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The Death of Chains: Why UX Starts (and Ends) with the Wallet
Recorded: Aug. 4, 2025 Duration: 1:00:51Space Recording
Short Summary
In a recent discussion, industry leaders emphasized the critical role of wallets in enhancing user experience and accessibility in the crypto space. Key topics included the evolution of wallet technology towards smart wallets, the importance of discoverability and interoperability, and the need for user education to navigate the complexities of Web3. The conversation also highlighted trends towards collaboration among wallet providers and the integration of traditional finance with blockchain technology.
Full Transcription
Thank you. GM everyone happy Monday we are about to get started on a very very fun space talking about
wallets and why they're needed and what's super important about them how they in my mind it's like
the most critical piece of infrastructure and
the user experience to get right, because it's what users encounter first.
So we will give it a few minutes, let the space get started, let it kind of fill up
with people, and then we will start the space.
So if you guys can sit back, enjoy the music that we have playing, try to find, believe it or not, there are not that many songs about wallets out there.
Most of them is about money, but not about wallets.
But I did my best to find what I could.
So sit back and enjoy.
We will get started momentarily. Let's love this now, let's love this. My wallet in El Segundo. Left my wallet in El Segundo. Left my wallet in El Segundo.
I gotta get it.
I got, got to get it.
My mother went away for a month-long trip.
Put a sopranus on an ocean liner ship.
She made a big mistake by leaving me home.
I had to roam, so I picked up the phone.
Got all the others to see what was going down.
So him, I pick him up so we could drive around.
Took the Dodge Dart, a 74. My mother left the yard, but I needed one more. Shahid had me covered
with a hundred green back. So he left Brooklyn and we made big tracks. Drone down the belt,
got all the conduit. Came to a toll, it paid and went through it. Had no destination, we
was on a quest. I laid in the back so it could get west Chilled down the road for two days and a half
The sun had just risen on a dusty path
I found a figure, had caught my eye
A mirror for the grandma who was four feet high
I pulled over to ask where we was at
With his index, later he tipped up
El Segundo, he said, my name is Pedro
If you need directions, I'll tell you
Pronto needed civilization, so throw the reservation If you get a, I'll tell you. Pride to need a civilization. So do the reservation.
If you get a mile south, there's a fast food station.
Thanks to your as I thought.
So Ali said, damn, Tim, what did you dress a bar for?
Well, that's right.
Anyway, a gas station we passed.
We got gas.
And ran on to eat grub.
It was a nice little park in the middle of nowhere.
Anywhere would have been better.
I ordered enchiladas and I ate them.
Ali had the real punch.
When we finished, we thought for ways to get back.
I had a hunch.
Ali said, pay for lunch, so I did it.
Pulled out the wallet and I saw this wicked, beautiful lady.
She was a waitress there. Put the wallet down and stared, stared, to put me back into reality.
Here's Johnny.
Yo, Tip Man, you got what you need?
I checked for G-Key.
I started to step, step.
Well, what do you know?
My wallet, I forget.
Yo, this is a brown wallet.
I have pops on this.
I have a G-Mats.
I gotta get it, man.
Lord have mercy.
That got hotter, I'll leave starts to curse.
I feel bad, but he made me feel badder.
Chit, chit, chatter.
Car starts to scatter.
Waking on out, we was off each pound.
Chitting on down at the speed of sound.
Three days coming, and three more going.
We get back, and there was no slack.
490 Madison, we're here, Shy.
He said, all all right see you tomorrow
thinking about for past weeks the last week can't go in my pocket i can't speak
i've been a car and tore p to the shack we gotta go back when he said why i said we gotta go my wallet in Elsa Gundam.
Yeah, I left my wallet in Elsa Gundam.
Left my wallet in Elsa Gundam.
Left my wallet in Elsa Gundam.
I gotta get it, I gotta get it.
Left my wallet in Elsa Gundam.
All right, I think it is time to get started.
I am super, super excited about this space.
Thank you all for tuning in. It should be a really good one. I think it'll be very exciting. I do think that wallet infrastructure is probably, I know I said it before people came
into the space, but I think wallets are probably the most important aspect to get right for the user experience.
I think that we see so many people come to the space and like,
wallets are probably the first interaction that they have when they move from a centralized exchange to actually self-custaining.
So we have some great, great projects.
We're going to have Metamask and Octo come up and talk and give some people the opportunity to introduce themselves.
So without further ado, we will get right into it.
We'll start left to right.
Just kind of say who you are, what you do, and maybe a little bit of what excites you about wallets, what you're really looking forward to.
So we will start with my friend Trey. How you Trey hey everyone I'm doing great thank you for
hosting I'm part of the polygon team I work in the in frame protocol BD team
here to grow the ug layer glow the number of chains that are building with
the uglier CDK stack and what gets me excited about wallets
um i would say discoverability uh and absolutely interoperability embedded within wallets this is
something that i think is crucial uh moving forward in the space awesome yes thank you i. I do think we're going to get into a lot of
like the really cutting edge tech stuff that's exciting. But next on my screen, we have Michael.
How are you, Michael? Doing well, doing well, GM, everybody. My name is Michael Kay. I'm the senior
BD manager at ConsenSys and also on the product safety team at MetaMask. And as far as wallets go,
I think the most exciting thing for me is making user experiences less friction. So basically
making it easy to onboard. I think the wallet has a lot of opportunity to get rid of a lot of the
friction that people deal with. And I think that's going to be one of the topics here today. So super
excited. Yes. And then I have an unrelated question.
Is that like a custom one of one good vibes club PFP or like,
did you just, yes, it is.
Yeah. Yeah.
It is a big shout out to the good vibes club and everybody out there.
