Web3 Galaxy Brain 🌌🧠

Today, I'm joined by Vivian Phung. Viv is the 23 year old solo founder of Snowball, a Web3 dev tools provider focused on mobile apps and webapps. Snowball's first product, Igloo, will give developers a simple solution for SSO authentication, AA smart wallet, and onramping in one SDK. Igloo is currently in private alpha on testnet. Prior to starting Snowball, Viv was co-founder of Dora, a multichain block explorer search engine, and she was an engineer on the Instagram feed team before that. In this conversation, Viv and I dive into the challenges facing mobile crypto app developers today, her approach to smart wallets, and her ambition to create the Vercel for mobile crypto devs. It's always fun getting to meet a dynamic and relentless founder as Viv, especially at such an early stage in the company's journey. Her persistence and enthusiasm are inspiring. I hope you enjoy the show. 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. Links Igloo demo @snowballtools @vivianphung Lit Protocol Alchemy AA SDK EIP-7212 roundtable on Web3 Galaxy Brain Chapters (00:00:00) Introduction (00:01:37) What is Snowball? (00:04:17) Passkeys, a replacement for passwords (00:07:00) Challenges with passkeys today (00:08:40) Passkey Smart Wallet UX, explained (00:12:40) MPC (Multi-Party Computation) and DKG (Distributed Key Generation) (00:15:20) Turnkey (00:16:40) Snowball's AA providers: Alchemy, Fun (00:17:30) Facilitating mobile dapp development (00:18:55) The EU will jailbreak iOS 2024 (00:20:40) Viv's background building apps: College programs, Eventbrite, Apple, Facebook (00:24:00) Apple: Passionate cult-like culture, intense work, codename database (00:26:20) Facebook: Open, strong intern program (00:28:00) Instagram: Building multifeed (00:30:00) Working in Web2 vs Web3: Dora (00:32:05) Mobile dapp dev is too hard right now, everyone rebuilding the same tooling (00:36:50) Session keys (00:41:40) Embedded app-specific wallets vs shared wallets (00:45:20) WebAuthn Passkey UX challenges: Create vs Authenticate (00:51:30) EIP-7212 (00:52:30) Viv on gaming (00:54:00) Appchains and gas subsidies (00:58:00) Where to find Snowball and Viv

Today, I'm joined by Gami. Gami is a crypto creator and the founder of GnarsDAO, the skateboarding-centric nounish community. Gami is one of a small number of practitioners in an emerging discipline that I call "crypto production." Gami led the creation of several onchain happenings, including GnarsDAO, a DAO dedicated to onboarding skaters to Web3, Forgeries, a nounish open edition and onchain Noun raffle, as well as an arts patronage dao, an onchain tontine, and much more. In this episode, Gami and I discuss his creative practice, and how he manages to be so prolific. We discuss his positive sum philosophy, his belief that crypto is a counter cultural movement, and his collaborative working relationships with Iain Nash, Volkey, and 0xlght. It was great getting a chance to chat with Gami, who is doing fascinating work summoning onchain happenings with social media and the blockchain. His perspectives on leadership were particularly surprising and exciting. I learned a lot from Gami in this call. I hope you enjoy the show. 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. Links Gami.wtf GnarsDAO Omega Build Hypercommons Tings Tontine Art Haus That's Gnarly Nouns HD Forgeries team on Def.Crypto (Youtube) Hyperstructures Embryonic Lght on Mirror Chapters (00:00:00) Introduction (00:01:32) Welcome Gami (00:04:30) Gami's origins (00:10:02) Online events that bring people together (00:13:00) "Everything is about context" (00:15:05) Crypto facilitates social interactions because onchain activity is verifiable kinship (00:18:00) Embracing transient events in an immutable medium (00:19:49) Hyperrealism: High fidelity representations are nevertheless representations; blockchains are one medium for recording history (00:24:15) Forgeries: Working with Iain Nash, Emre, Jordan and others (00:29:16) Raffle protocol omega.build (00:31:20) Open edition sketching, minimum viable ideas, Jack Butcher (00:34:30) How GnarsDAO got its start (00:36:30) Volkey (00:37:30) How to find collaborators (00:39:35) Hypercommons: Positive sum world (00:47:15) Branding, "SubDAOs," and the relationship between genesis DAOs and their offspring (00:51:28) Gnars, skating, and its brand (00:53:20) Shademark (00:56:35) How do you design projects so you can be prolific without becoming burdened with too much accumulated responsibility over time? (01:00:00) TimShel collaboration (01:02:40) Distributed data systems (01:04:46) Derek Sivers' video: Lessons in Leadership. The first follower is the CEO. (01:06:45) Domain names, ENS, and new ideas (01:10:15) Change in Gami's style after discovering Nouns. Lower fidelity artwork is easier to remix (01:12:00) Always leaning into creating (01:14:00) Private twitter, Twemex, Nicholas's twitter extension ideas (01:18:00) Reserved issuance in Nounish DAOs (01:21:00) Nouns HD on Zora and Base (01:24:40) Crypto producers inspire and relinquish ownership (01:27:00) 0xLght; Crypto as a countercultural movement (01:31:32) Limitations of the Twitter Algorithm hinder tweet engagement and reach (01:32:37) Algorithms vs curation, and freedom (01:39:08) Curating and letting go (01:45:15) Deviating from the original idea: That's Gnarly, a platform for extreme athletes (01:51:04) Gnars' values

