Chime was created with the mission to make financial peace of mind a reality for millions of everyday people. We're one of the fastest-growing financial technology companies in the U.S., offering banking services that are helpful, easy, and free—because we want to profit with our members, not from them. Our model doesn’t rely on overdraft, monthly service, minimum balance, or other member fees—it just focuses on delivering member value. How does Chime work? We partner with regional banks to design member-first financial products. This creates a more competitive market with better, lower-cost options for everyday Americans who aren’t being served well by traditional banks. We offer access to bank accounts with fee-free overdraft, provide members the chance to receive early access to their paychecks, help them improve their credit, and more! We help drive innovation, inclusion, and access across the industry with one of the most experienced leadership teams in fintech guiding us along the way. We were recently valued at over $25.5B and we’ve raised over $1.7B in funding from leading investors including Sequoia Capital Global Equities, SoftBank Vision Fund 2, General Atlantic, Tiger Global, Dragoneer, DST, Coatue, Iconiq, Menlo Ventures and others. Working at Chime means keeping our values in mind, putting our members first, and striving for long-term growth and success. To that end, we’re building an inclusive workplace where all perspectives and experiences are welcome on our team and creating an environment where every Chimer can thrive. If you’re passionate about applying technology to the challenge of making financial health a reality for everyone, Chime in–we want to hear from you! 💚 *Chime is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services provided by, and debit card issued by, The Bancorp Bank or Stride Bank, N.A.; Members FDIC.

Chime

Chimezie Emewulu, is a tech founder with over fifteen years of experience building tech products. He is the founder of Seamfix, a people & software development company that seamlessly automates processes for productivity and revenue for over 100 million Nigerians and their businesses. He started building during his second year of University and has not stopped building ever since. In this interview, Chimezie sits down with Peace to share his experience building Seamfix, and all the experience he has garnered from being a tech business man for years. He goes into detail about the experience he has garnered through the years, shares some of his biggest wins, talks about visibility, growing poor and a passion for philanthropy and gives a lot of valuable advice to founders and potential founders seeking to build their own companies. Watch the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hp2iLd4nUxs Video timestamps - Chimezie shares his background 1:02 - Starting Seamfix in 2007 3:11 - Finding Engineering, First experience Coding 4:28 - Early days of Seamfix 8:27 - Key Milestones in the last 15 years 11:27 - Examples of Seamfix Solutions 12:13 - What he wants to change in the next 10 years 18:18 - Biggest Challenges building Seamfix 20:02 - Intricacies of Running Business 25:00 - Key mistakes made while running Seamfix 30:00 - Advice for upcoming entrepreneurs 33:44

#FoundersConnect: Chimezie Emewulu, Co-Founder and MD of Seamfix Limited.

