EIP-7212 with Ulaş Erdoğan, Jerome de Tychey, and Lionello Lunesu

Sep 6, 2023

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Today's episode is all about EIP-7212.

To understand EIP-7212, first we need to talk about Passkeys.

Passkeys are a new authentication standard designed to replace passwords.

With passkeys, when you sign into an app or website, a passkey is generated on your device, and saved either locally, to a passkey manager, or to a hardware device like a Yubikey. Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Mozilla are adopting passkeys because they are more secure than the traditional username and password scheme.

Passkeys use the secp256r1 elliptic curve, or R1 for short. Bitcoin and Ethereum use the incompatible K1 variation. In other words, there is no built-in way to verify an R1 signature inside of a smart contract.

EIP-7212 proposes to add support for the R1 curve directly to the EVM as a precompiled contract, so that every modern device in the world will be able to sign smart wallet transactions natively, no software wallet required.

On today's episode, I'm joined by Ulaş Erdoğan, Jerome de Tychey, and Lionello Lunesu.

Ulaş Erdoğan is the co-author of EIP-7212. He is also the founder of Clave, an account abstraction smart wallet.

Jerome de Tychey is CEO of software dev firm Cometh, which are building AA smart wallets under their Alembic product line. He is also president of Ethereum France, which organizes EthCC.

Lionello Lunesu is an electrical engineer and software developer with experience building software and hardware wallets. Lionello was prototyping and writing about using the R1 curve on the EVM in 2016.

This episode is all about the pros and cons of adding an R1 precompile to the EVM.

This was an exciting conversation about a deep technical topic that could have major implications for mainstream adoption. I'm excited to share this panel, which gives insight into next gen wallet and authentication technology, and the Ethereum Improvement Proposal process. My thanks to Ulaş, Jerome, and Lionello!

As always, this show is provided as entertainment and does not constitute legal, financial, or tax advice or any form of endorsement or suggestion. Crypto has risks and you alone are responsible for doing your research and making your own decisions.

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(00:00:00) Introduction (00:03:38) Lionello Lunesu & The Tale of Two Curves (2016) (00:09:15) Ulaş Erdoğan⁠'s background and founding Clave (00:12:25) Jerome de Tychey's background (00:15:15) Passkeys and EIP-7212 (00:16:40) Why did Satoshi choose K1? (00:19:30) ecrecover (00:22:10) Secure enclaves (00:24:30) What does it mean for an elliptic curve to be compromised? (00:28:20) Which devices support Passkeys? Most! (00:29:00) WebAuthn (00:32:15) Passkey UX on iOS. Why trust Secure enclaves? (00:37:57) Smart wallets help users manage accounts securely. (00:40:00) What does it mean for 7212 to propose a new precompile for r1? (00:42:10) Ledger's smart contract based r1 verification (70k gas). (00:45:00) 7212's precompile executes in native Go or Rust (3405 gas) (00:49:00) Is ECRECOVER dead? Is K1 going away if 7212 is finalized? (00:53:06) Paymasters and gas sponsorship (00:55:10) Verification only requires R and S, while recovery also requires V (01:02:49) Safari 17 introduced largeBlob storage (via dwr.eth) (01:06:30) Current workflow for passkey signer on AA (01:07:20) MPC in the middle, and its advantages (01:09:00) Sessions and AA permissions (01:13:00) Precompiles vs opcodes (01:14:46) Social recovery and the Apple approach (01:18:38) Progressive precompiles