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. Links EIP-7212⁠ Igloo tools wallet demo Alembic wallet demo EIP-7212 Ethereum Magicians Thread A Tale of Two Curves by Lionello Lunesu (2016) EIP-101 Satoshi’s Genius: Unexpected Ways in Which Bitcoin Dodged Some Cryptographic Bullets by Vitalik Buterin (2013) evm.codes page on Precompiled Contracts Safari 17 largeBlob KZG Ceremony Passkey Signer Package post by rishotics on Eth Research Progressive precompiles via CREATE2 shadowing on Ethereum Magicians Apple: About the security of passkeys Chapters (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

My guest today is Henri Stern, CEO of Privy. Privy is an authentication and embedded wallet SDK. With Privy, dapp developers can allow their users to sign in with their existing wallet, or generate an embedded wallet associated with an email, SMS, or SSO provider such as AppleID or Gmail. Privy's embedded wallet powers friend.tech, the breakout social dapp launched in August 2023. With Privy, friend.tech generates a new embedded wallet for each user that signs in, allowing the PWA dapp to sign transactions at the click of an HTML button element — no WalletConnect back-and-forth required. Privy's 2/3 Shamir wallet option allows dapp developers to create self-custody wallets for their users, while Privy provides a password-protected recovery services in case users should lose access to their account or device. On this episode we discuss Henri's experience studying under Dan Boneh, working on Filecoin at Protocol Labs with Juan Benet, and building Privy. We explore the ins-and-outs of Privy's embedded wallet architecture and discuss what's next in wallets. It was a pleasure diving into the emerging embedded wallet and account abstraction smart wallet stack with Henri, who is a clear thinker and humble decentralization minded builder. I hope you enjoy the show. 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. Links @nnnnicholas on Twitter @henri_stern on Twitter Privy Architecture docs Henri's EthCC 2023 talk Courtyard.io Dan Boneh Shibuya POAP CabinDAO EIP-1193 Timestamps: (00:00:00) Introduction (00:05:01) Protocol labs, and how Privy started (00:09:38) Heterogeneous wallets cater to diverse user expectations. (00:12:13) Product decision made, focus on embedded wallets - Building stable wall connectors and library is difficult. (00:21:11) Wallet authentication process: SMS verification and key sharing. (00:25:14) Web tokens authenticate user and holder. Off share only accessible by user. Single device operations with iframe and key. Typical 90% usage scenario. (00:29:48) Privy uses hardware security module. It encrypts recovery shares and tracks devices for added security. (00:43:43) Fear of EOA, comparing Shamir and multi sig. (00:47:21) Account abstraction allows for smart wallets. (00:54:43) Main NetEase locked in app, no control. (01:00:48) Exciting fintech innovations cater to diverse users. (01:04:19) Balancing user control while empowering developers and users. (01:08:25) Enabling interoperable wallets in the Web3 space. (01:13:35) Few relevant DeFi apps; WalletConnect is problematic. (01:23:46) Apple offers secure self-custody wallets with social recovery. (01:26:01) Privy is a secure cross-platform custodian.