the “chimera” in Greek mythology — the fantasy, the illusion Tokenization is nothing new The term “tokenization” is mainly associated with securities, equities and real assets and indicates the creation of a digital token which represents ownership rights to the underlying assets and which is issued on a Blockchain. But tokenization is nothing new. It is an evolution of derivative instruments and securitized assets such . per se ABS For instance, the s and at the heart of the 2009 financial crisis were substantially tokens representing debt. The first examples of go back to the 17th and 18th century. CDO MBS securitizations Despite and literally dozens of tokenization platforms springing up in the last 12 months and plenty of businesses willing to try to raise funds with it, very little practical progress has been done so far. Notwithstanding the announcements of imminent issuance of tokens representing equities or real assets, none has yet been practically issued. the promises that I also share about the potential of STOs Perceived advantages of tokenization Governance participation mechanisms and automated dividend payments — which can be embedded in the smart contract — are often cited among the biggest advantages, together with the reduction of back-office work, the reduction of costs for the issuing companies and 24/7 trading. Fractional ownership is indeed also important as it helps democratize investing, but it is also not new and tokenization is just a new tool to achieve what has already been done in the past through fractional ownership of real estate or club-deals. Securitization vs tokenization So in what, practically, securitization and tokenization differ? Two things essentially: (i) the issuance of the token on a Blockchain, and (ii) the tradability/liquidity of the token on a digital secondary market. But the Blockchain has one fundamental scope: enabling the peer to peer trusted transfer of digital values, while providing certainty and immutability to that transfer. The first ever Blockchain — that of Bitcoin — was created to allow peer to peer transfers of bitcoins, not of real assets. By definition, its use can be easily extended to other digital assets or rights — such as digital photos, music or e-books for instance — which will benefit massively from the certainty and immutability which are intrinsic to the Blockchain. But as far as real assets or equities are concerned, the transfer and ownership titles are regulated by the law. Each jurisdiction has its own legal authorities which enable and certify such transfers. Real estate and land transfers are generally effective upon recording into Land Registries (at least in civil law countries, while the situation is more complex in countries such as the USA where the adoption of a public Blockchain based system can likely introduce certainty to the title ownership and cut conveyance costs and risks), car sales when entered into the motor vehicle registry, sales of equities in private companies when recorded into the companies´ registry. All those transactions are also likely certified by public Notaries in most jurisdictions. And the issue here is not to advocate whether the future Blockchain adoption may enhance the existing public systems of real estate or corporate ownership titles of any individual jurisdiction — which thing is also probably true — but to simply evaluate whether the Blockchain has some scope of use for tokenizing real assets or private equities within the existing systems. So the real question to answer is: can the on-chain tokenization of real assets and private equities bring more advantages or more problems in respect to a simpler off-chain tokenization? Tokenization use cases Let’s look at two use cases: use case A is the issuance of tokens representing private equity, while use case B is the issuance of corporate bonds/commercial papers or other corporate debt instruments by the same private company. In case A an SPV is needed as a vehicle for all the token holders to have a single entry in XYZ cap table. The SPV subscribes to XYZ share capital increase and owns the shares issued. The SPV will be managed by a nominee director under the terms of Trust Agreement I for the benefit of token holders. 100% of the shares of SPV will be owned by Trust I for the benefit of token holders. Trust Agreement I issues the tokens representing 100% of SPVs share capital. Under Trust Agreement II the shares of XYZ owned by SPV are held for the beneficial ownership of token holders. Note that in this case trusted third parties, such as a Public Notary and the Company Registry, are statutorily required in order to validate transactions. Therefore, in my opinion, the use of the Blockchain unnecessarily complicates things without bringing noticeable advantages. In case B instead, the same private company issues corporate debt. Because there are no statutory requirements for third party validations for the issue of debt instruments, such as the need to record it on a public registry, the token and the debt instrument are substantially the same thing and function on the same level. Therefore XYZ can issue directly to single buyers the tokens representing its debt. Tokens can be issued on the Ethereum Blockchain. A Smart Contract will embed the terms of the debt issuance in the token, such as automatic coupon/yield payments and the repayment of the principal at duration expiration with subsequent burning of all the tokens redeemed. Case B is therefore a good candidate for on-chain tokenization. Tokenizing real assets off-chain As seen above in use case A, when dealing with legally trusted authorities (such as land or companies registries) the Blockchain main functions — which are guaranteeing trust, transparency, immutability, non-corruption of data and non-duplication — are already performed by such authorities. Blockchain is therefore redundant. Well practised traditional legal structures such as SPVs, trustees, nominees and escrows — backed up by collaterals such as a mortgage or a pledge — are still needed to guarantee the investor (buy side) that the issued token is tied to the real world asset. This because the contractual promise — even if embedded in the smart contract — remains just an “unsecured contractual promise” which, without a collateral guarantee, still poses all the enforceability issues of any unsecured (contractual) promise. And until those public registries are not on the Blockchain themselves, the smart contract has limited practical application. Enforcement/execution — for real assets — takes place off-chain and therefore must be secured with traditional guarantees which can only function off-chain. Moreover, with such complex transaction structures, mistakes and disputes happen all the time and they need to be promptly rectified or solved. With public registries or with trusted parties mistakes can be easily rectified and disputes solved. Instead, Blockchains´ immutability and irreversibility features then become drawbacks. Without an appropriate mechanism for dispute resolution and reversibility, the Blockchain can render real asset transactions unmanageable. Therefore, in my opinion, the practical aspects of an on-chain real asset tokenization are still generally not sufficiently appreciated but when this is done, it appears that — in many cases — it is more efficient to tokenize/digitize real assets off-chain. Guaranteed liquidity is the key prerequisite Most importantly, what is still missing from the picture — — is the guaranteed liquidity and the possibility for the investors to effectively trade the tokens. Surprisingly, not much progress has been done on that very fundamental issue. and it is certainly the essential prerequisite for any tokenization either on or off-chain Only if deep pools of liquidity are brought in to ensure adequate market making, then tokenized assets may possibly scale-up in the future to match traditional financial instruments. Conclusions Summing it up: 1. Above all, deep liquidity of the digital secondary market is a prerequisite for any tokenization. 2. We can tokenize assets on-chain or off-chain. 3. Not every asset is suitable to be tokenized on-chain. 4. On-chain tokenization is advisable when the asset can be freely transferred without the statutory need of a third party off-chain validation (such as with corporate debt — as in Case B above — or, as an example, with unregistered real assets such as objects of art or plain digital assets such as digital photos, music, Cryptokitties etc). Here the Blockchain fully performs its main functions which are guaranteeing trust, transparency, immutability, non-corruption of data and non-duplication. 5. Off-chain tokenization is advisable when there is a statutory need for a third party off-chain validation of the transaction (such as with private equities — as in Case A above — or with real estate, cars, boats, planes, etc). Here the Blockchain is redundant because its main functions are already performed by the third party validation off-chain. 6. Of course, if and when those statutory registers will be on-chain themselves, then on-chain transactions will be possible also for real assets and the Smart Contract will be able to close the loop and to reconcile the ownership title of a real asset off-chain with the digital token (representing the asset) on-chain. 7. Of course the above conclusions may vary depending on the jurisdiction (eg. real estate on-chain tokenization may be advisable in the USA and not in Germany or Italy). : This paper is for general guidance only and it does not constitute legal advice. As such, it should not be used as a substitute for consultation with lawyers on specific issues. All information in this paper is provided “as is”, with no guarantee of completeness, accuracy, timeliness or warranty of any kind, express or implied. Legal Disclaimer #tokenization #cryptoassets #bianconi andrea #STOs #Blockchain

