how's it going I'm James here
representing abridged this talk is sort
of it's called beyond burner intuitive
design and incremental decentralisation
so really focused on UX issues bridges
is a development toolkit and we focused
on intuitive design for blocking
applications to onboard new users my
background if you if you've seen me
before I was with the grants team you
may know me from there at the EF but
this is sort of the new project that
I've been working on since April so a
little overview we'll go over what
beyond burner really means the
significance of the application layer
the current state of where we are within
adoption and then what fixing these
issues actually looks like so why beyond
burner so the BR the beyond burner is
the beyond Berger narrative plus the
burner wallet both of these sort of
industries which is the cryptocurrency
space as well as the alternative meets
industry or sort of holistic solutions
that are trying to disrupt incumbent
systems and they sort of face similar
adoption hurdles which is mainly like
unfamiliar like experiences and an
unfamiliar product which is also
somewhat inconvenient for people who
want to get at like use it and they
don't know how so it creates the
unfamiliarity and inconvenience creates
this comfort and friction for their end
users at a high level it's kind of like
I like meat I you know I don't know what
this vegan stuff is and and I don't know
I don't really like the taste of it or
something
for aetherium it's like I don't know
what a private key is what is gas and
why does it take so long to use these
applications on top of that we're also
building somewhat in a desert we don't
really have a lot of user data to pull
from to make many design decisions so
the and then another thing is this is
just another sort of example where we
are aetherium has about 0.01 percent of
the user base of facebook that's the
daily activity users or monthly active
users on meta mask divided by the
monthly active at Facebook and then need
alternatives are sort of significantly
ahead of that with the beyond burger
narrative they've kind of they've gained
a half of a percentage of the market of
the meat industry which is pretty great
so we needs a 50x dough user base in
order to match what they've done there
so again they be on burger a narrative
they kind of broke through that stigma
of meat of imitating that meat flavor so
you can be a mediator go to Burger King
and buy a beyond burger and be as
satisfied and it sort of points to the
fact that users will choose holistic
solutions if it's convenient and
comfortable for them and that's sort of
what we need to get to for aetherium
applications to actually be adopted by
end-users we can't sort of shove this
sort of decentralisation down people's
throats right it's not not as useful and
so the first I think the first real
iteration of this was the burner wallet
with Austin Griffith he kind of made
onboarding a thing a teeth Denver in
2019 that was the largest point-of-sale
system that has been spun up in a
theorem ecosystem since inception it
created instant value for people that
were on the ground that are wanting to
use that network and so how do you
onboard well you have to inspire trust
within your user base and it also has to
be efficient and convenient right the
old paradigm of key management is
challenging I see the future as key
management private key management as
being sort of sub-sect to a new contract
based management system my mom won't
likely ever download a private key most
likely right the new paradigm that we're
suggesting and beyond burner is to use
these burner wallet keys or ephemeral
keys with a contract account and so it's
essentially a multi sitting that you can
control funds with a number of different
keys and all of those
are potentially temporary right so
there's essentially there's sort of
burner keys that are tied to it to a
contract this is a design that's really
been pioneered somewhat by James Young
and this is sort of a quote from hem
programmable money deserves programmable
access which I fully agree and I think
it's a pretty sort of exciting new
frontier to be developed and so why
beyond burner the burner wallet is an
instance of the beyond Berger narrative
and the success of the out beyond Berger
within the etherium ecosystem so why do
we care about mass adoption I think we
need to talk a little bit about the city
was the application layer the
application layer is where value is
delivered to end-users and so that's
really fundamentally important if we
don't have that value delivered all of
the work that we're doing in the back
end with scaling it's charting etc will
go to waste or it's just kind of we're
developing in a silo so what does it
look like today well it's mainly defy
right the killer app of aetherium is
like maker and I SEOs it's it's you know
it's it's pretty maybe prediction
markets but that hasn't really even
really caught on yet so mainly it's like
you're trying to make and save money
the future of aetherium it was is a
different like we have a lot of
idealistic idealistic the philosophies
around the future and your Dean had a
nice little Twitter rampage about about
this obviously so what trolling the idea
of this but a lot of I SEOs did come out
and 2017 very serious about the menteng
new business models around blockchain
around an immutable ledger system to
actually like solve real world problems
we also have the unbanked essentially we
have the potential to create better
systems if we gain this adoption right
and so what does user adoption look like
mainly makes money creates better