They made a sick, sick design for us at Meta mask and I had to PFP it.
Yeah. Oh no. It looks so cool. That's why I was like, Oh,
that's really awesome. But next up we have Martin. You want to introduce yourself, Martin?
Hey, hey, thanks for having us. Yeah, my name is Martin. I was one of the co-founders and co-CEO
of a company called WalletGuard. We were acquired by ConsenSys in the middle of last year. And now
I am the product manager for the product safety team at MetaMask.
So thanks for having us.
And one thing I'd say I'm excited about Wallets is probably that abstraction,
like chain abstraction and things like that,
seems to be one of the main topics that some of the smartest people
in the space are working on right now.
Primarily, that was one of the biggest topics at DevCon when we were there last year.
And it seems like tons and tons of progress is being made on it.
So, yeah, it's really awesome.
Awesome.
Yes, thank you for being on the space.
And then Ayush, if you want to introduce yourself.
Hey, hi, folks.
So I'm Ayush.
I lead acquisition for Okto Wallet. Oko is part of the coin dcx group
and it's like as a wallet it has been live for the past two years so i lead acquisition for octo
wallet and before that i was also leading growth for another wallet called obvious wallet for
around a year and a year and a half so i've been in the wallet space for a while now I think what excites me the most
is how wallet is like the single most entry point and the communication point for all of
web3 defy and everything like you can't do anything in this space without having a wallet
and there's just so much that you can do and and you know the amount of programmability that a
wallet have you can have a wallet for normies you can have a wallet for degens you can that a wallet have. You can have a wallet for normies, you can have a wallet for degens, you can have a wallet for, you know, your grandma and everything. So there's
like, so much things that you can do with just a wallet. It's not
just a single entry point. It is one of the most important layer
holding all of Webthi together. So yeah.
Awesome. Thank you. Thank you. Yes. And I am two cent Timmy, I am
on the marketing team at Polygon and Ag. Yes. And I am Two Cent Timmy. I am on the marketing team at Polygon and Aglair, and I am very excited to get started.
But before we actually get into the real first question, if everyone listening can do me a favor, go into the bottom right corner, hit that little quotation mark, like retweet the space.
And then as people get on stage, give all the speakers a follow, because if you care about wallets, these are certainly some of the brightest minds we have in the space talking about it.
So it'll be a lot of fun.
And as we get started, just so all of the speakers know kind of how I like to run the space, if I'll ask a question, kind of leave it open.
You guys can jump in.
If you want to talk, you can give the little hand raise like that icon, or you can do the hand waving that way, and I'll be sure to call on you.
But really, I think it's important we get started on a foundational question.
What, in your opinion, are the biggest friction points that you've seen when onboarding into a wallet today.
And I think it's, I do kind of want to set the stage a little bit too.
It's kind of interesting because I know you guys at MetaMask have been around for quite some time
and you kind of saw, I think it was 2015, 2016-ish.
So like you went through this long evolution of what a wallet was and how it kind of developed.
through this long evolution of what a wallet was and how it kind of developed.
I think your team's done a really great job at like adapting to the times and having to,
I don't want to say pivot, but really just continue building and pushing the boundaries.
And then Octo is a relatively newer project that you guys have been building, but like
seeing the friction points and then going.
So I'll start with you, Aush, because your hand was up.
But what are the biggest friction points that you've seen?
I think, in general, the biggest friction points in wallet
is just having an understanding of what a wallet is.
Like, even today, when I try to onboard, let's say,
newer people to the wallet,
the biggest friction point becomes chain, right?
Like, there's,'s you know 20 different
chains and like you know each you people need to understand uh if it's an evm chain that wallet
address is same but if it's a solana chain then the wallet address becomes different then how do
you interact between the two chains and everything right so the biggest friction points for a wallet
right now is just you need to have a lot of understanding of how web3 operates to be able
to even use a wallet properly right like if i have to see my wallet balance across all network
like there's very few wallets that enable to see your portfolio across all networks most of them
you will have to keep switching your wallet you have to keep switching your chains to see your
portfolio balance in one place right if you have to move assets across from one network to another network, you need to keep changing the networks,
right? So that was one of the biggest things that we have solved for at Okto, which is when we
started, our basic idea was that, you know, how do we make this whole experience normy first? Like,
how do we make it an experience so that you can log in with your email ID, you come in, you don't
need an understanding of what a chain is, all your assets across all your chains come across one place, you
can swap from any token to any token on any chain without needing, you know, gas fees.
So that I think that that is still one of the biggest friction points, you know, just
having an understanding of what a wallet is, and having to have that, you know, learning
curve by using a wallet, I still think that's like one of the biggest friction points.
No, that was a great answer.
I'm going to pass it to Michael
because your hand went up next and kind of what you see.
And then we'll go to Martin.
I kind of have some thoughts on kind of everything
that I'm sure you guys will say.
Yeah, a lot of great points from Ayush.
I think what we've seen over the past 10 years, I mean, it's almost 10 years
now that MetaMask has its code base is a lot of things progressing. Originally, MetaMask was built
as an EVM wallet. Obviously, the future is multi-chain being interoperable. We recently
just launched Solana support. We got Bitcoin support coming soon. So kind of just making
it easier for the user to understand that everything can be in one secure guardrailed place. Our recent acquisition
of web three auth helped us also eliminate some of that friction to the onboarding experience.
So no more seed phrases, no more private keys, no more having to constantly tell people you're
onboarding to keep that info safe or keep it offline. Like these are different ways that along with removing native gas tokens. So with the MetaMask gas station, you don't have to have
certain tokens in order to actually make a transaction occur. And we're adding more tokens
and more support there. So I think as we knock out these points of friction at every layer of
a person's onboarding experience into crypto, we can get that product that's ready for mass adoption.