Why tokenization is still a chimera

This story was originally published on by . ProPublica Carson Kessler The day after Jonathan Marrero’s federal stimulus payment landed in his bank account, he took his 5-year-old twins out for lunch at an Applebee’s near where he lives in New Jersey. When he went to pay, his only means of payment, a debit card issued by the hot financial technology startup Chime, was declined. He didn’t understand why. Marrero had checked his account earlier that day and saw a balance of nearly $10,000. With the Applebee’s server standing next to him, he quickly pulled out his phone to check his Chime app, just as he had hundreds of times since he signed up in January. Marrero couldn’t log in. He immediately checked his email and found a message from Chime that read, “We regret to inform you that we have made the decision to end our relationship with you at this time. Your spending account will be closed on March 18, 2021.” He had no choice but to call his parents and have them pay the lunch bill. “I was so embarrassed,” said Marrero, a 32-year-old motorcycle technician. “I’m a grown man, and I was tearing up and everything.” Speaking of the $10,000 that he was suddenly locked out of, he added, “If it was $100, I wouldn’t sweat it. But it was everything I had for my kids.” Marrero’s grievance is not unusual. Chime, which provides app-based banking services to an estimated 12 million customers, has according to experts been generating a high rate of complaints, with 920 filed at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau since April 15, 2020. “For a company that most people have never heard of, I think that’s a lot of complaints,” said Lauren Saunders of the National Consumer Law Center. Many customers have told the CFPB that they can’t access their money or accounts, and that, among other things, Chime is slow to resolve problems. Of the 920 complaints filed about Chime, 197 were tagged as involving a “closed account.” The CFPB’s complaints are labeled inconsistently, and many of the other 723 also detail problems involving accounts that were closed against customers’ will. By comparison, Wells Fargo, a bank with six times as many customers and a lengthy of in its consumer bank, has 317 CFPB complaints tagged for closed accounts over the same time period. recent history misbehavior Marcus, the new online bank created by Goldman Sachs, with 4 million customers, has generated seven such complaints. Customers have also filed 4,439 complaints against Chime at the Better Business Bureau, compared to 3,281 for Wells Fargo. Meanwhile, several Facebook groups have sprung up with names like “Chime Bank has FAILED” and “Chime Thieves.” They’ve attracted some 700 members combined. One group has more than 100 posts and comments, almost all of them saying some version of the same thing. “Chime stole my entire unemployment backpay,” reads one typical post. Another says, “I’m a single mom of 4 kids and they stolen $1400 from me and refuse to give it back and now we are about to be evicted.” Chime doesn’t look much better on Google, where, according to the site’s “People Also Ask” feature, two of the questions most often posed about Chime are “Is Chime bank a real bank?” and, at various points in recent weeks, “Is Chime a ripoff?” or “Does Chime steal your money?” Most of the company’s CFPB complaints have been “closed with explanation,” a designation that conveys that Chime has resolved the dispute privately with the customer; the company is in the process of responding to the rest. As for the BBB complaints, Chime has said on the BBB’s website that it “takes these issues seriously” and that its “top priority is protecting its members.” Chime portrayed the customer complaints as largely driven by the company’s attempts to crack down on accounts that use fraudulently obtained unemployment insurance or federal stimulus payments. “As a leader in the US payments ecosystem and as part of our commitment to Chime members, we take seriously our responsibility to detect and prevent fraud,” asserted a provided by spokesperson Gabe Madway. statement “The past year has seen an extraordinary surge in activity by those seeking to illicitly obtain pandemic-related government funds and defraud US taxpayers. By some credible estimates, may have transpired. $400 billion worth of unemployment fraud alone We are proud of Chime’s robust anti-fraud efforts, which have returned hundreds of millions of dollars to state and federal agencies during the pandemic. While it’s important for us to fight fraud, our top focus will always be to take care of our members. And despite our best efforts, we do make mistakes.” The statement also touted Chime as having “proven that basic banking services can be helpful, easy and free.” It’s easy to see why Chime has caught on. Opening an account takes minutes. Chime’s app is intuitive and easy to use. The service welcomes customers with spotty credit histories and doesn’t require a credit check. It has no monthly fees and keeps other charges to a minimum. (It takes a small slice of the interchange fees paid by the merchant each time a customer uses a Chime card.) ‘ For customers who sign up for direct deposit, Chime offers two-day interest-free advances on paychecks, IRS refunds or government stimulus checks. The company has marketed aggressively in both new media and old. The company displays a youthful sensibility online, tweeting out memes on its Twitter feed. At the same time, its logo is plastered in many locations, including opposite the Nike swoosh on the uniforms of the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks. Chime is now the largest in a growing subcategory of financial technology, or fintech, companies known as “neobanks” (more on that later) that serve low- to moderate-income individuals underserved by traditional banks. The neobanks have thrived in the past year, vying with each other to land consumers looking for somewhere to deposit government stimulus payments, according to Jason Mikula, managing director for 312 Global Strategies, a