How Do You Choose the Right Tech Stack for a Crypto Wallet Development Project?

[johnjames]

Alright, so I am in the early planning stages of a crypto wallet product and I keep running into the same debate within my team: how do you actually decide on the right tech stack for crypto wallet development without overengineering from the start?

 

We are building for a user base that will primarily interact with Ethereum and a couple of EVM-compatible chains, but we want the flexibility to expand to Solana and possibly some newer Layer 2 ecosystems in 2027. The problem is that every developer on our team seems to have a strong opinion, and none of those opinions fully align.

 

Some of the specific things we are wrestling with:

 

Custodial vs non-custodial vs MPC. We want security without sacrificing UX, but MPC implementation adds significant complexity. Is it worth it for a product targeting a mix of retail and semi-institutional users?

 

Cross-chain compatibility from day one vs build for one chain and expand later. My instinct is to design for multi-chain from the start even if you only launch on one, because retrofitting cross-chain support later is painful. Am I thinking about this right?

 

How much of the security infrastructure should be built in-house vs leveraging trusted third-party auditing and custody solutions?

 

I came across a fairly comprehensive breakdown on Antier's crypto wallet development page that actually addressed some of the architectural trade-offs clearly. It helped clarify the MPC vs HD wallet debate for me personally. https://www.antier.com/cryptocurrency-wallet-app-development/

 

But I would love to hear from people who have actually shipped wallet products. What did you wish you had decided differently at the architecture stage? What held up better than you expected under real user load?