Migrating Coinbase's 56 Million Users to React Native: Key Lessons and Takeaways
Are you thinking about migrating a Native mobile app to React Native or building one from scratch? Are you interested in hearing lessons learned from migrating Coinbase's 56 million users from Native to React Native?
Nick Cherry, an Expert React Native developer and former Software Engineer at Coinbase, discusses his experience with React Native performance at Coinbase and his role in porting their Native mobile apps to React Native.
He is interviewed by Harry Tormey, CTO of StepChange, who also worked at Coinbase. Harry contributed as an engineer, developing the company’s first React Native mobile application, and later as an engineering manager, where he trained native mobile engineers and documented details around the companies transition to React Native.
In the interview, Nick discusses the performance challenges encountered with React Native at Coinbase. He highlights issues with re-rendering and the negative impact these had on JavaScript FPS (frames per second). Nick details the solutions they implemented to address these challenges, such as using memoization techniques and stabilizing the data layer to improve performance. Additionally, he compares the performance differences between iOS and Android when using React Native, providing insights into platform-specific optimizations.
Nick talks about his work on the mobile app for Farcaster/Warpcast, a popular decentralized web3 social network which is like a crypto powered combination of Twitter and Reddit. He talks about his transition to working on Farcaster/Warpcast and what being a 'sufficiently decentralized' social network means.
He explains the development process for the Warpcast React Native mobile app, including the use of REST APIs and delegated keys for on-chain interactions. In this conversation, Nick discusses the libraries and tools used in building the Warpcast app, including React Navigation, React Query, and Tailwind CSS.
Nick also talks about the challenges faced during development, such as performance issues and bridging native libraries. The conversation highlights the benefits of using Expo for development and the ability to push OTA updates. Nick shares his advice for starting a new mobile application and mentions the potential role of AI in front-end development and performance optimization.
Our team of experts brings decades of experience with modernizing Postgres and other databases. We’ve scaled applications that served millions of users at Nextdoor, Clubhouse, and Coinbase.
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