fintech consultancy. Chime offered new and existing customers a “Stimulus Sweepstakes” that dangled a chance of winning $1,200. Chime built a base of 8 million customers between its launch in 2013 and 2020, then jumped to 12 million over the past year, according to Cornerstone Advisors. Many of the new accounts began with deposits from federal stimulus payments, according to a recent analysis by Cornerstone and StrategyCorps, two financial service companies that specialize in consumer research. All that growth has made Chime, which is based in San Francisco, a hit in Silicon Valley. Venture capitalists have given the company a valuation of $14.5 billion, and the company’s CEO said in late May that Chime might prepare to go public as early as this fall. For all of Chime’s Silicon Valley tech patina, one thing it’s not is an actual bank. Like others in its category, Chime is a digital interface that hands over the actual banking to, in this instance, two regional institutions, The Bancorp Bank and Stride Bank. Chime customers interact with the Chime app, but Bancorp and Stride, both of which are FDIC-insured, hold their money. Since Chime is not a bank, that leaves it in a regulatory no man’s land, according to Alex Horowitz, senior research officer for the consumer finance project at the Pew Charitable Trusts. The rules and jurisdiction are murky at best. “When you have a fintech that is the consumer interface, they don’t have a primary regulator,” he said. “They’re primarily regulated as a vendor to the existing bank, because banks are required to manage their vendors and they’re responsible for third-party relationships. But it’s still a step removed.” Bancorp and Stride have an obligation to police Chime, according to Mikula. “The regulatory treatment should not be any different than if I myself went directly into Stride and opened up a demand deposit account or checking account,” Mikula said. “There should be no different threshold because Chime is a fintech.” (Bancorp and Stride did not respond to requests for comment.) The legal environment may be murky, but Chime has already attracted the attention of state regulators. In late 2019, the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation received complaints about an outage in Chime’s system that prevented consumers from accessing accounts and left many unable to pay their bills. The agency investigated and found a different violation: It concluded that Chime had violated state law by describing itself as a bank on its website and elsewhere. “DFPI found this was likely to confuse consumers into thinking Chime was an online bank,” the agency said in a statement to ProPublica. “Chime itself is not licensed or insured as a bank.” in late March. DFPI and Chime agreed to an administrative settlement Chime neither admitted to nor denied the findings but agreed to take a detailed series of actions on its website and promotional materials to make clear that it is not a bank. (A similar agreement was also reached with regulators in Illinois.) Even after the settlement, as of early July, Chime’s offered mixed messages. At the top, it stated, in large letters, “Banking that has your back.” homepage A bit lower, below the “get started” button, in much smaller type, were the words, “Chime is a financial technology company, not a bank.” The word “banking” is much more prominent on Chime’s home page than the words “not a bank.” Chime told ProPublica that it is in compliance with the settlement agreement and that all of the necessary changes have been made. California has also responded more broadly to the rise of fintech companies. On Jan. 1, a new law, the California Consumer Financial Protection Law, took effect. It gives the state new authority over providers of financial products and services. (The March settlement with Chime was based on preexisting statutes.) “The purpose of the new law was to clarify that if you’re meeting the definition of being in the business of providing consumer financial products and services, then yes, DFPI has jurisdiction over you,” said Suzanne Martindale, senior deputy commissioner of the agency’s Consumer Financial Protection Division. “We can supervise, we can draft regulation, and we also have authority to stop unfair, deceptive and abusive acts and practices and can enforce any state or federal consumer financial law.” Martindale did not comment directly on the complaints about account closures, but said, “We continue to monitor for compliance.” She said that if regulators uncovered “new activities that suggest there may be a violation or there may be a deceptive misrepresentation,” then “we may have to take a look.” Many of the complaints about Chime relate to the same things that spurred the company’s growth over the past year: government payments for stimulus aid, PPP, unemployment insurance and tax refunds. Indeed, many account closures occurred directly after a government deposit, according to customers interviewed by ProPublica and the CFPB complaints. That meant Chime was simultaneously pushing to land new accounts from customers with stimulus checks while trying to vet millions of new accounts for suspicious payments. (There is widespread agreement that fraud involving unemployment-insurance and stimulus claims has been rampant during the pandemic, though estimates of its scope have varied wildly.) Banks and neobanks are expected to take action if they see signs of suspicious activity, typically by filing a report with federal authorities, according to Mikula. Chime’s approach involves three levels of potential action. If Chime decides that the evidence of fraud is conclusive, it typically closes the relevant account and returns the money to the government if the account was opened with a check from the government. If Chime sees what it considers suspicious behavior — but can’t conclusively determine that fraud has occurred — it can still terminate the account, but then typically returns the funds to the account holder. Finally, Chime says that if its investigation confirms that a payment was