foreign
[Music]
for those that don't know I'm Taylor
Monahan uh I'm going to be talking about
the original sin basically some of our
early choices and how they've shaped
this ecosystem and more importantly how
can we make better choices so that the
world is better tomorrow
a little bit about me again my name is
Taylor Monahan I've been in the space
since 2013. I got in right before the
mount gox crash I've been building
wallets since 2015. I started my ether
wallet we then did like a brand Fork
into my crypto and we were acquired by
metamask earlier this year uh it's been
a it's been a ride that's for sure
um but I'm basically like an expert in
how to like build wallets also how not
to build wallets so maybe I can like
share some expertise today
so I have a four-year-old now
and this is one of our favorite books
and it's like quite ironic because uh
it's basically the Story of My Life
uh when I first started out
uh I was just building I was building
something amazing and I think a lot of
you here are probably in the same boat
right you're in the early days you're in
the early stages you're building
something
um inspirational right that's going to
change the world it's going to make uh
people's lives better it's going to make
Society better
um and I hope that you're really proud
of what you're building right like you
you you create something you brought
something new into this world
um and this space specifically is like
truly
remarkable it is next level in terms of
like what we are actually doing and the
impact that our products can have
um these are all of the best web three
words all of the most amazing things
that we can do with the technology and
our products and most importantly like I
think
you know at the end there we have the
inclusive community and we have the
genius people and the Good Vibes like
that's what I'm here for
um
and that's kind of what I like to focus
on most right like when I get on stage I
like to talk about people
because if we only think about the
technology and the products that we're
building
well you're going to end up in this
situation quite a bit
because the second that you sort of um
I don't know
the second year dreams start to come to
fruition the second that everything
starts to line up and you feel like you
might have a grasp on it it really does
seem that then out of nowhere
everything keeps crashing crashing down
because building shift is really really
hard
and especially when you're a wallet and
uh you know you're the product that
people are are using to access and
manage all of their digital assets
it's really hard things come crashing
down a lot
and the worst part of failing
uh like building a good product is
actually like the failing people right
we're failing the newcomers that enter
the space
uh they're getting fished they're
getting scammed
they're optimistic one day
and then they have their hopes in dream
crush the next day
and that's what basically the last I
don't know like seven years of my life
have been right like trying to be better
every single day trying to help people
understand the technology trying to get
people to understand how they can use
this technology to actually improve
people's lives
because this is up sometimes
as hopeful and as optimistic and lovely
and as much as we want to believe that
we are building a better world
it also means that sometimes you have to
face the reality
that our world is one where like
this is money this is people's
livelihoods this is their financial
well-beings this is their families their
mortgages their children's colleges
and this ecosystem specifically the
entire ecosystem from the get-go
has really been uh built on top of these
public-private key pairs like every
single thing that we do traces back to
the private key
and that private key is just like a
single string of characters
and it's so important that um I've spent
countless hours trying to educate people
about the importance of this private key
uh I worked with metamask years ago to
rename it now we call it a secret
recovery phrase
so that we can like hopefully have
people understand the importance of it
and the secretness of it earlier
um but the reality is like the products
that I've built are responsible for a
lot of money getting lost and if we
don't get significantly better and make
web 3 significantly easier to access in
the coming years
it means that the products I build and
we build are going to be responsible for
billions more dollars lost
and that's like a hard thing
to wrap your brain around it's not super
Pleasant uh I would say it's pretty
up
and it's been pretty for a while
actually this is a comment I made in
2018. uh one of the earliest mistakes I
ever made
was when we created my ether wallet we
didn't really understand why you
shouldn't let people enter their private
keys in the browser on a website
and so we did exactly that you would
generate your private key you would
enter it on the website and that's how
you access all of your money
um that was a terrible idea don't do
that seriously don't do that uh
uh this is
this is Dan uh Dan is one of the
founders of metamask uh and he has a bit
more optimistic take right the way he
kind of looks at the world around us and
the things that we're building is uh he
phrases at us we're basically at the
eating poisonous mushrooms phase of
product development and we are all just
leaping we're taking the leap of faith
um hopefully we're coming back and uh
you know letting our product creators
know like what hurt and what didn't what
worked and what didn't and hopefully the
people that are building those products
are listening to the people who are
adventuring out there into the abyss
and updating and improving and iterating
on all of their products so that uh
ultimately it hurts Less in the future
because what we are doing is truly like
a new paradigm like web3 we are really
starting at the ground floor
