Community Trust ScoreVerified
The competitive landscape for cryptocurrency wallets has shifted away from asset quantity toward integrated functionality, as more than 11.5 million tokens ceased trading last year, the majority of which were meme coins. With the ability to mint new tokens on platforms like Pump.fun available to anyone in minutes for minimal cost, a long list of supported assets no longer serves as a differentiator for wallet providers. Instead, the focus has moved to what users can do with those assets once they are in custody.
From Storage To Action
Historically, the primary value proposition of a self-custody wallet was secure storage. Following years of centralized exchange failures, users increasingly prefer holding their own keys, but they now expect these wallets to replicate the full suite of services previously provided by exchanges. This includes buying and selling, cross-chain swapping, staking, earning on idle stablecoins, and spending via card.
D’CENT, a South Korean hardware wallet manufacturer, illustrates this transition. Initially designed solely for key storage, the company identified a barrier where users had to leave the device to trade their assets. By integrating the ChangeNOW exchange API, D’CENT transformed its product into an “action wallet” with built-in swap capabilities. The impact on user engagement was immediate. By 2025, D’CENT reported passing one million registered users and achieving over 40,000 daily active users, with device sales nearly tripling year over year.
Similar challenges were faced by other providers. Zelcore, for instance, allowed users to store assets across dozens of blockchains in 2021 but required users to exit the wallet to execute trades. Building an exchange in-house involves significant compliance hurdles, including KYC, AML, and licensing requirements, which often clash with the decentralized ethos of self-custody. Consequently, many wallets are opting to integrate third-party infrastructure rather than building internal exchange engines.
Stablecoins And Usability
Stablecoins have emerged as a critical use case for daily wallet activity. Settlement volume for stablecoins reached into the trillions in 2025, approaching the transaction volumes of traditional card networks. The speed and cost efficiency of stablecoin transfers, which can move a dollar in under a second for less than a cent, make them a primary driver for non-crypto users entering the space. Wallets that facilitate the holding, spending, and earning of stablecoins are better positioned to capture this daily usage.
User experience remains a significant barrier to adoption. Traditional mechanisms like seed phrases and chain selection can confuse new users. Account abstraction is beginning to address these friction points by allowing wallets to sponsor gas fees, batch transactions, and hide the underlying chain from the user. MetaMask has implemented features that allow users to grant decentralized applications narrow permissions, such as limiting spending to 10 USDC per day or executing strategies over 30 days from a single approval. This level of granular control helps make the wallet experience more accessible to newcomers.
For smaller teams, integrating external APIs allows them to focus on core strengths like security and interface design. Cake Wallet, for example, integrated a swap API instead of building an exchange engine in-house. This decision allowed the team to maintain focus on security while enabling in-app trading. As a result, Cake Wallet grew from 15,000 initial downloads to 1.75 million total users, with 300,000 monthly active users.
Revenue Models And Future Outlook
The business models for wallets are also evolving. In the early hype era, revenue was often tied to monetizing attention through installs and token listings. Today, revenue is increasingly derived from user activity, including swaps, stablecoin flows, staking, and card spending. Providers like Trust Wallet are optimizing for user retention, recognizing that returning users are the primary drivers of transaction volume.
ChangeNOW, which has worked with wallets of various sizes, notes that surviving providers tend to move quickly and establish strong partnerships early. As token listings become a commodity, the next generation of successful wallets will likely be defined by usage frequency rather than the number of supported tokens. The ability to keep users inside the app for everyday transactions and generate sustainable revenue from that activity is becoming the key competitive advantage in a crowded market.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many tokens died last year?
More than 11.5 million tokens died last year, with the majority being meme coins.
What is an “action wallet”?
An “action wallet” is a self-custody wallet that integrates features like swapping and trading, allowing users to manage assets without leaving the application.