legitimate, it unfreezes the account. In reporting for this article, ProPublica interviewed 13 current or former Chime customers who claimed the company had wrongly frozen their funds or closed their accounts. ProPublica discussed the details with the company. Chime confirmed that five of the anecdotes were well-founded; the company acknowledged making mistakes and returned each customers’ funds. In two other instances, the company was able to provide documentary evidence of fraud and said it had not returned the customers’ funds. That left six complaints, and there the situation was much murkier and raised questions about the company’s approach. In its statement, Chime asserted that those six “did in fact involve fraud and/or violations of our terms.” Yet the evidence of misbehavior that Chime cited in conversations with ProPublica generally consisted of the same act that its marketing encouraged: Opening a new account using a federal stimulus check or a payment from unemployment insurance. In those instances, Chime said, it or its bank partners had closed the accounts but returned the funds to customers. Inadequate compliance management may be partially to blame for Chime’s problems, said former CFPB staff member Chris Peterson, who is now a law professor at the University of Utah. “As fintech businesses start to move into banking services,” he said, “they have to have adequate resources to monitor problems that emerge in their financial services” and then resolve them. The sudden account closures have put financially vulnerable customers under stress. That’s the situation Michelle Robertson, 52, found herself in. After getting burned by overdraft and minimum balance fees at her traditional bank, Robertson signed up with Chime three years ago. The pandemic wasn’t easy for Robertson, a computer technician in Richmond, California, who is also a single mother and the full-time caregiver for her elderly father. A much-needed infusion of cash was set to be deposited into Robertson’s Chime account the week of March 10: a $1,200 stimulus deposit and a $3,500 tax refund. She planned to use the money to catch up on the stack of bills that had been piling up. But on March 4, after setting up her Chime direct deposit with the IRS, Robertson received an email closing both her spending and savings accounts. Chime’s email, which Robertson shared with ProPublica, offered almost the same explanation as the company email provided to Marrero: “Following a recent review of your Spending Account, we regret to inform you that we have made the decision to end our relationship with you at this time.” She was unable to use her debit card, access the money in her accounts or sign in to the mobile app. The email informed Robertson that a check for any remaining balance would be mailed to her within 30 days. Citing “security reasons,” Chime’s email stated the company couldn’t explain to Robertson why her account was closed. (The company confirmed, in interviews for this article, that it should not have closed Robertson’s account.) She was directed to a passage in the company’s account agreement that states, “Chime and/or Bank may suspend, freeze, or close your Account for any reason with or without notice” and “Funds on deposit in any Account are subject to hold at the Bank’s discretion until the source of such funds and/or the activity is properly verified.” Robertson didn’t have much money in the account when it was closed, but the prospect of not knowing the status of her incoming deposits scared her. “I lost my mind. I couldn't believe it,” she said. “It was very shocking, just for them to tell me that and then not know why and then have all this money that I was really, really counting on.” What followed was a frustrating roundelay in which Chime directed Robertson to the IRS, and the IRS directed her to Chime. In one email, Chime told Robertson, “Please note that any Direct Deposits such as your Tax Refund that can be received during the account access restriction, may have been rejected and returned to the sender in the next 1-3 business days so, we encourage you to contact the originator of your deposit to avoid any further delays.” Robertson’s interaction with Chime’s customer service provided no new answers. She kept getting emails telling her to “contact the issuer” and stating that no “further information” could be given about the closing of her account. (According to 10 other Chime customers, users are discouraged from contacting customer service via phone or sending multiple emails; they’re told that doing so could “cause the review time to be extended,” as one Chime email put it.) With more than two months having passed with no access to her money, the consequences grew dire for Robertson. Unable to pay her bills, she feared eviction from her home, car payments were delayed, her cell phone was shut off, and late-payment fees piled up. Eventually, in late May, the federal government came through: Robertson received a paper check for her stimulus payment; the tax refund followed a few weeks later. She no longer has a Chime account and has no intention of ever signing back up. In its statement to ProPublica, Chime said that “for those cases where Chime did make a mistake, including the two highlighted in this story, we sincerely apologize. We have made efforts to make things right with these members.” (Robertson said that, beyond unfreezing her funds, Chime has not contacted her.) For his part, Jonathan Marrero finally got his account reopened in late May after filing complaints to the CFPB and BBB. He said Chime (which confirmed to ProPublica that it had erred in closing Marrero’s account) provided no explanation for blocking him from his funds for more than two months beyond telling him there had been suspicious activity in his account. Marrero immediately withdrew all of the remaining funds. “It’s been torture,” he said. After this article was published, Michelle Robertson emailed ProPublica to say that a Chime executive apologized to her on July 4.' Update, July 7, 2021: Photo by on Adam Nir Unsplash