um we are creating entire new systems
we're creating new tech systems
recruiting new social systems Financial
systems everything is brand new
unfortunately
sometimes these new paradigms just uh
you know they come with some struggles
and I think one thing that it took me
years to really comprehend and really
grock was the fact that there is such a
huge incentive
for Bad actors to get your private key
to get your secret recovery phrase like
it is so huge that
um I don't know hundreds of thousands of
like random scammers around the world
North Korean hackers like literally like
nation-state actors are trying to get
your private keys
and we're building the product that
houses that thing that has all the
people's money
that's cool
over the years we've seen like an
increasing number of scams and Sim swaps
and social engineering phishing
spearfishing account takeovers web 2
account takers web 3 account takeovers
supply chain attacks DNS hijacks bgp
hijacks injection attacks
and even at the root the cryptography
itself we've even screwed that up a
couple of times
resulting in Keys either being stolen uh
or inaccessible
and this incentive is so so so large
like I cannot emphasize the traditional
world just does not operate like this
there's almost nothing in the
traditional world where if you lose it
like that's game over and there's no
like path to recourse like that doesn't
exist
we have so many layers to protect people
uh and in crypto we just don't have
those yet
and the hardest thing about this is the
reality that
truly people don't understand that this
like
this string of characters these like
random numbers and letters or these
words like if they lose that or if it's
stolen it's game over
and increasingly
especially with this last Bull Run it's
not just their eth right it's their
tokens it's their nfts it's their
Collectibles it's their soul bound
tokens
it's access to communities and games
it's
it's everything right it's like
basically turning into their identity
like we're getting dangerously close
to turning that key that that that
string character is that nobody really
understands
into people's identity
and I think that we think a lot about
education we think a lot about ux we
think a lot about the UI we think a lot
about the things that we can do to fix
it
I've given probably like
15 talks covering how you should educate
people more and fix your uis
and it's had
some impact
but not enough
and the thing is is that the people in
this ecosystem are creating real value
and they're creating it so quickly
that I'm not sure that just like
you know updating some copy is going to
cut it
because again at the end of the day the
whole entire ecosystem
is relying on these freaking characters
right this this string this string
that's a private key
don't lose it that's you that's your
identity and all your money and
everything you have in your children's
future don't lose it
uh it might look like this
that's the secret recovery phrase it's
it's it's the same right don't lose that
either
that's everything
it's kind of it's kind of absurd like
when you really just like cut down to
the core of it
it's absurd
and we have such big brains in the space
like truly remarkable Innovation
happening every day
we talk about Game Theory we talk about
incentives we talk about the economics
we talk about so many different things
and yet somehow we haven't really been
able to come to the conclusion that like
hmm maybe we should focus for a second
on how do we actually improve users
lives on the whole at the core protocol
layer right we're like solving
scalability
resolving we have thousands of VIPs
that are solving every single thing
can we do something for like the end
user though that's going to directly
impact their lives and save them
hundreds of millions billions of dollars
over the coming years
because right now migrating all of your
assets from one account to the next is
basically the best thing you've got
earlier this year metamask had 30
million monthly active users
that's a lot of people
there's a lot of private keys out there
with Ethan them
with some asset on any of the other 23
evm compatible chains
tokens nfts non-standard tokens standard
tokens
there's open positions there's open
positions across chains they're
synthetic assets
and right now if you get into the space
and start doing stuff and then something
happens right your computer is hacked
you're physically attacked your entire
infrastructure is taken over by North
Korea
your only path of recourse is to try to
front run the people who have stolen
that that phrase
uh and like move all your stuff really
fast
and that like not only is is absurd uh
it also like it has a real cost like
it's hard it's stressful uh it's time
consuming
um it punishes the people that are most
engaged right so like the people that we
want in this ecosystem the most the ones
that are like total d-gens right
it's punishing those people because when
something happens which it will they are
the ones who have to spend the most
amount of time and the most amount of
real money
to move their assets
and frankly it should not be like this
because we can do better because this
entire ecosystem builds magical all
day every day we literally create
billions of dollars out of thin air like
nothing
we can do this
it's like it's it's it's quite
remarkable how Limitless our
imaginations are
in some ways and how limited we seem to
be in the other ways
so this
is the original set
we need to understand collectively
whether you're building wallets whether
you're building
smart wallets dumb wallets
whether you're building jobs
whatever you're doing
whatever layer you're stuck you're in
we are responsible for what we create
we're responsible
for how that impacts people's lives
technology is incredibly incredibly
powerful but it is not like the end-all
be a solution
we can't just like put technology or
