tl;dr

This proposal would empower the Sanctum team to build a Sanctum mobile app, codenamed “Wonder”. Even though this is not a proposal that involves community CLOUD funds, this is going to be the largest product decision ever made by the Sanctum team, so we want to put it up to governance vote. We’re excited about this direction but still want to gut check with the community.

what

Our goal is to onboard more good (agentic, integrous, open-minded, earnest) people onto the magical new world of crypto. Wonder would be a mobile app that maximally serves these users.
Why would these users want to be on chain? They are unlikely to want to trade memecoins. But they would be interested in earning/raising money on crypto to fund their ambitions, holding assets with long-term real yield, and participating, belonging, and interacting with other like-minded people.
Core goals of Wonder:

• to make the new user UX safe and easy (no seed phrases)
• to put people first (profiles, not wallet addresses), and
• to maximise love, fun, and delight

(potential) core product features:

• automatically gives you great yields on your assets
• shows you how much money you’ve made from your yield-bearing assets (SOL, JUP, CLOUD, USDC)
• gasless trades/transfers
• lets you spend and offramp your money via card or bank transfer
• curates the best, most aligned projects so you can participate or invest in them
  • MetaDAO launchpad integration?

potential monetisation models:

• AUM fees on deposits
• swap fees
• subscription fees

why

The Business Case:

• There’s immense value in products that touch the end-user. Google, Netflix, Amazon, Zillow, and Expedia all capture substantial value through being “the place the user comes to when they want to explore.” Wonder would do the same for crypto.
• Abnormal profits come from pricing power. And pricing power comes from consumers having a reason not to switch to alternatives. Consumers, especially in financial services, are sticky and prefer to stick to what they already know.
• The market has recognized this opportunity. Phantom recently raised at a $3B valuation. Jupiter trades at a $1.7B market cap and $6.2B FDV. MetaMask made $320M in swap fees and is one of the reasons why Consensys is worth $2.3B in secondary markets.

Team:
We have a track record of making things fun, building delightful products, simplifying very complex concepts. We made futarchy fun and accessible. I mean we made liquid staking fun for gods sake.
At the same time, we have a reputation for competence and safety — today, Sanctum safeguards over 1B in funds.
I think this combination gives us the prerequisite to build a trusted, yet delightful, product — important for people to want to put lots of money.
Personal:
A month ago I saw my 17 year old cousin open up his phone. He was trading TRUMP on Moonshot, looking at his portfolio go from $6 to $4.60 (lol). I was really happy that crypto has conclusively come to the mainstream, but also sad that that was his first experience with crypto.
Crypto has a lot more to offer than trading memecoins, but it seems like everyone is focused on building apps for that. I want to build the right introduction to crypto: the app we all deserve, but no one is building. I want to build a truly delightful consumer app that lets everyone participate fully in the magic internet economy — to get rich, find meaning, and have fun along the way.

go-to-market

The goal is to build out a minimally delightful product with just one killer feature — but some iteration will be required to find that feature.
To get our first users, we’ll run a very intimate, high-touch closed beta with our best cloudmen (probably initiated by staking score) — each of them would have some small numbers of invite codes. We’ll use that to iterate on the product and find that killer feature.
Once we are sure we have a compelling product and hook, we’ll look to distribute to the broader crypto audience. Other ideas include co-hosting IRL events with our Sanctum cloudmen to sign up new users.

considerations

The largest consideration here is opportunity cost. Building this mobile app will require significant resources and will affect to some degree our focus on scale the core business. The alternative is to stay the course and focus solely on growing Sanctum as a B2B staking business or going into institutional liquid staking (more CEXes, building out custodial products, locked SOL, etc.)
Other considerations include: building mobile consumer apps is notoriously hard, and value capture is not completely clear, especially if we don’t focus on capturing the users which have max trading volumes.

discretion

The Sanctum core team reserves the right to change details of the prospective features or go-to-market if we deem it better for the product.