We can make it so that there's not a million elements of friction.
I mean, even our acquisition with WalletGuard,
which, as Martin stated, occurred about a year ago,
now you don't have to have a separate WalletGuard extension.
It's now built directly at the wallet level.
So making these things wallet level is part you know, part of the product itself,
making it easier for onboarding overall. Fantastic. Thank you. Yeah. And Martin,
what do you have to add? Yeah, in terms of friction, I like to bring up two points.
I think one of the biggest ones that we have today is just the fact that you have
so many different networks and assets can be scattered across those networks. Like I might have 200 USDC on Linea,
and then I might have a bunch of other funds on Polygon or Ethereum mainnet. And just getting
those funds to work together in a cohesive way when I'm trying to do a transaction can be quite tough at times. And then the second one I think is permissions,
which just like Web2 works, there's a lot of EIPs that have been worked on lately, like 7702,
7715, which make Web3 interactions behave much more like Web2 and can really make the analogy
work for people that are onboarding into the space,
where it becomes much, much more simple.
And so I think that those are two ways that we can significantly improve the current friction.
And like Michael teased already, there's tons of solutions being worked on,
and already many done or either very closely done that we are working on internally to address problems like that.
Yeah, all of you kind of touched on some big points.
I think about like, I think the abstraction is good.
And then I think there are, it's interesting
because if you've been in crypto a while,
you're probably on, I don't know, at least five to 10 chains initially.
And like about a year ago, I remember I was making kind of a document for my wife on how to recover things should like some unforeseen accident happen to me.
And I'm like, you need to be able to access it.
And I was like, I started like, to access it and it was like i started like
oh this will be easy it's like fairly simple and straightforward and then it turned into like a 25
page document because it's like kind of like uh what michael was saying of like okay so here's my
evm addresses and then here's how you add the polygon network to made a mask and here's how
you add arbitrum and here's how you add like all of these different ones and then like
okay now we have my Bitcoin wallet
and then we have my algorithm and Cardano
and like whatever chain that was on
but like it just goes on and on and then
I think
trying to get like communicate
not only that but like and then
if I have Ethereum on eight different
chains like here's how you actually have to
bridge it and get it usable.
And I think there are like huge frictions there for people that are coming on.
Michael, you have something to add?
Yeah, as you were stating that,
I was just thinking about like the onboarding process for most users
over the past decade has been, you know,
hey, you got to get your crypto somehow.
So you got to go set up an exchange account.
You got to KYC yourself. You have to, you know, purchase the crypto somehow. So you got to go set up an exchange account. You got to KYC yourself.
You have to purchase the crypto.
You have to wait for it to post.
You have to send it to now an on-chain wallet where, hey, watch out.
Seed phrases and private keys.
Never expose them.
Your device needs to be set up correctly.
Like this is not the path for mass adoption.
So I think when we get to the point of saying hey um for example install metamask
you don't need an exchange you don't need to deal with the friction and the wait times and the high
fees you could buy your solana your bitcoin your ethereum directly in the wallet natively this is
how we get to that point that i'm talking about where we're not just giving a long list of things
to do in order to onboard into web3 we're actually simplifying what people are already doing and creating less of those friction points.
So it's like the ultimate formula because generally wallets and infrastructure of wallets has been so different than it was 10 years ago.
Now wallets are implementing different ways of discovering networks, different ways of streamlining processes.
implementing different ways of discovering networks, different ways of streamlining
processes. So it's going to be very interesting to see how wallets over time become more and more
like an operating system, the operating system of the internet of the future. No more emails,
no more usernames, no more passwords. You now have this completely different decentralized
landscape where anyone can build anything. And I think that's like the most beautiful thing in the world. No, I love it. Trey, passing the mic over to you.
Yeah, I think one angle where we can definitely improve is not taking for granted that a user
knows stuff. One example that I can make easily, when I send money to someone with a wallet,
I see a memo. Okay, what even is that memo? Why
is there? It might be useful. I might need it in the future, but explain to me why it's there.
And if I think of the first time I've used a wallet, I think it was almost five years ago,
I wanted to join crypto more deeply and access an opportunity that an exchange doesn't give to you, right?
And I knew what dApp I wanted to use and I trusted that link. But till this day,
when I want to use a dApp, I go on X, I grab the link and then I connect my wallet. I don't do that in any other case, right? Like the discoverability is so important and you need to teach people
how can you get scammed how much
money are you moving into my world well you might need a ledger it might be a good case for you to
use a ledger there's so much on the educational side that we need to do and we cannot assume that
someone uses a wallet and they also use crypto twitter that's not uh always the case it wasn't for me for a very long
long time before i joined crypto twitter that's where you get the educational layer of crypto
yeah i use what do you have to yeah completely agree with all the way especially love to how
michael framed the you know operating system of the future uh you know one again adding
to the education part right like i think some small things like uh you know initially i have
seen people make mistakes of sending you know instead of sending money to some other address
they send it to a contract address of the token right and there's no way to retrieve it right and or like you know my
my token is like i don't have gas fees like i have hundred dollars that i got airdropped on
this network but there is no way that i can swap it out right or just having an understanding of
what slippage is or having an understanding of you know how much is the fees is people don't
understand all of these things they don't understand the concept of slippage they don't
understand that you can set it they don't understand of you know having a gas fee they
don't understand like how the gas fee changes why am i being charged this much like we have
at octo we have a lot of users who are very new to web3 they don't understand gas fee they don't
understand why gas fees keep fluctuating why you know and you can set it basis your transaction
you can set it up and
everything. So there's a lot of things that need to be completely abstracted away for, you know,
users to be able to like really, you know, use Web3 without having an understanding of what a wallet
is. Yeah, no, I, that's actually a really good transition into kind of my next question.