Why Was This Banking App Closing People's Accounts?

¿Por qué esta aplicación bancaria cerraba las cuentas de las personas?

Pourquoi cette application bancaire fermait-elle les comptes des personnes ?

क्यों बंद कर रहा था यह बैंकिंग ऐप लोगों के खाते?

この銀行アプリが人々の口座を閉鎖したのはなぜですか?

Por que esse aplicativo bancário estava fechando as contas das pessoas?

Tại sao ứng dụng ngân hàng này lại đóng tài khoản của mọi người?

为什么这个银行应用程序会关闭人们的账户？

Challenge Chime wanted an error monitoring solution that would work with React Native, unify its error management across platforms, and ensure stable experiences for iOS and Android users. Results Chime benefits from complete clarity during app releases with Bugsnag’s stack traces, filtering, and Stability Center, which enable complete error monitoring and fast debugging to ensure app stability and lower crash rates**.** Chime Aims to Stabilize User Experiences and Lower Crash Rates Founded in 2012, Chime is a technology company that believes banking should be helpful and easy. Chime offers mobile access to banking services provided by its partner banks to provide members with a Spending Account, optional Savings Account, and Chime Visa ® Debit Card. Members can also access SpotMe for no overdraft fees and receive their paychecks up to two days early. Over two years ago, Chime consolidated its Android and iOS mobile app development on the React Native (RN) platform. Chime’s mobile engineers recognized the need for a stability management solution that would work seamlessly with RN and provide more details than the typical error monitoring tool. “We wanted to track crash rates to make sure we improved the stability of the product over time,” states an engineering manager on the spending and savings team. “We wanted to track crash rates to make sure we improved the stability of the product over time.” – Engineering Manager, Chime Shift to React Native Required Support From an Error Monitoring Solution When Chime originally launched its services, the company developed separate Android and iOS mobile apps. Approximately four years later, the decision was made to move to the React Native platform to consolidate engineering efforts and deliver a unified member experience. By enabling engineers to work on both iOS and Android apps, Chime could align its development around product features rather than app platforms and thereby deliver the same features to all customers faster. Hand-in-hand with this decision was the need to find an error monitoring solution that could handle RN apps. Chime did not want to rely solely on the built-in app store tools. Not only would it be more difficult to track crashes and monitor unexpected errors, but some errors are platform-specific. The team wanted a solution that would bring all bugs together in a single monitoring location and provide stack traces. A mobile engineer recommended that Chime evaluate Bugsnag. As the only error monitoring solution that supports RN, Bugsnag aggregates errors across iOS and Android platforms and provides the level of detail that the mobile engineers wanted. Today, Bugsnag is used across product teams within Chime. “With React Native, the same developers are working on both platforms. If we used only the built-in tools with the Play Store or Apple Store, it would be more difficult to track the crashes,” an engineering manager explains. “With Bugsnag, we have one very useful tool where we can see both sides.” Bugsnag Enables Release Stability and Control Over All Error Types Bugsnag is used by Chime for monitoring release rollouts and for debugging. As each new release goes out, mobile engineers use filters to find any spikes in errors, determine what they are, how many events have happened, and how many users are impacted. Bugsnag supports error data on Android’s ANR (Application Not Responding), Chime includes them in its crash rates. “Anything that detracts from the customer experience is really important to us. That’s why we think of crashes and ANRs similarly and include ANRs in our crash rate,” explains an engineering manager. “Beyond monitoring crashes, we’re able to monitor when unexpected errors come through and handle those gracefully,” a software engineer states. “It gives us deeper control over what’s erroring out in the app and provides stack trace along those lines as well.” The team uses stack traces to view the line of code where the app crashed, breadcrumbs as a secondary method to narrow down unhandled crashes, and custom data in the Bugsnag error reports to group errors and debug. Chime Decreases Crash Rate and Saves Debugging Time With Bugsnag Since using Bugsnag, Chime has exceeded its software stability goals. Engineers are able to maintain a healthy application stability score and spend less time investigating and fixing bugs. “It’s a helpful tool,” says a Chime software engineer, recognizing Bugsnag as playing a role in that accomplishment. “Bugsnag accelerates the debugging process,” adds an engineering Manager. Adding custom metadata in Bugsnag has been particularly useful to Chime as it provides more context behind crashes. Chime is focused on developing a deep understanding of what its members are encountering in the app and providing the best experience possible. Chime also benefits from Bugsnag integrations with Jira and Slack for seamless ticketing, communication, and monitoring of its app store ratings. “It’s a great tool for delivering a better customer experience, making the app more stable, and taking pride in your application as an engineer.” – Software Engineer, Chime