systems and that could also mean like
providing knowledge or comfort or like
social belonging dopamine to the
end-user like all of that stuff is is
essentially value for them and fun is
also so we've included in that value
proposition potentially and for
developers if you get user
that means you can actually make money
which is a huge thing because today the
money is really reserved for exchanges
right who no one is making real revenue
aside from exchanges and consultants
more or less right and so that's sort of
the exciting proposition is that you
could make a sustainable ecosystem if
you actually develop systems or
developers are able to build
applications to attract real end-users
and so to the current state of
development where are we so like I
started mentioned earlier we're really
focused on scalability this has been the
Holy Grail and this is probably 90% of
the talks that you've heard at DEFCON
thus far but again we're sort of
building in a desert where we're sort of
siloed we don't have a lot of
interaction within these systems that
were that were coming up with and even
the core of our ecosystem you know we
still haven't adopted
etherium to like pay for things within
our existing infrastructures right and
within the the companies who are really
pioneering this it would be great to
sort of have a bit more dogfooding right
for these things to happen and so I also
propose that we're sort of focused on at
least from a narrative perspective
potentially the back end more than we
need to be because the front end should
be driving the back end solutions this
is another quote from James working with
him it's really great he just has like a
lot of wisdom to share
but don't like the perfect be the enemy
of good
probably not original but attributing it
to him so the current state twenty five
billion dollars was raised in 2017 or
since 2017 there's about ten apps with
20 or 2,000 users each on the daily
again 0.01 percent of the Facebook user
base very few have product market fit if
any so we're well within the chasm right
and the reason for this too is the
developer challenges this is a survey
build by fluence in 2019 if you haven't
seen it
I think it's probably the best UX survey
out there today and they kind of just go
over all of the issues with developing
blocking apps it's it's really difficult
it's you know we're both developing this
new interface and then you have the
tools that you're also developing at the
same time and there's a lot of issues so
again you're coming back to you know
we're sort of forcing private keys down
and users throats more or less this is
also a stat that I saw it on another
presentation that I thought was really
interesting I believe it comes from the
cryptic radius study so how do you fix
in user issues and I'm gonna go back to
onboarding and scaling and MOOC but
focus on that onboarding side because
this is beyond burner again so it's
again focused on that account contract
with ephemeral keys to create a
programmable access of funds and if you
don't have effective onboarding there's
no reason to have a state channel or a
second layer solution there's no there's
no real need for e 2.0 if we don't have
enough end users to drive traffic the
approach to really understand this is
you had to know your user base create
intuitive interfaces and then iterate
with the feedback that you're given and
that a lot of that means to ship quickly
and and gather information as quickly as
possible
mmm and so again sort of iterate why
onboarding sucks it's uncomfortable and
inconvenient primarily and I think
everyone can kind of appreciate that I'm
sure everyone has tried to like talk to
someone like hey yeah that's like great
you know come on to the meta mask or
something and whoever you're talking to
is like now I'm not really sure like
compounds kind of weird I don't really
want to download this thing so
hypothesis that we developed a bridge
was okay if we just use web to like
flows like Atos authentication for
instance we could maybe on board more
users and that could happen and so we
sort of went on a rampage we came with
an SDK in June and on been like
integrated it with as many applications
as we could we hit like eight or nine
essentially and so all of these
applications sort of have a bridge
tooling integrated into it and the most
popular have been Yolo wrecked into
house they actually have real end users
if you want to actually experience what
this account contract assign feels like
definitely check these both out your ex
is just a binary options trading you
know betting platform and then Dow house
is going to be a Dow you spin up a like
the house right so it's they have like
10 different dolls moving along there
which is pretty exciting and what we
found from that is sort of all of this
feedback was that there's two types of
users that you're looking at when you're
developing blockchain applications one
is for web 3 and the others for web - so
like web 3 users are really interested
in you know privacy web 3 provider they
prefer meta mask and self sovereignty of
course it's I spoke with Nate grittier
who is building in what 3 as well and
he's kind of describes as coddling an
ember and a damp forest where you're
just trying to get it to kind of like
keep heating up right and of course he's
like meta mask users for web 2 users
though they kind of they likely don't
care as much they're they're looking for
just like intuitive fun things to use
which burner and like the abridged like
smart contracts or account contracts is
potentially a more viable solution and
so the common denominator everyone wants