code like in a bubble and say like oh
that's just that thing over there uh
it's immoral it's a political it's it's
like just this thing
what we're building is is not about
I don't know whatever's on your landing
page right like what we're building
uh is trying to make people's lives
better make society's lives better uh
what we're trying to do is solve really
messy problems social problems we're
trying to improve how people can
coordinate with one another
we're trying to allow people to take
control over their lives and their
futures
and not be restricted by
some government some State some
Corporation
and in order to do that like we really
need to Value people and we should be
putting people and the problems that
people are are encountering every single
day sort of front and center like what
are we doing to fix that
and our products are a mechanism that we
use the technology is is the tool
but the choices
those are ours
and those have to be about people and
they cannot shy away from the hard
things
this book is really real guys I highly
recommend it
all right so
new paradigms
this is a new world we are actually
successfully creating a new world we
have successfully onwarded a remarkable
millions and millions and millions of
millions of people into this new world
we have successfully just intermediated
a ton of things we've given people
control full control where nothing can
stop them
what we need to be heading towards
is saying that this stuff this key this
whatever you want to call it right
whatever it turns into tangibly this is
mine
right when we talk about identity when
we talk about our things it's mine
what we should be striving for is it
cannot be hacked or stolen because it's
mine
I have full control over it
I can use it I can access it
I can revoke it right if I think it
might be compromised I can be like oh
let's just pause for a second and
reevaluate the situation let's not let
those hackers take that thing
and then once I've uh secured the
perimeter I can recover it
the things that I do
they don't just happen on my behalf but
I'm giving my full consent
that consent has to be informed like I
have to know what I'm consenting to
um I have to have a choice in that right
I can choose to consent or to not
consent
because ultimately
we all need to choose how we interact
with the world
and also
how we impact the world
because it's our choices that shape this
world every single choice that we make
so they're sorry there are there are a
couple eips out there that are trying to
tackle this problem
I am not
going to uh say which one is best I
think that the solution is probably
not one of these it's probably a few
more conversations some online debates
and whatever evolves from that
I trust the big brains to figure it out
but these are the ones that'll get you
started they're the most recent ones if
you want to go down the rabbit hole
there's like 10 other ones that that
really did some deep research but these
are the ones that are kind of out there
right now erc4337
this is sort of operating
um it doesn't require a protocol change
it'll be uh implemented probably by
flashbots it gives some quote-unquote
account abstraction stuff
then you have 3074 this is the one that
um if you have an account right you have
a private key right now you can delegate
control
uh that's like sort of one half of it
right like when we talk about key
rotation or key revocation or key
recovery uh it's you know you have to
like assign that Authority somewhere
else and then the original thing you
want to like revoke The Authority uh
3074 is the one where you can like it's
the rules for how to delegate
and then erp5003 is a new one
I think we're calling it auth usurp
um
this is a basically you're gonna deploy
some like code uh we imagine that in the
beginning it'll be some simple code but
it'll basically take your current
account your current private key and
it'll give it some like smart contract
abilities
503 really makes sense with 3074 it
doesn't really there's better ways to do
it without 3074.
um but most importantly there's a lot of
mechanisms and a lot of things we can
learn from all the history and all the
research that's been done the
conversations that have happened around
these
uh and we can talk and discuss and put
our big brains together
to hopefully come up with a really
strong powerful
solution that will actually serve
real people
because that's the goal
we can do anything we want
and the most important thing that we do
is continue to dream
don't be limited by some
I don't know
uh
stupid tweetable phrase like code is law
don't have your imaginations limited by
uh this ecosystems obsession with uh
immutability or like trying to put
technology and code over here
and pretending that's separate from the
people over here
everything has to work together
right the whole system is where the
magic comes from
and so we all have to work together we
have to use the tools available to us we
have to use each other
we have to collaborate
right we have to get really really
creative
and we can't be
we can't be limited by anything
all right so I encourage every single
one of you
to keep on dreaming because that's the
only way that we're ever going to build
a better world
and we're well on our way
the amount of people that are actually
using this this technology that we're
building
it's truly impressive I never thought
that we would get here
but I do hope that we're going to be
able to make some
real improvements
before the next wave because as of right
now we're simply not ready
for 100 million or a billion people
to have their identities
tied to that single string of characters
all right
I also have to show some stuff okay so
uh for those that don't know I'm at
venomous metamouse is part of consensus
consensus has a ton of amazing things
going on one of them is Village doll so
remember I was talking about like you
