hey everybody my name is Matt slipper
and the CTO co-founder of a company
called key oaken for those of you who
don't know who we are or what we do
we're a full-stack crypto native
software development consultancy we've
worked with a lot of notable people in
the space both on aetherium as well as a
variety of other chains and when I say
full-stack I mean we do everything from
protocol design and development to UI
implementation we've also worked with
Moloch Dow building a bunch of or
writing a bunch of reports that are
designed to accelerate the eath to
roadmap as well as with Rick Dudley to
help accelerate the creation and
implementation of it 1559 so as for me
usually there's supposed to be a slide
with my face on it and an enumeration of
all of my incredible career
accomplishments rather than do that
because I think everyone in here knows
how to use LinkedIn I'm gonna tell you a
quick story and this will set the stage
for both my talk and also how I think
about building software and why
mainstream adoption for eat matters so
when I was 16 I built this thing it's
called transmute and it was a little web
app and what it did was it let you drag
a video from your desktop onto your web
browser and drop it on top of the device
that you wanted the video to be playable
on so you could take a video on your
desktop drop it on the iPod BAM you can
now play it on an iPod so I begged my
mom to pay for a press release and some
Google ads and I managed to get some
users I had a couple hundred people
using it for a while and there was this
one guy who went through and he uploaded
something like 350 or so videos and they
were of him flying model airplanes in
Los Angeles and that was really really
cool it was really really cool because
here's this guy he's in his sixties he
flies model airplanes for fun so he
doesn't he's clearly retired he doesn't
care about my technology he doesn't care
whether I use ffmpeg or live a V or like
what the container protocol that it is
that I'm using he just cared that I was
able to solve his problem and he's an
example of someone that I would call a
mainstream user someone who doesn't care
about your protocol doesn't care about
your technology but wants to solve a
problem using it and that brings us to
today's topic so how do we build apps
that are ready
for mainstream users right here right
now without waiting for additional
protocols or new research to be
developed so to get really specific and
reiterate what I mean by mainstream user
I'm talking about people who use
applications for the benefits they
provide rather than the technology that
powers them this includes things like
decentralisation so a performer on Spang
chain doesn't use the platform because
she thinks crypto school she uses it
because she's able to custody her own
funds and the financial system can't
come in decide they don't like her job
and all of a sudden delete her access to
the financial system she doesn't because
there's no chargebacks on crypto and it
means that rather than charging a 20%
fee per transaction they're able to get
five and that can mean the difference
between someone paying rent or someone
not being able to pay rent
the point is these are people that are
being enabled by the technology and in
the past historically crypto has focused
on the technology rather than what the
people are able to do with it I think a
great example is bits Square so does
anyone in the audience know what bits
Square is okay absolutely nobody except
Jackie awesome so bit Square is sort of
the granddaddy of decentralized
exchanges it launched in May 2016 the
cool thing about bit Square is that as
far as the centralization goes it was a
showcase of all of the things that we
consider now to be sort of the forefront
of decentralization of thought it uses a
big Java app to talk to a peer-to-peer
network that peer-to-peer network is
only available over tor so you have to
be connected to tor to get the order
book and get the orders and all the
other things that make it a centralized
exchange in exchange it uses fiat and
crypto if it's a Fiat to crypto exchange
so how do you do that Trust lessly
when people have the ability to cheat
you in the fiat world well it had a
doubt you could stake bsq tokens in
order to become an arbitrator in order
to and and then arbitrate any failed
transactions that occur on bit square so
they've been around for a while they
renamed to bisque like the soup but
there's only one problem with that and
I'm sure you can kind of guess what that
is nobody uses bisque and the reason
nobody uses bisque is because not
because they don't like decentralization
or because they're stupid but it's
because
complicated and it makes them feel
stupid they all used centralized
exchanges coinbase kraken whatever and
if I were to put on a number line here
where bisque and coinbase fall as far as
decentralisation and users go it would
look something like this
you've got bisque which is decentralized
out the was Oh in fact the founders were
thinking about going full satoshi and
disappearing at one point and they've
got fewer users and then you've got
coinbase which asks for your passport
and what you did last night to let you
trade but it has a lot of users I've
deliberately chosen some somewhat
polarizing examples here in order to
illustrate a wider point which is that
if you pick any individual dap or thing
that we're building on crypto generally
speaking it's going to occupy one of the
poles of this spectrum so how do we
build things that are more in the middle
that can be appealing to mainstream
users well I think the first step is to
actually understand what attributes of
decentralization and convenience is
afforded by centralized platforms users
want and what those things are
so for decentralized platforms that's
usually things like this self
sovereignty I'm the only one that can
spend my funds no one can take them away
from me transparency and auditability if
the operator or a counterparty or me
decides to go and do something bad
everybody's gonna find out about it and
they're gonna yell at me
and finally portability I can take my
funds and leave a platform that's
starting to exploit me someone in a
previous talk talked about it was a wire
line guys they talked about how once the
Gmail platform got big enough it was
