#33: Ivo Georgiev & Dimo Stoyanov, Ambire & heyAura | Building for the Chronically On-Chain

Episode DescriptionToday’s guests are Ivo Georgiev and Dimo Stoyanov, co-founders of Ambire and heyAura, who have been building together for 13 years, from Stremio to AdEx to a smart-account wallet. We get into why the “next billion” wallet thesis stalled and why Ambire instead built for the chronically on-chain, how the Ethereum Foundation’s Kohaku privacy initiative ended up built on Ambire, and why an AI agent living inside your wallet could make protocol interfaces, discovery, and even vaults obsolete. Along the way, Ivo argues that people trust user interfaces more than they trust smart contracts, and that almost everything in crypto is really just a swap.Guest Links* Ivo Georgiev: https://twitter.com/Ivshti* Dimo Stoyanov: https://twitter.com/_DimoStoyanov* Ambire: https://twitter.com/AmbireWallet* heyAura: https://twitter.com/heyauraHost Links* Ryan Rodenbaugh: https://twitter.com/ryanrodenbaugh* Vaults.fyi: https://vaults.fyi* API Docs: https://docs.vaults.fyi/introductionSubscribehttps://www.wallfacer.io/podcastTimestamps* [00:00] Intro* [00:34] How Ivo and Dimo met, Stremio, and the start of AdEx* [02:03] Why the ad network had to be built on Ethereum* [03:32] From AdEx to Ambire: onboarding people who’d never used a wallet* [06:02] The wallet market and who Ambire is really for* [10:10] Accounts vs. wallets, and unsustainable embedded-wallet pricing* [12:07] Shipping EIP-7702 first, and why it enabled Ambire’s growth* [16:06] Kohaku: the Ethereum Foundation’s privacy initiative built on Ambire* [19:12] The Safe integration, and trusting UIs over smart contracts* [22:47] heyAura’s origin, and putting discovery and security into the agent* [26:47] Smart sessions, and running an agent on your existing wallet* [29:12] Prompt injection, and finding the use case people actually want* [32:42] Can an agent replace the vault? Personalization vs. capital efficiency* [35:24] Local models, order flow, and opaque addresses* [37:31] heyAura’s top use cases and the year ahead* [40:45] The business of wallets: why everything is a swap* [45:05] Closing This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit wallfacerlabs.substack.com