And we're seeing more and more, I think, with basically EIPs coming out and new standards,
that's the concept of smart wallets are becoming a lot more popular.
So first to start, for our listeners, I know all of you know what a smart wallet is, but can you describe what a smart wallet is and how they differ from your standard wallet? And then I'm also really interested in the trade-offs between the two wallets because it's an interesting concept when you think about, and this is literally for me asking the question, not for any other reason, but like, how do you guys balance what I would call like the mass adoption, making a wallet easy to use versus the technical, like, you know what, you don't want to abstract some things away because certain people, I'm probably one of them, like, that's a weirdo where it's like,
no, I actually like the borders between chains and I like the structured rules. And how do you
balance the two? Because there's definitely a trade-off in like, here's where it's easy versus
like, okay, here's technically how it works. So yeah, basically can talk about smart wallets and
why you would do them and like what you're giving up
when you move to smart wallets.
And I'll leave the floor.
I think Martin would be a good one to tap on for this.
Martin, you're up.
All right, I'll do my best.
So I think the best way to think about a smart wallet would probably be that it really
just enables a lot of the functionality that we've been talking about, such as that's coming
soon TM with like 4337 and things like that. Things like having 2FA on your transactions,
recoverability. So it's a completely different account type fundamentally, right?
Like right now we have EOAs.
When I think about a smart account, I like to think about it as what's called a contract account.
So that's, and I'm using the definition a little bit loosely here, right?
Like they're not, I guess what I'm trying to say is, I think it enables way, way better
functionality for the end user. And we can really go towards that end of how do we get to the best
abstraction for the user. And so for what we've done, we've added 7702, that's Gator, the Gator framework for MetaMask.
So you can now actually upgrade to a smart account and you can start enabling batch transactions directly on MetaMask now.
The benefit of this is that you can actually start batch revoking and doing batch transactions.
So on things like Uniswap where you previously had to do like three transactions to do
to do a swap you can now just do it at one so that's like one of the main benefits
but i'll let others speak to the definition as well
yeah i i'm going to call on you i sorry yeah so if i can just add, I think Martin gave a good definition.
So I think smart wallets is basically like you can program them.
The reason they are called smart wallets is because you can program them to do a lot of
things and one of the biggest benefits that we get with the RC437 is you can abstract
gas, you can pay gas in any token of the toy.
So basically what it enables is if I'm spending money in USDC, I can actually deduct gas for
the users in USDC.
So you don't really need another gas token for doing it.
And also a great point that you can enable multiple actions, you can bundle multiple
actions into one.
It increases the tradeoff is that it does increase the cost one time because it you have to still you know the first time when you do a transaction from a smart wallet
the it takes a little bit more gas fees when you first you know deploy it on chain but apart from
that a lot of transactions can be bundled together in one you can set up automatic transactions for
example like you know i want to dca into um pole token a poll token from my wallet every 15 days, smart wallets
can enable that.
So you can program a lot of different functions on a daily basis almost like a bank account.
Whatever your bank account can do, a wallet can do that and more.
Whenever you get an airdrop, you can probably send a note.
There's a bunch of things that can be done using a smart wallet. That is just not possible at all. It's like normal wallets.
That's actually really interesting.
I didn't even think about like the airdrop stuff.
And it's funny because like,
I think a lot of users really do just care about like,
tell me how much ETH I have across trains.
I don't care how much i have on mainnet
versus polygon versus i've like i actually opened my wallet right before um like this space just
account how many different chains i have a single ethereum asset on and like on one wallet too
because you have different ones and i'm like i have eth on eight
different chains right now which and when let's say i wanted to literally buy an nft sometimes
i'm like okay i might have enough eth or do i need to buy more like and go through the bridging
where i do think like it would be lovely to see almost like just a smart wallet where it's like aggregate everything, pun intended, and then just buy it.
But I think so that kind of leads me into the next question where how are wallets?
What are you guys doing, I guess, to support initiatives like AgLayer where you have a unified liquidity, whether it's AgLayer or OPStack or
Orbit or Elastic Chain? How much thought has gone into that and what can be done for that?
Yeah, I think it's super important to say that discovery is one of the biggest things
in order to have this adoption to a dApp or a network. And one of the biggest things in order to have this adoption to adapt or a network. And one of the
biggest things also was people getting completely wrecked and scammed as they perform discovery,
going to Google and searching for like, let's say you're talking about crypto with your friends and
family members, the chances of them going and trying to figure it out themselves and then
getting completely wrecked is very high. You might get that phone call where
they say, Hey, I went to, uh, install this wallet and it looks like everything I moved in is gone
today. So the last thing anyone wants to deal with, especially from just performing discovery
is getting that phone call where your friend or family member just lost everything. So I think
what we've been doing at MetaMask toask to get you know to bring discovery to all these different great moving parts of web 3 is showcasing daps uh having listings for things
that are verified making sure that users have a guard railed experience so that they know what
they're clicking on within our application within our environment is something that they can't mess
up on and that brings a lot of confidence to a user actually being onboarded into Web3
because there's really two big hurdles, right?
One of them is where can I use my crypto?
And that's why we built out the MetaMask card.
And the other one is, well, what happens if I get scammed
or what happens if I click on the wrong thing?
So discovery is now being more and more integrated
into various parts of MetaMask
and kind of
creating these pathways where the user has the right links and they don't have to wonder,
was it .io? Was it .net? They're brand new users. They don't even know what websites to look for.