time for Google to start exploiting its
own users with the portable crypto
platform that becomes impossible and
these are things that are only possible
using a robust cryptocurrency system
however and it's a big however users
don't necessarily know about those
things what users see when they interact
with taps on a daily basis is they don't
have these things and they really really
like these things they really like user
name password authentication the ability
to get all their funds back I think my
ether wallet has six or seven warnings
reminding you that you know if you you
know lose your seed words all your funds
are gone that really scares people
people like the ability to go to a
website on their phone or on their if
their iPad or whatever else and have all
their data right there and the ability
to log right in they also want
performance has to be fast has to feel
instant in order for it to be fun and
finally actions shouldn't have to be
paid for and so these are really
ingrained user expectations if your
application doesn't have those things
you're not going to be able to get over
the hump and users won't be able to get
over that hump to actually start
exploring what your application has to
offer and so until user behaviors change
significantly we have to honor these
things and figure out where the
appropriate trade-offs are in order to
get mainstream adoption to happen and I
way I say this happens is we need to
support multiple access points from
users with varying needs so to
illustrate this a little more who's seen
this screen before yeah pretty much
everybody so I pulled this one from the
ef-s website for the auction to buy
tickets using the on chain auction
contract that they put together for for
DEFCON and it's the screen that says you
have to install this other thing before
you're allowed to use my thing users
really don't like this and this isn't
dig at meta mask meta mask is
responsible for a lot of the adoption
that aetherium has already had but madam
asked risk profile is different from the
majority of decentralized applications
if you're a crypto kitties your users
are not going to be storing arbitrary
amounts on your platform they're not
going to be using your platform in
arbitrary ways they're not using your
platform for free and fury
either and so as a result if you have a
meta mask only login since meta mask has
to be maximally paranoid in order to
serve its users it's a little bit like
you want to play with your crypto kitty
but you got to go to some bank vault in
the Swiss Alps maybe talk to this guy
with a gun and people really find that
off-putting not only does it scare them
and like it like I mentioned before but
it also makes them feel kind of stupid
and no one wants to feel stupid while
they're using an application so I've
provided enough atmospherics I hope for
like you know me to actually start
talking about various solutions to these
problems and the first is well
we can borrow from applications that
have already tread this path before and
those are indent encrypted messengers I
worked at several and and encrypted
messenger companies and they generally
do something like this you have a user
make up a password you strengthen that
password using a KDF you encrypt
whatever ciphertext it is shove it on
the server and now as long as the user
has that password they're able to sync
that data everywhere they decide to go
but this doesn't solve password recovery
to do that you need to either have a
version of the key yourself that you're
able to decrypt so that does violate the
first tenant which is self sovereignty
because technically speaking the
operator could go in and steal all your
money if it wanted to but at least the
users going to be able to recover and to
be honest when you have a non-technical
person using crypto I generally trust
the operator more than the user or you
can use something like fund custody
smart contract the way these work it's a
little bit like a gnosis safe where user
funds are actually stored in a smart
contract that smart contracts then has
the ability to delegate ownership of
those funds to a separate address and it
enables you to call recover with a new
owner that initiates a challenge timer
when called the user gains the ability
to in the event of operator malfeasance
cancel the transfer of ownership and
eject all those funds from the contract
so even though the operator does have a
window of time in which it can try to
steal your funds if you're watching it
it can but we're still not changing user
behaviors with these things we're
accepting them so we're able to get
short-term user value and user adoption
using these solutions but it's not what
we want long term we want people to be
able to change their behaviors to be
more congruent with what crypto is going
to require in the future and so for that
you can use something like wallet
connect so for those of you who are
unfamiliar with wall connect Pedro Gomez
has done an amazing job of this it's a
standard that allows you to share keys
and signature data between various
wallets for users that have an existing
wallet they can import it directly into
your DAP for users that are on your debt
that starts storing more value and
becoming more accustomed to the crypto
space and wants to self custody they can
eject and that's going to solve the
third tenet of why decentralisation
matters the portability bit so you
should check out wallet Connect if you
can
because it's going to slowly start
changing user behavior recapping where
do we fix so far so we've done
onboarding we've done authentication and
sync but we haven't solved performance
and we haven't solved gas so to do that
we need to go off chain this is the
Gartner hype curve you've all probably
seen it before
this is where I think lots of different
l2 Solutions sit on the Gartner hype
curve this isn't to dig at each one of
these solutions it just means that of
the various l2s that are available to
the world right now state channels are
the ones that are ready for production
and on main net and the reason you're
not hearing about them and are instead
seeing people on Twitter saying that l2
isn't here yet what the hell happened is
because once things are production ready
they start getting boring
and I think boring is awesome because it
means you can use them for real value so
