The Last Wallet You'll Ever Open I Shady El Damaty

Sat, May 2, 2026, 12:00 AM

In this talk, Shady El Damaty, co-founder of Human Tech (formerly Gitcoin Passport), argues that the wallet as we know it will be dead within nine months, replaced by natural language interfaces where users set guardrails and delegate execution to AI agents. He frames the core problem: agents need secrets to act autonomously, but giving them private keys is dangerous — leading to exploits where leaked keys drain funds. He outlines three approaches: the "YOLO" method of giving agents keys directly, the local isolation approach (like IronClaw or Open Wallet Standard), and his proposed superior solution: 2PC architecture.2PC (two-party computation) means the private key never exists in any single location. Instead, key shares are split between the user's client and a server/enclave, multiplied together on the fly to generate signatures. This enables runtime policies — spending limits, gas caps, MEV-safe routing, time-limited permission tokens — enforced at the server level, with human approval only triggered when guardrails are hit. Shady demos the vision: a user opens a natural language prompt, tells Claude to rebalance their Aave portfolio with a $500 cap and $10 gas limit, and gets a five-minute permission token for execution. The architecture is chain-agnostic, live today as an npm package, and pairs with Human Tech's proof of personhood infrastructure (2.5 million users, 50 million credentials) to identify and protect humans in agentic workflows. 00:00 Introduction 00:36 Autonomous Software Is Eating the World 01:31 The Wallet Will Be Dead in Nine Months 02:19 Who's Running AI Agents Today 03:11 The .env File Problem: Agents and Secrets 04:09 Design Philosophy: Capabilities, Not Authority 05:12 Guard Rails for Non-Deterministic Systems 06:22 Compressing Capabilities to Minimal Attack Surface 06:52 Agent Security as a Design Problem 07:54 Approach 1: YOLO (Give the Agent the Key) 08:15 Approach 2: Keep the Key Local 09:19 Approach 3: The Key Doesn't Exist (2PC Architecture) 10:42 How 2PC Works: Split Key Shares and Runtime Policies 12:04 Adaptive Policies and Agent Guard Rails 12:58 The Future: Natural Language Wallet Interactions 14:06 Frontends Constructed on the Fly 14:50 2PC Is Live Today for Builders 16:06 Chain-Agnostic Signatures on Any Curve 16:53 Human Tech: Proof of Personhood and Wallet as Protocol 18:07 Closing and Hackathon Invitation _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 🇫🇷 *Pragma Cannes 2026* Pragma Cannes 2026 was held on April 2nd at the JW Marriott Hotel in Cannes, France and was an in-person summit for builders and leaders in the web3 ecosystem. Watch the full Pragma Cannes 2026 YouTube Playlist here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXzKMXK2aHh5OnsJ95gz7HoI1tLUj3kZr ETHGlobal's Pragma series takes place in cities around the world, and is designed to be a different kind of event. Pragma is a one-stage conference with founders-only on stage, bringing together a small group of curated attendees and speakers to discuss the future of web3 and reflect on the past. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ✅ Follow Kartik Talwar X: https://x.com/TheRealKartik ✅ Follow ETHGlobal X: https://x.com/ETHGlobal​ Warpcast: https://warpcast.com/ethglobal Website: https://ethglobal.com YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@UCfF9ZO8Ug4xk_AJd4aeT5HA _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Are you interested in Ethereum development and entrepreneurship? 👉 Sign up for the next ETHGlobal event: https://ethglobal.com/events 🎁 Get exclusive access and perks with ETHGlobal Plus! https://ethglobal.com/plus 📣 Want us to throw an event in your city? Tell us where! https://ethglobal.com/city