know uh incentives and getting people
working together and collaborating so
that like everyone can be better and
more empowered village now is one of our
various attempts to do this it's really
really exciting whereas is villaged out
in the house
Make some noise
find them they're freaking cool uh
they'll explain everything to you uh
it's a really it's it's it's such a cool
initiative uh and
yeah I'm so excited okay next uh infuria
you know that evil centralized thing
that the whole ecosystem is relying on
and it's gonna be our deaf yeah no it's
well on its way to being decentralized
we could not be more excited EG and the
team have been working on this for God
as long as I've known him and I've known
him since like 2016. it's been crazy
um but we are actually making moves
there that's a QR code I don't know
where that QR code goes to but I assume
it'll give you more information
or maybe
a party favor I don't know find out uh
isn't Vera in the house
it's Patrick here oh okay okay they'll
explain to you but all I want to say is
that we are committed to building a
decentralized world right we really are
and last but not least wear snaps
okay we all lost announce people here
metamask this is the future of metamask
I know every single person in this room
has some problem with metamask
I have problems with my mask
I sit there and I go like why do you do
this to me metamask
and I'm building metamask
and then I tell people to fix it and
then like
I yell at metamask more I know that
you've all been in this boat with me
metamask is actually the solution now
because we can't keep making metamask
bigger we can't keep running around like
doing whatever Taylor says to do and I
think that's not scalable uh we are
building for billions of people what
snaps does is it enables every single
person to extend the metamask
functionality so instead of metamask
having to like build and maintain
something for your custom thing and try
to keep up with this ecosystem that
moves so freaking fast
what we're going to do is we're going to
put the power in the Builder's hands to
actually extend metamask to better serve
you as the Builder and also better serve
your users
because you actually know best right
we we can grow our team bigger and
bigger and bigger and we still won't be
able to keep up because the Innovation
that is happening in this ecosystem is
so so remarkable
and that's what snaps aims to do it aims
to give everyone the builders the smart
big brains in the room the power to make
metamask work better for you
uh like you heard earlier there's a
bunch of snaps people here if you're a
builder and you're frustrated with
metamask talk to them they they will
explain it all to you
and that's all I've got just want to say
thank you
amazing that was a excellent talk we
have time for just one question if
anybody has a quick question if so
please raise your hand and we'll get a
mic to you ASAP
do I see a hand
I saw one and then I went down there we
go just I'm just blind
the lights are crazy
yeah hello um just a quick question uh
what would you what will be your perfect
world for perfect users uh a perfect
user system for you
because of like the accounts and the
private Keys yes yeah for example on
what thing can we back the user's
information so right now we in the
physical world we back up with the
people's bodies I know that person
because I see that person physically
beside me so I will need something
something based on the physicality of
the person or something like a second
like a second degree second
Factor authentication but then
yeah so the reason why I kind of shy
away from
um saying like this one technology this
one thing or this one thing that these
one groups of people or the standards
body is working on is like the solution
is that I think
um frankly I think it's ignorant to
think that like any one party or any one
group of people can serve like the
entire world perfectly and especially at
the pace of innovation that we're seeing
um I think that there's like a couple
important factors and I think the
conversation is often marred in this
like like account abstraction is the
word if you want to Google it like
ethereum account abstraction you can get
the whole history it's it's such a big
thing it has so many goals at this point
but the thing that I'm most focused on
is like
um I think we need to provide a
migration path for users that is uh as
cheap as possible so not migrating on
their assets but going from whatever
this old way of doing things to the new
way of doing things has of a low cost
secondly I think that
um people should be able to like revoke
whether that's like permissions or their
entire key or whatever it may be they
should be able to say like no that's not
valid anymore that's not me anymore
um and then I think that obviously uh
there's
in order to make those two happen there
has to be some delegation some
permissioning system something where uh
because like if you revoke all the
permissions
then you don't have any you can't do
anything so you have to like give them
somewhere else and there's there's a ton
of people that have been doing a ton of
work on this over the years the ethereum
account interaction research is in
conversations like those that's one
thing but if you look at decentralized
identity which has been a decades-long
effort by some remarkable organizations
around the world that really focused on
this
um that's like a whole another rabbit
hole that you can go down and I will not
pretend to think that uh like I I deeply
understand the this design space as much
as I'm so if this is something that like
really interests you and you want to
start working on it
um I would definitely recommend like
starting there and looking for the
experts and the people who are talking
about it because they are uh way smarter
than me
awesome that's all the time we have
please give Taylor
love you
[Applause]