Web3 infrastructure · Global · 2023

WalletConnect: one SDK, three audiences, and a competitor set that includes Firebase

SECTOR

Web3 infrastructure

MARKET

Global

COMPANY

WalletConnect

ROLE APPLIED FOR

Product Marketing

DATE

Oct 2023

Web3 DevTools

The situation

Web3Inbox let wallets and decentralised apps message their users. The developer integrates it, the wallet hosts it, and the end user is the one who actually experiences it.

Three parties, one product, and each of them measures success differently. The developer wants easy integration. The wallet wants users to stay inside the wallet. The user wants their notifications to stop being scattered across a dozen apps.

01 · What this engagement produced

5 of 34 outputs

Research

Competition

Segment, position and price

Message

Launch and enable

Measure and maintain

Solid is what the brief produced. Dashed is what it did not reach, and could not from outside.

02 · The decision

Put Firebase in the competitive set.

Web3Inbox let wallets and decentralised apps message their users. The developer integrates it, the wallet hosts it, and the end user is the one who actually experiences it. Three parties, one product, three definitions of success: easy integration, users staying inside the wallet, and notifications that stop being scattered across a dozen apps.

Web3 companies benchmark against web3 companies. It feels rigorous and it's usually wrong, because the developer deciding whether to integrate your SDK is not choosing between you and Push Protocol. They're choosing between you and the notification stack they already know how to use.

Naming Firebase as a competitor changes what the messaging has to do. It stops being why us over the other web3 tool and becomes why this instead of the thing that already works, which is a harder argument and the only one that matters. The corollary is that the differentiator can't be decentralisation, because Firebase doesn't lose on decentralisation. It has to be the wallet-native delivery that Firebase structurally can't reach.

03 · What I wasn't given

Developer interviews

Usage data

Parties who define success differently

Not givenNo roadmap, no integration figures, and no way to test the one assumption the whole positioning rests on.

04 · The work

3 moves

Ten ICPs, three value propositions, nine competitor categories.

01Narrow the field

01 Research · 03 Segment, position & price

Ten candidate ICPs across wallets, dapps, DeFi platforms, DAOs, NFT marketplaces and crypto gaming
A developer persona underneath them, because for an SDK the buyer and the user are the same person and that changes every channel decision
Worked examples using Aave, Uniswap, OpenSea and MetaMask, so the abstraction had something concrete to stand on

02Three value propositions from one feature set

04 Message

Needs, pain points and solution mapped separately for dapps, wallets and end users
Not three tones of voice, three different arguments, because the three parties optimise for different things and one of them isn't buying anything

03Nine competitor categories

02 Competition

Web3-native messaging and notification tools, including Push Protocol and Notifi
And the incumbent stack: Intercom, Zendesk, OneSignal, Pusher and Firebase
Which is where the positioning argument actually had to be won

Where I pushed back

The competitor set they'd expect was the wrong one.

A web3 infrastructure company asking for a go-to-market expects a web3 competitive landscape. Handing back one with Firebase and Zendesk in it is mildly impolite, because it implies the category is not yet a category.

It also happens to be the read that makes the messaging work. A developer's real alternative is the tool already in their stack, and a positioning built against Push Protocol never has to answer that.

05 · What I'd change

Ten ICPs is a research output, not a go-to-market. I'd force a ranking, probably wallets first, since they're the distribution chokepoint and every dapp integration is worth more once the wallets are already there.

What happened next

HELD UP

It shipped, it found users, and then the company changed its name.

Oct 2023

I presented this. Web3Inbox was an SDK looking for a go-to-market.

Jan 2024

WalletConnect launched the Web3Inbox app, extending the SDK into a user-facing product where people could receive and manage notifications from every app in one place. Business Wire

Sep 2024

WalletConnect rebranded to Reown, repositioning from a connection protocol to an onchain user-experience platform, with notifications folded into its AppKit product. Reown

The product shipped and found an audience, and the wallet-native delivery argument, the one thing Firebase structurally cannot do, is still what the notification offering rests on.

The bigger validation is the one I didn't predict. The company itself concluded that its category was user experience rather than connection, and renamed to say so. That is the same move as putting Firebase on the slide: deciding that the real comparison isn't the other web3 tool, it's the ordinary software people already use.

The brief, as it was set

Brief set by WalletConnect

October 2023

Product Marketing, take-home

Define the ICPs and go-to-market for Web3Inbox, our messaging and notifications SDK for wallets and decentralised apps.

Summarised from the brief. Answered from public information only.

What I wasn't given

Developer interviews

Usage data

Parties who define success differently

Not givenNo roadmap, no integration figures, and no way to test the one assumption the whole positioning rests on.

Set by the company.