Rainbow
Rainbow Technical Briefing
Published December 14, 2021
Supported by IowaEDA , Finix and Numary
Overview
Rainbow introduces itself as the most accessible Ethereum wallet — built to deserve a spot on your home screen rather than forcing a 30-word seed-phrase gauntlet on new users. The demo tours what makes Rainbow distinctive: auto-discovery of ERC-20 tokens across Ethereum mainnet, Arbitrum, and Optimism merged into a unified view (no chain-switching); a Savings section wired to Compound Finance that auto-swaps any deposited asset into DAI under the hood; Uniswap liquidity-pool positions surfaced with annualized fees; NFTs as first-class citizens including floor prices, trait-based search into OpenSea, a Showcase feature for favorites, and per-wallet public web profiles like rainbowwallet.eth; a swap UI that takes any-to-any input and exposes EIP-1559 custom gas tipping; and WalletConnect as Rainbow's deliberate answer to an in-app dApp browser — connect Rainbow to any web dApp via mobile Safari and bounce back to Rainbow for action approvals.
0:00 Introduction to Rainbow — the most accessible Ethereum wallet
Rainbow introduces itself as an Ethereum wallet built to deserve a spot on your phone's home screen. The thesis: Ethereum wallets are a new product category and, before long, any "finance app" people keep on their home screen will first and foremost be an Ethereum wallet.
1:00 Onboarding without the 30-word seed gauntlet
Rainbow skips the usual "write down 30 words" first experience — it drops users straight in, with an Apple Pay on-ramp for fast funding and a smoother unwrapping experience rolling out through 2022.
2:00 Auto-discover tokens across L1 and L2s
Rainbow automatically discovers ERC-20 tokens held by an address — including tokens on Arbitrum and Optimism — and merges them into a single unified token view. No chain switching like other wallets require.
3:00 Rainbow vs MetaMask
Why Rainbow pursues a richer UX than the incumbent (MetaMask) — price charts, native visualization, a real "single app" experience instead of add-custom-token-by-hand friction.
3:30 Savings section — Compound Finance
Rainbow's Savings tab is wired to Compound. Deposit any asset — even meme coins like Shiba — and Rainbow auto-swaps the deposit into DAI under the hood before routing into Compound, so the user never sees the intermediate step.
5:00 Uniswap pool positions, contextualized
Rainbow surfaces Uniswap liquidity positions with annualized fees, contextualized alongside your other holdings — turning DeFi positions into a product surface rather than a raw pair of token balances.
5:30 NFTs as first-class citizens
NFTs have been first-class in Rainbow since day one. Clicking into an NFT shows floor price for the category, image, trait-based search hooks to OpenSea, save-to-photos for using the artwork as a Twitter avatar, and a Showcase feature for favorites.
8:00 Web profile — rainbowwallet.eth
Every Rainbow wallet with an ENS name gets a public web profile at rainbow.me — visit rainbowwallet.eth to see that wallet's showcase and NFTs. A natural social layer on top of Ethereum.
9:30 Swap between any two assets, EIP-1559 tip control
The Rainbow swap UI takes any-to-any inputs — type in a source amount, destination amount, or USD value and the others auto-calculate. The view-details sheet surfaces the execution rate, and the EIP-1559 gas UI lets power users tip the miner a custom amount.
12:30 WalletConnect instead of an in-app dApp browser
Rainbow deliberately skips an in-app dApp browser in favor of WalletConnect for long-tail web experiences. The demo connects Rainbow to Uniswap in mobile Safari, logs in as rainbowwallet.eth, and starts interacting with the dApp — action approvals bounce back to Rainbow.
Presented by Mike Demarais — Rainbow · LinkedIn · website