So if we can create that guardrailed environment, keep them in a much safer place,
and then also make it so that even if they try to mess up, they can't mess up,
that's paving the way for that mass adoption that we're all talking about.
You actually brought up a fantastic point that I didn't think about.
And like,
it does go,
I think with wallet safety is like,
I want to go to a website and like,
I don't know anybody who isn't in web three,
who would ever like go like,
Oh yeah,
it's a dot that uses a dot xyz
website or dot uses an io or i don't know i'm even thinking about like the sillier ones like
dot club or um dot app like that just doesn't it doesn't resonate with people like everyone just
uses dot com so like even then i don't know i'm sure there were people it's like second it's like
second nature to most people, right?
Like you're not even thinking and you just assume.
And I think like, you know, this is, this is why it's so important to like,
make sure that like when, when you are onboarding somebody,
you have to understand they don't, they don't know anything.
Like how can we expect the masses to come into web three when the masses
don't even understand how to manage their passwords,
how to use
an antivirus, how to prevent a lot of the threats that people are getting drained by
in Web3 that are just Web2 threats that have existed for a long time, like phishing and
social engineering and malware and Trojans, you know, all these fake DMs that people get,
fake Zoom calls that they get onto and then they end up getting drained.
You know, these are all things that I always stress.
We need to web two before we web three.
If we don't take that approach, then we're just setting up people for failure.
If you're onboarding someone into crypto and you're not mentioning security at
some capacity, I mean, that's a recipe for disaster.
You're going to be getting that phone call eventually.
So to your point, if we are able to get that abstracted,
and this is part of the first question
that you had asked in this conversation,
if we can remove that layer of friction
from that entire process and make sure
that the user is confident when they're clicking confirm,
confident when they're clicking on a link,
knowing that we can detect it as malicious
or a wallet trainer before they even get to the point of connecting their wallet, then you start to have people
realize that security and crypto exists. And it also is paired with safe discovery.
I absolutely love that answer. But yeah, I do think there, I would say when you're building it out, so this is probably more for like the dev type question, is there standardization for those features? Or is it something that we are actively developing? Because like, I do know, that's probably one thing that is tricky in an emerging field, like you're going to have and i'll be totally honest i'm ignorant to the
wallet dev standardization other than like the very big ones but like is there a standardization
that we're using for to build the wallet or is it something where it's like people will do it
they'll see the trade-offs and eventually one standard will kind of emerge as the best.
Yeah, I think it's with time, right?
Like as time goes on, new protocols get introduced, newer threats get introduced, and we have to adapt to it so that people don't end up losing their assets. Or even when it comes to situations where Bitcoin, right?
There's so many protocols on top of Bitcoin like OpCat and RareSats and Ordinals and Runes. If we're stating that we support something, we have to make it
clear that like, hey, these protocols aren't supported or this is not standardized yet.
I think having an open wallet standard, which I think Martin could also comment on,
there are different parts that MetaMask and ConsenSys have built out over time that other wallets tap into,
that we provide as a public good. For example, ETH Phishing Detect, that's a repo that we have
where we block wallet drainers, we list malicious websites, we combine security heuristics from
multiple providers and then provide those heuristics to other wallets so that the entire
space could stay safe. And it would be detrimental to turn off those types of, you know, layers of, you know, things that we're trying to get standardized, things that we're trying to make it a default, right?
Like you're in Web3, security is a default.
Let's make it at the product level and make sure the user doesn't have to worry about it.
Yeah, I would just plus one to everything Michael said.
I don't even know if I could one-up that at all.
I mean, I think Michael said it perfectly.
Like, to be honest, like,
abstraction has always been a major part
of MetaMask's roadmap.
Same with privacy and security.
And so all of these things we take very, very seriously.
And, like And abstraction in particular
tends to follow open source and things like that. That's the reason why ETH Phishing Detect is open
source. Our smart contract account is open source. And the entire extension for that matter is open
source. And so when it comes to both that and and EIPs and things like that that build these standards yes I
would say that for the development question a lot of times there's
extremely talented contributors in the Ethereum protocol better they're all
working those on those types of problems and then it's up to us as the wallet to go and follow them.
Yeah, and I do think, I mean, there's a lot of research.
I know Polygon and AgLayer is very big on open source because it really is like we are, I mean, there's competition among wallets. I mean, I'm sure Oktoo and made of mask have like are competing for some
of the same users but like at the same time like you can either compete over the pie that exists
or you can just try to grow the pie to a size where everyone's doing well and i think that's
actually like really really important because realistically we are kind of all together um
and i want i use you said something early that i kind of want to
dig into a little bit where um you're talking about like a wallet can be sort of anything
do you and it made me think of like kind of in line with the ag layer ethos of like or thesis
where we're going to have a whole bunch of chains.
And right now we call it general purpose block space is kind of very,
very saturated, right?
So do you see wallets being developed for specific use cases where it's like
this wallet is a wallet that you use to, I don't know,
make up for DeFi or this is a wallet that you use for nft collection or something like
that or do you see kind of a general wallet and then just the general wallets get better and
bigger and able to do more um that's a great question timid so i personally am of the opinion
that i don't think there will be a general purpose wallet um and for a very simple reason that
you know someone who is like think of it this way like a dgen will probably want
is is someone who holds let's say millions of dollars if they want to trade on let's say
something like an hyper liquid they will probably want to connect to the site using their ledger
and not you know use or they'll probably transfer their funds to one of the other wallets and then use it right like i think general purpose wallet is very difficult because
each wallet is designed keeping a certain persona in mind and each persona will
requires a different kinds of things let's say a dgen will require more security related features
they will require much more phishing protection they will want to have
custom features like you know the ability to set the gas fees at a certain state the ability to
have you know uh better signing the ability to you know make some custom features the ability to let's
say add a custom network and so on and so forth but let's say someone who is just entering into
crypto does not really need all of those things right like a dj might need an option to convert all the
dust to like some other token right so i think i don't believe that there will be one wallet for
all i think wallets will be split basis the use cases not basis chain but definitely basis use
cases and it will be dependent on the persona it could be a dj and it could be a trader it could
be an ft collector let's say for example some of the wallets were specifically designed for NFT collection
because it helps give you a very clear view of the NFTs and everything.