How to Reduce Your Crash Rate 

Transcendence Volume I, Book 1: Introduction

Crypto Market Recap: 04/02 Buckle up because the crypto market this week was a wild ride, even for seasoned investors. Bitcoin (BTC), fresh off its best monthly close ever, took a surprising 4% tumble, failing to recapture the glory of that milestone. This price swing highlights the ever-present tension in the crypto sphere: fear of missing out (FOMO) battling with the fear of losing money. So, what spooked Bitcoin this time? Imagine a tug-of-war between scaredy-cat sellers and optimistic buyers. This week, the sellers gained some ground, pulling the price down towards the $60,000 mark. That once-tempting $70,000 target suddenly seemed out of reach for BTC. But here's the twist: despite the early weakness, some investors saw an opportunity. These shrewd players, often referred to as "smart money,"  placed large bids (over $150 million!) at the $62,000 mark. Are they onto a bargain? Perhaps. Or maybe they're just overconfident, a bias we humans are all susceptible to. Overconfidence can cloud judgment, leading us to believe we've outsmarted the market – a dangerous trap in the ever-volatile world of crypto. Beyond Bitcoin: XRP Feels the Heat While Bitcoin grabbed the spotlight, other cryptocurrencies felt the heat this week. XRP, for example, took a 5.5% dive to $0.59. Here, it seems external factors might be playing a role.  Factors contributing to the drop included strong U.S. manufacturing data impacting the trajectory of the Federal Reserve's interest rate reductions. This is a classic case of how external noise can disrupt our investment decisions. We get bombarded with information, and sometimes, it's easy to get caught up in the frenzy and forget about the bigger picture. Did the fundamentals of XRP change? Not necessarily. But the market reacted to the broader economic climate, reminding us that cryptocurrencies aren't isolated ecosystems. The Crypto Market Petri Dish The crypto market is a fascinating blend of innovation and human behavior. Regulatory battles, whale movements (those holding massive amounts of crypto), and even celebrity drama all add to the mix. It's a world where fortunes can be made and lost in a blink and where understanding our own biases is just as important as understanding the tech. This week, for instance, we saw the Tron Foundation push back against a lawsuit by the U.S. SEC, highlighting the ongoing regulatory uncertainty surrounding the crypto space. This is a crucial reminder that the rules of the game can change quickly, and investors need to stay informed about these developments. Further complicating the picture, Tether, a controversial stablecoin issuer, made a significant Bitcoin purchase, adding fuel to the speculation about its reserves. And as if on cue, former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried chimed in, defending his actions after a prison sentence. Market Snapshot (April 2, 2024): $2,677,124,123,446.54 (reflecting the overall value of the cryptocurrency market) Total Market Cap: $98,682,935,541.67 (indicating the amount of crypto traded in the last 24 hours) Total Trading Volume: Looking at Major Cryptocurrencies: Downward trend with a 24-hour price change of -2.05%. Market cap of $1,365,266,570,137.60 and a trading volume of $35,060,909,934.35 suggest high liquidity and active trading, possibly indicating cautious or negative investor sentiment. Bitcoin (BTC): Downward trend with a 24-hour price change of -3.25%. High liquidity and active trading are suggested by its market cap of $419,551,638,720.56 and trading volume of $16,106,676,738.21, which may indicate cautious or negative investor sentiment. Ethereum (ETH): : This is on a downward trend, with a 24-hour price change of -4.57%. With a market cap of $86,279,700,831.28, it signifies its standing in the market. The trading volume of $2,143,468,824.95 indicates high liquidity and active trading. This may indicate cautious or negative investor sentiment. BNB (BNB) : Is on a downward trend with a 24-hour price change of -6.25%. With a market cap of $84,561,539,794.19, it signifies its standing in the market. The trading volume of $3,828,077,113.58 indicates high liquidity and active trading. This may indicate cautious or negative investor sentiment. SOL (Solana) : Is on a downward trend with a 24-hour price change of -2.38%. With a market cap of $33,820,280,805.71, it signifies its standing in the market. The trading volume of $1,784,375,678.55 indicating high liquidity and active trading. This may indicate cautious or negative investor sentiment. XRP (XRP) Other major cryptocurrencies like USDC, DOGE, ADA, and AVAX all followed the downward trend this week, with price drops ranging from 4% to 6%. While trading volume suggests some continued activity, the overall sentiment seems cautious. Here's the takeaway: the crypto market is complex, but we humans are even more so.  The next time you're thinking about entering the crypto arena, take a deep breath, do your research, and remember:  beware of emotional impulses and focus on the fundamentals. The crypto world is a thrilling but  unforgiving frontier, and a little healthy skepticism can go a long way.

