El Salvador: Rescuing the Chivo Wallet
El Salvador became the first nation to recognize Bitcoin as legal tender, but its rollout faced significant technical challenges. The introduction of Chivo, a Bitcoin wallet that offered $30 worth of Bitcoin as an incentive for users to sign up, was initially a costly failure. This led to Dakai stepping in to continue the work where the previous developers had left off. With the initial launch already in jeopardy, El Salvador enlisted Dakai’s help to create a completely functional application from scratch in just three weeks. This was a critical project that needed to safely manage the life savings of 6 million citizens without any issues. The original application had screens that were non-functional, unusable code, and frequent crashes, necessitating a complete overhaul. Dakai rewrote the national payment app in three weeks, scaling it to accommodate 6 million registered users and 800,000 daily active users. To move quickly, Dakai made smart assumptions and balanced the needs of six decision-makers. They achieved the right mix of speed and necessary approvals to launch the project effectively. Dakai rapidly developed and integrated APIs and partner code they had not previously utilized, while also refining the user experience to ensure that even illiterate citizens could use the app successfully. As a result, the Salvadoran government no longer faced monetary losses due to bugs, and residents began to trust the application, which now had 800,000 daily users and over 90% of the population registered.