And a lot of other wallets have NFT showcase as just as a very small feature, whereas there
are wallets that have NFTs as their main feature.
Right.
So I think I do think that wallets will be will be and it is already happening that they
are specific use case based wallets.
And mobile also factors into this because there's a lot of wallets that have a great web experience, not that great of a mobile experience.
And there are wallets like Okta that are just designed for mobile.
So I think that also will be a differentiator in coming times.
Yeah, that's really interesting.
I do think it's like Octo because you guys started as a wallet and now it's a chain.
It's going to be like, I don't, it's a really, really interesting, I don't want to call it an experiment,
but like something that I don't think we've seen where like wallets and chains kind of become one of the same
and can work to route transactions and you have this like uh this ability to do i don't know
like you have this specific use case i guess and it's a really interesting i think it's actually
really cool and i mean coming from aglaire I don't think it's very surprising that I think that's probably the case. Yeah, so actually the way the Okto network is designed, it's not a
retail-focused network, right? It's not work like, let's say, Polygon, where users can transact with
each other. It's sort of like a middle-wide layer, right? the purpose of network is to enable the
wallet infrastructure layer right it's to make it much much more
decentralized it should be able to you know hold a lot of load and for us to be
able to develop a lot of chain abstraction technologies such as our own
you know bridging services and so on and so forth so so the network is mostly like
you know it's not retail focus It's more like an infrastructure layer.
So that's like a very small difference here.
No, thank you for that.
Just talking more about it and diving a little deeper.
So one, as we kind of getting towards the end,
and I'm sure these will be big discussions,
but when we look forward, what do you guys think in five years, the typical interaction with the wallet will look like
for the mainstream user? And then a second part of that question. And I think it's just kind of
interesting to speculate, or it could be all of the above. But do you think wallets will move to
something closer to browsers, banks, or something else entirely, right?
Because I feel like right now, I mean, I make the joke all the time.
It's kind of funny.
But, like, my wallet has a greater percentage of assets, more value in it than my savings account.
Which, like, maybe it's crazy.
I don't know.
But I use my wallet more like a bank account um these days but of course there's like browser extensions
and you can use your wallet as browsers so kind of what will it look like in five years and then
what do you think like the closest analogy for uh i hate using normies but web2 users like what
will how will they conceptualize wallets?
Mark or Michael, go ahead and give your answer.
Yeah, great question.
I think the future is being able to use any asset
on any chain instantly
and not having to think about performing bridging
and swapping and all these different hops
that you have to currently do,
which add a lot of friction to the experience. So what we're building at MetaMask, obviously,
I can't mention some of these things. I don't know if Martin could hint at some of these things,
but that's the end goal is to make it so that you can interact with anything, both Web2 and Web3,
and have that as a streamlined experience, whether it's a payment account from a traditional
bank, if it's a wallet that you're managing assets on a certain chain with. And just to give a quick
example, make it super layman. If you onboard someone into crypto and they happen to have
Ethereum on Polygon, they can buy a Bitcoin ordinal with no friction. They don't have to
think about all these different
steps that they have to take in order to get their asset to where it needs to be. So I think
that's going to really accelerate on-chain activity, and it's going to open the floodgates
for these dApps to be able to build on top of it and say, hey, we're fully interoperable. We work
with anything that's out there. And also maintaining that layer of security is going to be one of the most important things,
confirming that something is actually legit and what it claims to be before we
let the user perform any action. So the next five years are going to be insane.
And I think it's going to, it's going to be really cool to see, uh,
once we see what people, um, you know,
what people's opinions on are what we're cooking.
Awesome. I love it. I was going to say, I, I hope someone has a little bit of alpha because these spaces are always more fun when someone says like, oh, here's here's a tidbit of alpha.
I get that you can't always do it. It's just I would say that's the degen in me coming out, like wanting some some alpha.
Martin, did you have anything to add?
No, once again, I think I think Michael summarized it perfectly.
To tie it back to your question of, like, whether wallets become more like browsers or banks or something maybe more identity focused, like, the answer is probably hopefully all of the above.
We just need to make it secure enough for users.
need to make it secure enough for users. And that's why, you know, everything when it comes to
abstraction, security, privacy, all these things need to be balanced with the proper trade-offs,
having the right settings and toggles for users to be able to customize that experience depending
on, you know, their experience with blockchain. Hopefully in five years, it's really all of us not even having to onboard like right now
the biggest conversation over the last three years five years has been how do we create
educational content good enough for normies to join the blockchain right that should be completely
reversed it should it should just be simple enough that a user just wants to use SSO or Web2 protocol to join the blockchain, and they can trade whatever they want, whenever they want, on any chain.
In fact, they don't even have to know what chain it's on.
I think one of the best promises, like best, most promising things, applications of this most recently has been things like X stocks being put on chain.
of this most recently has been things like X stocks being put on chain.
The fact that you're seeing these financial products coming on chain and all of it becoming
part of the same liquidity is extremely exciting.
And I think that the next five years are going to be exponential in terms of blockchain
adoption progress.