Crypto Market Recap: XRP Feels the Heat

"The most effective debugging tool is still careful thought, coupled with judiciously placed print statements." -- Brian Kernighan. Cutting a patient open and using print for debugging used to be the best way to diagnose problems. If you still advocate either one of those as the superior approach to troubleshooting, then you're either facing a very niche problem or need to update your knowledge. This is a frequent occurrence, e.g., this recent tweet: This specific tweet got to the HN front page, and people chimed in with that usual repetitive nonsense. No, it’s not the best way for the vast majority of developers. It should be discouraged just as surgery should be avoided when possible. Fixating on print debugging is a form of a mental block; debugging isn’t just stepping over code. It requires a completely new way of thinking about issue resolution. A way that is far superior to merely printing a few lines. Before I continue, my bias is obvious. I and I . This is a pet peeve of mine. , wrote a book about debugging blog about it a lot I want to start with the exception to the rule, though: when do we need to print something... Logging is NOT Print Debugging! One of the most important debugging tools in our arsenal is a logger, but it is not the same as print debugging in any way: Logger Print Permanence of output Permanent Ephemeral Permanence in code Permanent Should be removed Globally Toggleable Yes No Intention Added as part of design Added ad-hoc A log is something we add with forethought. We want to keep the log for future bugs and might even want to expose it to the users. We can control its verbosity often at the module level and can usually disable it entirely. It’s permanent in code and usually writes to a permanent file we can review at our leisure. Print debugging is code we add to locate a temporary problem. If such a problem has the potential of recurring, then a log would typically make more sense in the long run. This is true for almost every type of system. We see developers adding print statements and removing them constantly instead of creating a simple log to track frequent problems. There are special cases where print debuggings makes some sense, in mission critical embedded systems a log might be impractical in terms of device constraints. Debuggers are awful in those environments, and print debugging is a simple hack. Debugging system-level tools like a kernel, compiler, debugger, or JIT can be difficult with a debugger. Logging might not make sense in all of these cases, e.g., I don’t want my JIT to print every bytecode it’s processing and the metadata involved. Those are the exceptions, not the rules. Very few of us write such tools. I do, and even then, it’s a fraction of my work. For example, when working at Lightrun, I was working on a production debugger. Debugging the agent code that’s connected to the executable was one of the hardest things to do. A mix of C++ and JVM code that’s connected to a completely separate binary... Print debugging of that portion was simpler, and even then, we tried to aim towards logging. However, the visual aspects of the debugger within the server backend and the IDE were perfect targets for the debugger. Why Debug? There are three reasons to use a debugger instead of printouts or even logs: Features - modern debuggers can provide spectacular capabilities that are unfamiliar to many developers. Sadly, there are very few debugging courses in academia since it’s a subject that’s hard to test. Low overhead - in the past, running with the debugger meant slow execution and a lot of overhead. This is no longer true. Many of us use the debug action when launching an application instead of running, and there’s no noticeable overhead for most applications. When there is overhead, some debuggers provide means to improve performance by disabling some features. Library code - a debugger can step into a library or framework and track the bug there. Doing this with print debugging will require compiling code that you might not want to deal with. I dug into the features I mentioned in my book and series on debugging (linked above), but let’s pick a few fantastic capabilities of the debugger that I wrote about in the past. For the sake of positive dialog, here are some of my top features of modern debuggers. Tracepoints Whenever someone opens the print debugging discussion, all I hear is, “I don’t know about tracepoints”. They aren’t a new feature in debuggers, yet so few are aware of them. A tracepoint is a breakpoint that doesn’t stop. It just keeps running. Instead of stopping, you can do other things at that point, such as print to the console. This is similar to print debugging, only it doesn’t suffer from many of the drawbacks: no runtime overhead, no accidental commit to the code base, no need to restart the application when changing it, etc. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXRqKqSp7x0&embedable=true Grouping and Naming The previous video/post included a discussion of grouping and naming. This lets us group tracepoints together, disable them as a group, etc. This might seem like a minor feature until you start thinking about the process of print debugging. We slowly go through the code, adding a print and restarting. Then suddenly, we need to go back, or if a call comes in and we need to debug something else... When we package the tracepoints and breakpoints into a group, we can set aside a debugging session, much like we set aside a branch in version control. It makes it much easier to preserve our train of thought and jump right back to the applicable lines of code. Object Marking When asked about my favorite debugging feature I’m always conflicted, ... It seems like a simple thing; we can mark an object, and it gets saved with a specific name. Object Marking is one of my top two features However, this is a powerful and important feature. I used to write down the pointers to objects or memory areas while debugging. This is valuable as sometimes an area of memory would look the same but would have a different address, or it might be hard to track objects with everything going on. Object Marking allows us to save a global reference to an object and use it in conditional breakpoints or for visual comparison. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGjVVKCNosM&embedable=true Renderers My other favorite feature is ; it lets us define how elements look in the debugger watch area. Imagine you have a sophisticated object hierarchy but rarely need that information... A renderer lets you customize the way IntelliJ/IDEA presents the object to you. the renderer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaUf8KXHsd0&embedable=true Tracking New Instances One of the often overlooked capabilities of the debugger is . A Java debugger can show you a searchable set of all object instances in heap, that is a fantastic capability that can expose unintuitive behavior But it can go further, it can track new allocations of an object and provide you with the stack to the applicable object allocation. memory tracking https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFOFOEg2W4k&embedable=true Tip of the Iceberg I wrote a lot about debugging, so there’s no point in repeating all of it in this post. If you’re a person who feels more comfortable using print debugging, then ask yourself this: why? Don’t hide behind an out-of-date Brian Kernighan quote. Things change. Are you working in one of the edge cases where print debugging is the only option? Are you treating logging as print debugging or vice versa? Or is it just that print debugging was how your team always worked, and it stuck in place? If it’s one of those, then it might be time to re-evaluate the current state of debuggers. Also published . here

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chime.com

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Since 2012

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