Hi All,
Time flies! 6 years since launch! I won't bore you all with the stuff I wrote in my note at the 5th year anniversary. If interested, please search my profile and you can find it. I would appreciate it if you do.
But just to quickly recap, we started building Cake Wallet in the 3rd quarter of 2017 and launched in January of 2018. As I always say the highest and probably the most emotional time for me was when Cake got listed on getmonero. I would just sit and refresh getmonero over and over just to see the Cake logo popup. It was NOT easy to get listed on the App Store back then.
What started out as a basic (VERY basic) Monero wallet on iOS only has grown into a wallet that's basic enough for starters but filled with numerous features for advanced users and now with availability on iOS, Android, MacOS, Linux (and soon Windows).
Small plug of features : I believe we are the first wallet to add 2FA to complete various tasks - a feature I really like and user. I also like the multi send feature, coin control, address book, add your own node, accounts/subaddresses, nodes, Tor (through orbot for now), fiat api through tor, and the freedom we provide to our users to turn on/off features they don't want and so much more.
Cake now has multiple coins and we moved the Monero ONLY feature to the Monerodotcom by Cake Wallet app for the hardcore types, or if you just want another Monero wallet in addition to Cake that you don't use or use for other stuff :). (BTW MoneroDotCom Wallet is no available for MacOS desktop)
Cake's apps have over 400,000 unique downloads on iOS and Android App Store combined. We don't know about the direct downloads so its probably more than 400k. From the beginning the Monero community is important to me and very near to me.
We have been A LOT together. Any new feature we add in Cake, we ask ourselves "How will this affect Monero" or "Let's discuss with the community". This will not change for me. If I want to do something without the Monero community, I will go ahead and launch another wallet WITHOUT Monero so Cake, Monerodotcom, and Monero are not affected. This is a hypothetical.. and no nothing is planned or in the works.
In 2024, we will continue finding ways to make Monero easier to use in addition to finding more and more ways to use in the real world. Regardless of the very small minority of haters, we will keep building Cake, Monerodotcom, and Cake Pay. I will continue funding the development of Monero, Monero related projects, conferences, meetups, podcasts, books, movies, art, and much much more. You have a Monero related project? Let's talk.
Of course all this for Cake couldn't have happened with our amazing dev, support, and marketing teams that make it happen 24/7/365.
Thank you Monero Community very much for working with me for the last 6 years on making Cake Wallet and Monerodotcom Wallet a success and the premier wallets for Monero.
Vik
PS: Come join me and the Cake Team in Dallas in March at the Finney Forum on Privacy. Cake is the MAIN sponsor. Luke Parker and other Monero community members are speaking.