My guests today are John C. Palmer, Steve Klebanoff, and Danny Aranda, founding members of PartyDAO, creators of the Party Protocol. Party is a dapp for onchain group coordination. With Party, a small group of friends or a large group of strangers can come together to raise funds and buy an NFT, trade tokens, or complete any other onchain activity together. Party is a group wallet with onchain governance, designed to allow parties of people to move quickly and get things done onchain. On this episode, John, Danny and Steve explain how they have expanded Party's purview from the original Partybid group NFT purchasing experience, to the Party Protocol, which is more flexible. The new Party allows people to crowdfund ETH without a predefined acquisition target, or sell party memberships as timed and limited editions. Operators, a new feature launched just one day before this recording, solves a sticky problem familiar to multisig signers and onchain DAO members alike. When coordinating to execute time sensitive onchain transactions like a DEX token swap, Safe multisigs and Governor DAOs often have difficulty, as the swap orders they collectively approve expire and would revert, by the time constituents have signed the transaction or voted on the proposal. Party Operators allow party members to vote on an intent, which describes parameters like the tokens to be swapped and an acceptable exchange rate, as well delegate execution of the swap to qualified party members. Operators separate voting on transaction intents from their execution, solving the delays that plague existing onchain coordination schemes. Towards the end of the call we talk about the brand vision, values, and aesthetic choices the team has made, which represent a unique perspective amongst their peers. It's always a great time getting together with the PartyDAO crew to discuss their perspective and approach to building tasteful crypto products. I hope you enjoy the show. 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. Links Hosted by @nnnnicholas Party.app PartyDAO Github Party Protocol Docs Party Notion John's Multiplayer alignment matrix Chapters (00:00:00) Introduction (00:09:37) Two axes of coordination in crypto: on-chain/off-chain, economic/social. (00:11:50) Categories of on-chain coordination (00:20:36) Group bids to fractionalize NFTs (00:25:24) Introducing new protocol with diverse use cases. (00:33:07) 3 components of the product: group formation, decision-making, execution. (00:39:16) Party can be used for group activities like trading NFTs. (00:41:47) Ethereum group solutions for regular consumers. (00:50:02) New proposal type separates consensus and execution. (00:52:18) Three parts: UX, gas cost, security risk (00:57:50) Intense conversation about general intent and behavior. (01:02:32) Choosing qualified executors and protecting best interests. (01:09:47) Consumer-focused crypto product. (01:23:46) Open-source protocol seeks developers for collaboration. (01:29:56) Using ETH to fund proposals. (01:33:03) Party fund projects, release NFTs (01:36:43) Crypto parties generate revenue through competition.

Paul Razvan Berg, a longtime Solidity developer and co-founder of Sablier, discusses his influential open source repos, testing in Foundry, and the recently launched v2 of Sablier. He also talks about PRBProxy as a great update to Maker's DSProxy. They explore Layer 2 technology, math libraries, and the BTT model for testing smart contracts. They delve into formal verification, lock-up streaming, applications of Sablier, staking NFTs, and building lending protocols. A fascinating conversation!

