitcoin Cash and economics.

Welcome to Mathieu Geukens interview, where we sit down with him to discuss CashTokens web wallet. In this interview, Mathieu Geukens will share his insights and experiences on CashTokens web wallet. So, without further ado, let's jump right in:

📝. What inspired you to build a CashTokens web wallet for BCH?

🖥️: I started on the CashTokens webwallet because I'm very excited about the CashTokens upgrade. When the 'mainnet-js' library added support for CashTokens I immediately wanted to build something with it. I think I was the first to experiment with the new CashTokens features in the library. The project started as a 'MVP', a minimum-viable-product, just to get the features working, but now it's turned into a wallet that's ready for end users: with a nice UI and an intuitive interface. So there'll be atleast one wallet with support for CashTokens on launch day! But until May 15th, it's just on chipnet.

📝. Can you explain how your CashTokens web wallet works and what makes it unique?

🖥️: What makes the CashTokens wallet unique is simple - it is the only wallet with CashTokens support that's currently available. The wallet has integrated the BCMR standard (bitcoin cash metadata registries) so it can display tokenmetdata from a trusted tokenlist or from a self-published registry by the creator. The webwallet also allows for creating new CashTokens: fungible tokens, immutable NFts and minting NFTs, and linking metadata to it the newly created tokens on-chain. I encourage people to take a look you don't have to understand the technicals to be able to use it!

📝. How do you ensure the security of the CashTokens web wallet and the private keys of its users?

🖥️: So how the webwallet works behind the screens is it uses mainnet-js as the core library to handle all the wallet functionality.
Webwallets shouldn't store large amounts of money as they are inherently less secure than some of the other types. Security for the webwallet mainly means making sure to report any underlying issue to the mainnet-js maintainers so they can sort out what went wrong and add extra tests. In the earlier stages we found edge cases where the library would burn CashTokens when that was not the goal, this issue was resolved soon after and extra tests were added to the library to guarantee security. These kinds of issues should be expected as the software is very new and we are all building on a test network for the coming months.

📝. What features have you implemented or plan to implement in the CashTokens web wallet to make it more user-friendly?

🖥️: The BCMR standard makes the wallet user-friendly. A wallet without metadata is very un-userfriendly imo. Also the createTokens page was designed to be as easy as possible.

📝. How do you plan to promote adoption of your CashTokens web wallet among BCH users and merchants?

🖥️: I don't have a "plan" to promote the wallet, I will just share new features and improvements as they happen and expect that it will gain some grassroots support because of its unique features.

📝. Can you talk about any challenges you've faced during the development of the CashTokens web wallet and how you've overcome them?

🖥️: One challenge I faced when building the webwallet out as an MVP is that I'm not a designer and don't know what the best tools/ libraries are to make something pretty. Fortunately another developer, Akad, saw my project and added a styling library 'Chota' on his fork of the project. The end result looked very nice so I reached out to him directly and settled on that library for the userinterface. Collaboration can be so helpful, it certainly helped me overcome the challenge from going from MVP to user-friendly product.

📝. How do you see the future of CashTokens and BCH in general, and how does your web wallet fit into that vision?

🖥️: I am very optimistic about BCH because of CashTokens. I think that BCH needed to take a bold step in terms of innovation and needed to go further into the direction of smart contracts & programmability. CashTokens is exactly this, an innovative solution that enables a huge amount of new usecase and does so at a minimal cost. It is not only the biggest upgrade to Bitcoin (Cash) it is also the *best* in terms of cost-benefit analysis. If BCH had stopped innovating I would not have considered it much more interesting than LTC or DOGE, luckily BCH is taking a very different direction from those projects and I'm confident it will pay off. My webwallet fits into the vision of CashTokens being a huge innovation by enabling end-users to use & create tokens.

I am one of the few developers that have worked a lot with BCH smart contracts so I'm extremely happy with all the things that are possible. But also regular uses will benefit tremendously, it just takes time to build AMM DEXes, algorithmic stablecoins or prediction markets, so they will only experience the full effect of CashTokens a few years down the line

📝. What are some future updates or features that you plan to add to the CashTokens web wallet to make it even better?

🖥️: I still want to make it easier to add metadata to tokens, I think if people try the wallet they will agree that this is not yet as simple as it should be

📝. What advice would you give to other developers who are interested in building web wallets for CashTokens?

🖥️: If someone interested in building with CashTokens were to ask advice I'd tell them to watch my 'CashTokens Developer Guide' on youtube on join the developer telegram groups to learn & discuss ideas.

📝. Finally, where can people go to try out your CashTokens web wallet and learn more about it?

🖥️: I should have started with this! People can find my webwallet at https://my-cashtokens-webwallet.netlify.app They can get tbch to create their first tokens on https://tbch.googol.cash they can also post their address in https://t.me/@bchchannel to receive $TEST tokens, and generally they can follow me on twitter for any and all updates to the webwallet geukensmathieu

Bottom line

To conclude, the introduction of CashTokens on the Bitcoin Cash blockchain marks a significant innovation that enables the creation of smart contract-based tokens. Mathieu Geukens, a Bitcoin Cash smart contract developer, has built the first web wallet with support for CashTokens, which allows users to create, send, and receive fungible and non-fungible tokens with ease.

Despite the challenges faced (still facing) during development, Geukens is committed to overcame obstacles to create a user-friendly product. The future of CashTokens and BCH looks promising, with the potential for further innovation and growth in the cryptocurrency DeFi space.

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