a seamless experience they don't want to
think they want to they don't want to
trust what what you're doing and they
don't want to waste time in the
onboarding process otherwise you won't
you won't get there you won't be able to
show the value of what the application
is so to us that looks like at least at
first when someone is getting used to
understanding what decentralization and
what web 3 provides or aetherium offers
no seed phrase download native mobile
apps are really nice all the onboarding
occurs within the application so no
needing to switch screens and then
account recovery options are also
included
within your management system so again
we want to create instant value for the
end-user and the account contracts are
really the way potentially to do that
it's a more flexible way in the
ephemeral Keys essentially the account
contracts is in particular useful these
you can recover your funds and you can
also uniquely permission each key for
different use cases right so each queue
could have different access and this is
sort of what beyond burner really aims
at you have a account contract that has
multiple keys all for different reasons
you have your phone your computer your
guardian your mom or girlfriend or you
know whoever maybe you have a Portis or
tourist integration as well as a sort of
master reset EULA Rex maybe you're
interested in playing you also play gods
unchained and you're part of meta card
data all of those could have different
levels of fund access and that's all
programmable so if you end up losing
your phone thankfully you have all these
other keys that you can build your your
next phone with you can recover your
funds through through a social recovery
process and again this this system has a
lot of possibilities that have yet to be
developed in terms of a planking and
recovery flows so if you're interested
in sort of building that kind of stuff
please come talk to me after this and so
this kind of comes on to incremental
decentralisation again you want to
soften landing pad for users to come
into the ecosystem and sort of
understand what's going on before you
just put them in the deep end and that
comes down to sort of providing that
layer of trust and sort of onboarding
them into something that looks familiar
while also giving them full access of
their funds but but not not showing them
a completely new system at the beginning
and this also to some extent I think
that DAPs
full decentralized full stack
decentralized apps
have a very simple chance of actually
succeeding in the near term it's more
about like aetherium applications where
you have hybrid solutions that are using
like AWS and firebase or you know other
sort of like Simpsons to get things that
people want to use the second piece of
the onboarding puzzle is Fiat ramps of
course and you have like wire moon pay
ramp Network and carbon all these
different solutions that I think they're
all sort of competing the same space
it's really great that that's a
competitive area right now and then
lastly if you have apps you need off
chains actions if you have users or on
your app you you likely need all Change
transactions in order to make a seamless
experience and all these teams are doing
a lot of really great work to provide
like fully decentralized solutions for
days off change transactions at abridge
we actually have a off chain system as
well but but it does have a degree of
trust it's using a central hub that you
could potentially conclude with there's
I'm not going to get too deep into that
but that's that's kind of like
essentially the the idea and so to fix
the UX issues again you just need
onboarding and enough chain transaction
so that's kind of the combination that
you need in order to make a seamless
application flow and if you want to see
another example you can like scan this
app this is actually a native mobile app
I don't know like how many people have
actually used like a native mobile
aetherium app that's not a wallet anyone
ok sweet couple all right
so but this is a native mobile app that
has a account contract as well as the
bridge sort of off chain solution
integrated into it that you can sort of
play around with it's like social
tipping for content so the takeaways
here the theorem is really difficult to
use for a lot of reasons
while decentralization is really really
important it also inhibits to some
extent user adoption if it's going to be
taken to the nth degree from the
beginning there's also really difficult
tools under developed tools to use
within the ecosystem to develop these
applications and we have no user data to
actually say what tools are really
useful right the okay the need to create
trust right we need to create trust for
the end-users through more intuitive
design to make it convenient and
comfortable and programmable access is
potentially a way in which to do this
through account contracts and so I sort
of been proposing the ecosystem should
spend about as much time on this issue
maybe not as much obviously I think the
nuances of connecting 82.0 is going to
be quite a task
but getting nailing down this flow also
requires a significant amount of effort
and iteration and it won't happen
overnight
we need sort of I'm sort of encouraging
pragmatic development and hybrid
architectures and sort of continuing to
ship solutions to gather that user
feedback and and sort of focus on end
users rather than maybe the most
idealistic situation possible so that's
this is me on the Twitter and it's
abridged if you want to check out what
we're doing
yeah that's that'll do
[Applause]
you