My guest today is Tom S. Lehman, who goes by Middlemarch on Twitter. Tom is the creator of Ethscriptions, an NFT standard for inscribing base64 encoded URIs in the data field of EVM transactions. Prior to Ethscriptions, Tom was co-founder and CEO of popular lyrics site and content company Genius. Ethscriptions are inspired both by Bitcion Inscriptions and the Ethereum practice of appending hex encoded UTF-8 strings to the data field of regular transactions, a gesture that has been used by hackers and artists to communicate onchain. The best way to think of Ethscriptions is as an alternative to smart contracts. Instead of executing and verifying logic onchain inside of a function call in an EVM smart contract, Ethscriptions leave the validation of minting and transfer events to offchain indexers, which can follow the protocol's standard to decide whether transactions mutated Ethscription state. Instead of reverting invalid transactions when they're sent, Ethscriptions indexers ignore them, despite their successful inclusion in the chain. This makes Ethscriptions a more Bitcoin-style protocol experiment, where a new software reads new meaning into data stored using existing rudimentary blockchain affordances. At the same time, Ethscriptions is an artistic meditation that questions the presumed legitimacy of L2s and NFT standards like ERC-721, which both make certain assumptions about how meaning should be stored and computed on Ethereum and other EVMs. It was fantastic talking with Tom who is an energetic builder and independent thinker. I hope you enjoy the show. As always, this show is provided for entertainment and education purposes only and does not constitute financial advice or any form of endorsement or suggestion. Crypto is risky and you alone are responsible for doing your research and making your own decisions. Links Ethscriptions.com The infamous TechCrunch Disrupt appearance (2013)

My guest today is Decent co-founder and CTO Will Kantaros. Decent is an NFT service provider that has helped over a thousand creators deploy NFT projects to Polygon and other EVMs. According to Will, hundreds of thousands of collectors have minted over six million NFTs on Decent's contracts. Their new product The Box is a web checkout SDK that lets users pay for Mints and other transactions on one chain, with assets held on another. On this episode, Will and I discuss Decent's evolution from a NFT dev studio into an NFT infrastructure provider, their shifting focus to cross chain interactions, and the infrastructure choices they're making to enable cross chain minting. It was good to get to know Will and hear how they're approaching cross-chain transaction user experience design, which is only becoming more important by the day. I hope you enjoy the show. As always, this show is provided for entertainment and education purposes only and does not constitute financial advice or any form of endorsement or suggestion. Crypto is risky and you alone are responsible for doing your research and making your own decisions. Links Decent Uniswap Foundation Bridge Assessment Report Decent's The Box Docs

My guest today is Christian Montoya, Senior Project Manager of Metamask Snaps. Metamask Snaps is a major upgrade to Metamask slated for September 2023. Snaps transforms Metamask into a programmable platform, roughly akin to an App Store. Snaps is an execution environment where third party developeres can, if granted permission by the user, run sandboxed Secure ECMAScript as a user prepares to make a transaction, or periodically in the background. Snaps will debut in the browser extension, but Christian hints in this conversation that Snaps will eventually find their way to the mobile app, too. On this episode, Christian and I discuss what it's like building inside of Metamask and Consensys. Christian fields my various gripes about the Metamask UI with grace. Then we dive into Snaps: the tech stack, it's security, and the user experience affordances it provides third party devs. We cover lots of nitty gritty technical details that shed light on the Metamask Snaps thesis and provide hints at how listeners might start thinking about designing Snaps, which are set to launch imminently. It was great getting to know Christian better and learning about the Snaps project from one of the key people involved. I hope you enjoy the show. As always, this show is provided for entertainment and education purposes only and does not constitute financial advice or any form of endorsement or suggestion. Crypto is risky and you alone are responsible for doing your research and making your own decisions. Links Metamask Snaps documentation Metamask Flask Getting started guide

My guest today is Reservoir founder Peter Watts. Reservoir is an NFT API provider that makes it easy to build cross-chain NFT interactivity into any app. On this episode, Peter shares how he got his start building music and streaming apps and how music NFTs led him to starting Reservoir with a co-founder he had never met in person. We discuss Reservoir's demand driven approach to development prioritization, how they deal with tech debt, and why it is that no one else is making a unified read/write API for cross-chain NFT markets yet. It was fun learning from Peter how Reservoir manages to develop so much tooling accross so many dapps and chains. As always, this show is provided for entertainment and education purposes only and does not constitute financial advice or any form of endorsement or suggestion. Crypto is risky and you alone are responsible for doing your research and making your own decisions. And now, I hope you enjoy the show.