Love it. Ayush.
I love what, you know, everyone said, like, I think I completely agree, like, wallets will be plus plus,
but there's also another line of thought that, you know, a lot of like the B2B or like the
programmable wallets thing, which is that, you know, wallets will be invisible in five years,
right? Like the end goal of some of these wallets will be like how do we like a user will not know that
they're interacting with the wallet right there's no need of seed phrases there's no need of you
know fragmentation no switching or anything right so a different line of theories like wallets will
also become invisible to some extent that they are just perform they are like agents right they
are just performing actions, right? Different
kinds of actions and the underlying
layer is handled by a wallet but the users
themselves are not realizing that they're
using a wallet, right? So it's because the wallets
are so deeply embedded in every
particular dApp that you use
or every particular application that you use
that it's almost invisible.
Yeah, no, i definitely think that like we didn't really get into it this time but talking about wallet fragmentation is actually a really good point too
and like i do think that will be eliminated troy you have your hand up yeah i think we will see
both cases most likely uh we will have thousands of banks launching their own stable coins and
their own vertically built-in wallet with their bank accounts to just you know to capture as much
users as possible but at the same time we will see wallets that are focusing on making power users, meaning that converting and transforming normies
into more specialized users.
So we'll let people use a ledger,
memorize their seed phrase,
making sure that they're not giving
their credentials to anyone.
It's very likely they will see both.
And ultimately, and I speak for Aglair here,
our goal is to build the infrastructure that can power both cases, meaning that making interoperable assets fast and aggregating all sources of the asset issues that we will see launching within the next five to 10 years, which will be, as I mentioned, probably every single bank will have its own stablecoin and yield that they provide to their users.
So we're building that.
No, that's great. Thank you for that.
So we have about 13 minutes to go.
I brought two people that had requested to speak just from the audience.
I don't know if you guys have questions or you want to ask anyone in particular.
So that's the hot round. The speaker don't know what you're going to say,
so it's a little bit of a risk, but Chai, we'll start with you.
Is there anything you wanted to add or ask any of the brilliant speakers we have on?
Chai, going once twice chai engagement farming what's up yeah maybe maybe doing that he's trying to earn his yaps or something um but okay burns you have uh anything you want to say
yeah i just wanted to throw michael and and Martin some flowers in the MetaMask team.
It is the wallet truly is the most important friction layer that you can come across in
the space.
The moment somebody can't do something, they're going to say, fuck it and potentially use
a different wallet or maybe not use Web3 for that application.
And obviously, close to home for me,
being founder of Defenders, the fact that you've got people who are from WalletGuard who have
begun building, been acquired by MetaMask and are really pushing for security and having security
layer embedded into the wallet, it's the direction that things absolutely
need to go. So really bullish on what you guys are doing. Great talk today.
Thank you, Burns. Big shout out to the Defenders team as well. It's always good to see other people
building out, you know, these tools in the space. One of the big things that we were always asked
at WalletGuard was, you know, what do you think about your competition? Well, we, it's good to work with your competition. I think that's the beauty of Web3,
where you have all this, you know, all these builders, this open source software, sharing
different repos, and making sure that we can all stay safe, instead of Web2, which is everything
is proprietary and behind closed doors. And you
can't look at it. You know, you know, this, this is really what defines the opportunities that are
in this space. And it's really great to see you guys building out security layers as well.
Amazing. And thank you for the comments burns.
Yeah, I, this is not everyone needs to do your due diligence but i do think what you're building
burns is actually really cool i mean there's a huge like i don't know i don't want anyone to like
lose everything they have um i'm a huge redditor like that's how i got into web3 i actually
moderate the polygon subreddit and like then I just like see all the time,
just stuff where people are like,
I deposited this and I lost all my funds.
And like,
it's just super sad to see because it's one going from real people who
would be real users to really bad actors.
And like,
so it's a double negative that you really get across the board.
So no,
it's great.
But X factor,
you requested to speak and I brought
you on stage. Do you have any questions to ask the team here?
Two cents, Timmy. What's up, buddy? I'm just here to engage with you. I'm just kidding. How's it
going, guys? Thank you for getting me up here. I just wanted to say that when I first started
in crypto, my first chain was blockchain.com, I believe, my first wallet. And then when I went to
an app, I used MetaMask. And to the team's credit, I have never needed nor wanted to
get another wallet. So I appreciate you guys. I'm an OG user from the very beginning,
and I have been with you guys from the the start it's it's really cool when
apps and devs ship build listen to their community and keep on expanding their roles because you guys
have really withstood the test of time so that's awesome and also on a little side note too the ag
layers here and he received no questions like do do people understand what ag layer is and what
we're trying to build like connecting all the blockchains with super low liquidity. I mean, my
God, sorry. I just have to give
a little attention to the AgLayer. It's one of the most exciting
mechanisms, really, of Polygon.
So, pretty exciting stuff. Thanks for
having me up here, guys. Appreciate you.
Yes, thank you. Thank you.
Appreciate the shout-out
that you're giving. So, yeah, we're
coming to the end. I think
we'll start wrapping it up. We'll
just go speaker by speaker and kind of anything you guys want to leave the audience with. One
thing that you're, yeah, what you want the audience really to take home about what you're
building and what to do. Also just how to get in contact and start using the wallets if you guys
have questions. I know we have a lot of builders that listen to this that are probably interested in integration.
So how to connect, things like that.
So we will start with you, Michael, because you're first on my screen, if you want to just give your closing words.
Yeah, for sure.
You know, we're here.
We're here, we're building, we're open source, it's transparent.
We're building.
We're open source.
It's transparent.
