The Original Sin by Taylor Monahan | Devcon Bogotá

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

it's been crazy um but we are actually making moves there that's a QR code I don't know where that QR code goes to but I assume it'll give you more information or maybe a party favor I don't know find out uh isn't Vera in the house it's Patrick here oh okay okay they'll explain to you but all I want to say is that we are committed to building a decentralized world right we really are and last but not least wear snaps okay we all lost announce people here metamask this is the future of metamask I know every single person in this room has some problem with metamask I have problems with my mask I sit there and I go like why do you do this to me metamask and I'm building metamask and then I tell people to fix it and then like I yell at metamask more I know that you've all been in this boat with me metamask is actually the solution now because we can't keep making metamask bigger we can't keep running around like doing whatever Taylor says to do and I think that's not scalable uh we are building for billions of people what snaps does is it enables every single person to extend the metamask functionality so instead of metamask having to like build and maintain something for your custom thing and try to keep up with this ecosystem that moves so freaking fast what we're going to do is we're going to put the power in the Builder's hands to actually extend metamask to better serve you as the Builder and also better serve your users because you actually know best right we we can grow our team bigger and bigger and bigger and we still won't be able to keep up because the Innovation that is happening in this ecosystem is so so remarkable and that's what snaps aims to do it aims to give everyone the builders the smart big brains in the room the power to make metamask work better for you uh like you heard earlier there's a bunch of snaps people here if you're a builder and you're frustrated with metamask talk to them they they will explain it all to you and that's all I've got just want to say thank you amazing that was a excellent talk we have time for just one question if anybody has a quick question if so please raise your hand and we'll get a mic to you ASAP do I see a hand I saw one and then I went down there we go just I'm just blind the lights are crazy yeah hello um just a quick question uh what would you what will be your perfect world for perfect users uh a perfect user system for you because of like the accounts and the private Keys yes yeah for example on what thing can we back the user's information so right now we in the physical world we back up with the people's bodies I know that person because I see that person physically beside me so I will need something something based on the physicality of the person or something like a second like a second degree second Factor authentication but then yeah so the reason why I kind of shy away from um saying like this one technology this one thing or this one thing that these one groups of people or the standards body is working on is like the solution is that I think um frankly I think it's ignorant to think that like any one party or any one group of people can serve like the entire world perfectly and especially at the pace of innovation that we're seeing um I think that there's like a couple important factors and I think the conversation is often marred in this like like account abstraction is the word if you want to Google it like ethereum account abstraction you can get the whole history it's it's such a big thing it has so many goals at this point but the thing that I'm most focused on is like um I think we need to provide a migration path for users that is uh as cheap as possible so not migrating on their assets but going from whatever this old way of doing things to the new way of doing things has of a low cost secondly I think that um people should be able to like revoke whether that's like permissions or their entire key or whatever it may be they should be able to say like no that's not valid anymore that's not me anymore um and then I think that obviously uh there's in order to make those two happen there has to be some delegation some permissioning system something where uh because like if you revoke all the permissions then you don't have any you can't do anything so you have to like give them somewhere else and there's there's a ton of people that have been doing a ton of work on this over the years the ethereum account interaction research is in conversations like those that's one thing but if you look at decentralized identity which has been a decades-long effort by some remarkable organizations around the world that really focused on this um that's like a whole another rabbit hole that you can go down and I will not pretend to think that uh like I I deeply understand the this design space as much as I'm so if this is something that like really interests you and you want to start working on it um I would definitely recommend like starting there and looking for the experts and the people who are talking about it because they are uh way smarter than me awesome that's all the time we have please give Taylor love you [Applause]