an example of this is a ticketing
application and by the way if you're
using payments you can just take off the
shelf stuff for this you don't have to
build anything special you can use the
Die card but I'm talking about an asset
transfer system here so for a ticketing
application you have a general flow that
looks something like this so you've got
a user he goes to your DAP and he wants
to buy a ticket for something your dad
mints a token and either if there's
enough collateral deposits it directly
into a channel and credits to users
balance or makes a non chain transaction
on the user's behalf in order to make
sure that that token exists the users
made know on chain transactions here
they haven't paid for any gas if the
channel is adequately collateralized
they get that token immediately and now
they can actually start doing things
with it just like they would on
something like Ticketmaster but
something that's important to note is
after that little dotted line on the
user column the user can close the
channel and they can get delivery of
that token this is something that's kind
of unique to aetherium there's been a
lot of talk and like rumbling about
howie this-- money if eath is money then
ERC 20s and ER c720 ones are it's medium
of exchange and receiving delivery of
that token means that it sort of doesn't
really matter how complicated or even
how centralized the system is that
creates those tokens as long as you're
able to eventually takes all
in custody of those tokens you can play
with the rest of the etherium ecosystem
so to tie it all back together to this
ticketing application that I'm talking
about once you receive that NFT or that
er c20 that represents your ticket you
could stake it on the you know swap if
you want or sorry put it in a eunice
watt pool if you wanted to you could
perform an atomic swap with it if you
wanted to the sky is limit because
you've received delivery I mentioned
centralization earlier and there are a
class of applications to which it
probably just makes sense to centralize
it at this particular juncture so if
you're the mentor of the token you're
the only place that can use the token if
your company were to go up in smoke your
token which becomes meaningless bytes on
a blockchain
you should probably centralize and just
allow people to settle onto
etherium using a RC 20 or a RC 7 21s and
it seems kind of like a sad like an
acceptance of defeat but it's not
because at the end of the day adapts or
businesses and they're trying to find
product market fit and they're trying to
get people to use them that's the
important part people to use them and
they're more likely to fail as a result
of no one using them than they are
people finding them to be insufficiently
decentralized and so if eventually your
DAP becomes something that could be a
public good go ahead and start teasing
it apart and be centralizing it and
making it more robust but until then you
want to make sure you're building the
right thing before you're building the
best thing and I can say from experience
having built several l-2 solutions both
generic and specific it costs hundreds
of thousands of dollars to build a
rigorous audited production-ready
decentralized l2 that users really want
to use and that's a huge risk
particularly for a tiny company so
continuing we've ticked all of our boxes
but there's sort of a big question
remaining which is like what's next and
why does this matter this is not fun
crypto this is not zk snarks it's just
sort of boring solutions to get people
to start using aetherium
why does getting people to start using a
theorem actually matter
well let's tie it all back together
people talk in the abstract about an
aetherium killer app
the reason an aetherium killer app is
interesting and useful is that unlike
say a Silicon Valley venture backed
company where to the victor goes the
spoils and the goal is you grow your
platform you engage with your users and
then you exploit them and you crush them
under the heel of your boot every
startup that launches on aetherium has a
unique opportunity to find fit for
itself but also find fit for the entire
chain we don't talk about yuna swap in
the context as if you know swap is the
only defy thing we talked about defy as
a whole so something succeeding on
aetherium grows the pie for everything
else and the best way to do that is to
build lots of MVPs that provide user
value and talk to those users and those
users have to be mainstream users that
are solving a problem because the number
of people that are interested in crypto
for crypto sake is extraordinarily small
I really really like this graphic
because it talks about what a successful
MVP is so in this case the MVP is a
transportation device and so on the
bottom they start with a skateboard and
eventually emerges into a car and on the
top they start with the wheel and then
eventually they put together a car
anyway the bits gone on a little bit too
long but the idea is up until relatively
recently and this is a testament to the
etherium community we didn't even have
the wheels we didn't have the primitives
to actually choose between which model
of MVP we wanted to go about building in
order to build mainstream decentralize
applications we do now with l2 with all
the open source work that's been done
with many of the things that have been
described at this very conference we
have the ability to do things at this
very moment so it's a watershed moment
in aetherium to get to the next ten
million users in aetherium we need to
find that killer app removing barriers
and not forcing users to change their
behaviors lets us validate more
hypotheses about what users want to use
aetherium for more quickly so that over
time we can in fact to make people care
more about decentralization than just
convenience so that's the end I hope you
found it helpful and interesting this is
usually also the bit where like I you
know try and sell you stuff but I don't
actually have anything I want to sell
you instead I'm working on
a lot of interesting stuff at Keo can
shoot me a DM on Twitter if you want to
hear more about it
otherwise ya would love to hear more
about what people think of these
concepts and if you're talking about or
you're interested in talking about UX
adoption and l2 feel free to reach out
thank you very much
[Applause]
you