Odaily Interview with Trust Wallet CEO Felix: After 220 Million Downloads, What's Next?

Recently, Trust Wallet launched the Trade Menu, and the narrative of wallet + AI continues to heat up. The crypto wallet track is undergoing a quiet yet profound paradigm shift. The competition among tools has evolved into a competition over experience and trust.

Odaily had the privilege of interviewing Felix, the new CEO of Trust Wallet. The in-depth conversation revolved around topics such as Trust Wallet's product direction, AI-driven user interaction experience, competitive and cooperative relationships with exchange wallets, and the end-state of crypto wallets. As an industry veteran with over a decade of experience in crypto and product development, Felix provided clear and firm answers regarding product philosophy, growth paths, and his vision for the ultimate state of wallets.

For clarity, Odaily has summarized the key points from the interview as follows~

On February 26th, Trust Wallet launched a new trading interface. What industry trends and user needs prompted this move?

The market has undergone profound changes. Crypto traders are acting faster than ever, and their trading activities are becoming more diverse—spot, derivatives, prediction markets—often all conducted on mobile devices. However, most wallets haven't kept pace with this rhythm. Their interfaces are still scattered across different tabs and nested menus, creating friction precisely when users need to act quickly.

The Trade Menu is our answer. It's a single interface that integrates Swap, Perpetual Contracts, Prediction Markets, and popular Meme tokens. When you spot a market opportunity, you don't need to search for the corresponding function; you can act immediately.

Could you rank the most commonly used features or sections by user frequency?

Swap remains the core; the vast majority of trading activity is concentrated there. Beyond that, cross-chain operations and staking participation have remained consistently strong. As users become more familiar with mobile DeFi, the use of derivatives protocols is also growing rapidly.

But honestly, the ranking itself isn't that important to me. What matters is the trend—users are engaging more deeply with each session. They're not just swapping and leaving; they're exploring, formulating strategies, and managing assets across chains. This is precisely the user behavior the Trade Menu is designed to support.

In January, Trust Wallet disclosed that global downloads have exceeded 220 million. Have you encountered any growth bottlenecks? If so, what are they, and how do you plan to break through them?

The real bottleneck isn't user acquisition; it's activating users and increasing their depth of engagement. We have a massive installed base, but converting downloads into daily active users—into users who actually perform meaningful on-chain operations with the wallet—is the harder problem to solve.

Two things can unlock this situation. First, genuinely improving the product experience—making it faster, simpler, and reducing friction at every step. Second, giving users more reasons to stay: better trading tools and a continued push towards third-party, AI-driven automation features. This is the growth flywheel we are building.

What kind of product will users need next? What forward-looking plans does the team have?

Users need a wallet that works for them, not a tool they have to struggle with. Currently, the demands placed on users by cryptocurrency are still too high—choosing a public chain, setting slippage, confirming gas, jumping between menus. This friction shouldn't exist.

The direction we are exploring is "intent-driven user experience." Users no longer need to manually perform every step. Instead, they express what they want to do, and the wallet automatically presents the optimal execution path. AI is the layer that enables all of this—but the user always remains in control, deciding what actions to approve and what can be executed.

What are wallets competing over? Can you rank these factors by importance?

Ranked according to what users truly care about, it should be:

First, Security. Always. If users can't trust you, nothing else matters. Security is a non-negotiable baseline, an area we continuously invest in, and the core of our brand identity.

Second, Experience. Processing speed, clarity of operation, simplicity of interface. A wallet shouldn't get in the way; it should enable users to interact with the blockchain smoothly.

Third, Breadth of Features. Users have a wide range of use cases and functional needs. Can you meet them?

Fourth, Coverage of Public Chains and Assets. If you natively support a wide range of public chain ecosystems that cover user needs, users have no reason to leave.

Feature competition is something everyone will eventually get caught up in, but the wallets that truly win long-term users will be the ones that excel in trust and user experience.

How do you view the competitive and cooperative relationship with exchange wallets? In terms of user acquisition, what adjustments and specific strategies will there be?

Currently, I see it more as a complementary relationship than a competitive one. Centralized exchange wallets serve a specific group—users already within the parent platform's ecosystem. Their product decisions will always be constrained by the parent platform's interests; that's a structural limitation we don't have.

Trust Wallet's advantage lies in its independence. We can integrate the best liquidity from across the entire market, not just resources from a single exchange. Trust Wallet isn't optimizing for any exchange's order book; we are optimizing for the user.

The logic for our user acquisition strategy is simple: build the best product. The wallet with the best experience and strongest performance will naturally win users. We will support this with targeted growth initiatives, but the product itself must bear the primary pull.

What does the end-state of a crypto wallet look like? Is there an existing Web2 product that can serve as a reference, or will it develop a unique form?

The closest "Web2 analogy" is probably a super app, similar to WeChat Pay or Alipay. Users' financial operations are embedded into their daily lives, not isolated in a separate product. But this analogy isn't entirely accurate either, as those are centralized and permissioned.

Honestly, the end-state of a crypto wallet should be something entirely new—a self-custodial, AI-driven, cross-chain, intent-responsive functional layer. Users fully own and control their assets, setting their own rules. No bank holds your funds, no exchange controls your assets, no middleman acts as a gatekeeper. This isn't a Web2 product; it's something the internet has never had before.

The CEO has changed. Is there a story behind this that you can share?

The story is actually quite simple. Trust Wallet is at an inflection point—220 million downloads, a massive active user base, and the product itself has tremendous growth potential. This opportunity required a product-focused leader who can move quickly and execute with conviction.

With over a decade of experience in crypto and product, I have a clear vision for where this product should go, and our team is fully prepared. The Trade Menu was launched within weeks, our AI developer tools are already live, and there's much more to come. This isn't a story of transition; it's a story of growth.