We have a lot of different tools in the MetaMask tool set,
including the delegation toolkit, MetaMask snaps
that allows anyone to build directly inside of MetaMask.
Reach out to us, build with us.
This is the beauty of, again, Web3,
is that everyone can work together.
And I think the more more that you know the more
transparency that's on the table especially in a space that's managing your assets the better and
if we can all come come to that consensus of hey these tools exist the the devs can tap into them
it's completely open we want to work with everybody no one is competition I think is the ultimate win
my DMS are always open if you have any questions, please shoot me a DM
I always try to respond to everybody and I try to make it super easy to tap in so
Looking forward to the future conversation and it's been an amazing space
I really really appreciate the stage that you let us on here today. Thanks again, everybody
Yes, thank you. I very much enjoyed connecting with you and making a new
friend in Web3 is always fun. So thank you. Martin, anything you want to leave the audience with?
No, yeah, I'll just rephrase what I said at the beginning of the space that
abstraction is generally like, it really is one of the hottest topics right now, whether you see it or not.
Again, some of the smartest, smartest people in the space are working on these types of problems.
It's been a huge talking point at conferences like DevCon, and I'm sure it will continue to be,
as well as the standards themselves. So as these standards get more and more built out,
I'm extremely optimistic about how we can make blockchain
way, way more usable for the Web2 users.
And so it was really, really great to be here today.
Thank you for hosting this, and we'd love to come back sometime.
Thanks for having us.
Yeah, so you guys will be welcome anytime we have a space.
I mean, some of them probably won't be applicable to you, but you are will be welcome anytime we have a space.
I mean, some of them probably won't be applicable to you,
but you are more than welcome to request to come up and we'll be happy to have you.
So thank you.
Ayush, anything you want to leave the audience with
and how to connect with Okto?
For sure.
So first of all, thank you so much for the Twitter space.
I think it was pretty good, you know,
connecting with all the OG people
building into space for a while. so yeah like for octo i think there's just one thesis that we have started that we built
octo with that you know how do we bring octo to as many users as possible like and especially
retail users so we like to have a focus on trading a little so we were one of the first wallet to
have futures integrated obviously
built on hyper liquid and then we went on to like you know also integrate solana and other
networks and the whole idea is that you know how can we create like the simplistic experience
where you can have all your trading needs in one place that could be future that could be swapping
that could be meme coin trading and so on and so forth so that's like has been our aim and we've
been building at it building at it for the past two years or so um the easiest way to get started
on octo is you can either click on my profile or you can search octo on twitter go to the profile
or you can just open your app so it's mobile only so you can open your app store or play store and
you if you just search for octo wallet you will find a link to download it and you can give it a
short write out and for any questions if you get stuck somewhere if you want search for OktoWallet, you will find a link to download it. And you can give it a shot, try it out.
And for any questions, if you get stuck somewhere, if you want to understand how it works, my DMs are always open.
I'm more than happy to help you out.
But yeah, thanks again for inviting me on the space.
Yes, thank you, everyone, definitely.
I would say, like, check out OktoWallet.
It's very cool.
I enjoy it.
Like, I don't mean to say let's
put anyone down i'm sure everyone's familiar with metamask i would guess probably like
first time wallet user 99 probably use metamask and like i think it's fun to play around with
other wallets i very much enjoyed octo uh like and using it so it's a it's a fun wallet uh
just a little bit of plug thank you so much for that
it it makes me super happy oh yeah i i uh i'm glad i mean there's there's great projects and
i think both both made a mask and octo have fantastic products it's funny i like i probably
go around and play with more than i should but uh no i enjoy checking things out and seeing
what i like and even just like different apps with different wallets are fun.
But yeah, I'm rambling a little bit now.
Trey, I will close it out to you if you want to leave it and then kind of say what's going on, what you think is what you're excited about for Aglare.
Absolutely. Well, we spoke during the last hour about abstraction, interoperability, aggregation, a future where Web2 and Web3 can collide and connect.
And all these things will be possible thanks to the infrastructure of AgLayer.
And I think it's remarkable how far into the future the team is thinking it's five to ten years from here and we are already building that infrastructure for the web tree for teams like metamask or opto to build on and that will apply
also for the future of banks the future of institutions coming on chain all of that is to
serve the future of the internet and to make accountable and hold accountable the web 2, thanks to how Aglayer is handling the transaction
and the ZK technology behind it.
So I'm very excited about Aglayer.
I think it's probably the best inter-op protocol
that you will hear out there.
And it's being built for mass adoption.
Great. Yes, thank you. out there and it's being built for mass adoption.
Great, yes, thank you. I don't know.
It's funny, sometimes I feel like I'm drinking the Kool-Aid
but I also feel like I would be bullish on Aglier
and what's happening.
I wanted to work for Polygon because of what it was building.
So I guess it's kind of coming on.
But yeah, I think it's fantastic.
Thank you for that. So with that, we will wrap it up. Everyone, please give the speakers a follow.
Keep in touch with what they're doing. They are bringing a lot of really, really great stuff to
it. So even though you didn't get that much alpha on the space today, I promise if you follow them,
they may tweet out things and have a talk with legal or HR
if they're anything like me
and saying you shared that too soon.
But yes, give them a follow.
Check out the wallets.
We will be here every Monday
at 12 Eastern for UTC.
That's as many time zones
as I can do off the top of my head.
But no, it was a great space next week.
We are hoping that we have a very good live stream one with Sandeep and some
other projects to get kind of founder's vision.
So that is one I am very much looking forward to.
Hopefully he can make it.
The times may change if he's not available, but most likely it'll be 12 Eastern next Monday.
And thank you all for being here and enjoy the rest of your Monday.
Take care, everyone.
