# Abstract wallets and chains through Profiles | Devcon SEA

- Channel: [Devcon](https://streameth.org/devcon)
- Date: 2025-10-07
- Duration: 10:47
- Watch: https://streameth.org/watch/yt-pg3mgNHQ6tc
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pg3mgNHQ6tc

## Description

Profiles have been key to user retention in Web2 with most people having at least 7 profiles personalizing their experiences on various platforms. In contrast, Web3 lacks profiles, leaving dApps unable to understand user needs resulting in low retention rates. Despite onboarding efforts, 88% of wallets created through account abstraction last year were used less than five times. Perhaps tying user interests and reputation to wallets by creating profiles is the secret sauce for mass web3 adoption

Speaker(s): Hira Siddiqui, Mujtaba Idrees, ley
Skill level: Beginner
Track: Usability
Keywords: Identity, Digital Sovereignty, User Experience, Account Abstraction, open, ranking, recommendation

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Devcon SEA was held in Bangkok, Thailand on Nov 12 - Nov 15, 2024.
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## Transcript

[Music] hey everyone I'm Hira I'm co-founder of plurality Network can you guys hear me at the back as well okay perfect so today we are going to be talking about profiles and wallets and specifically how we can abstract wallets and chains through profiles but before we do that let's take a trip down the memory lane over the past two decades we have seen an immense growth on the internet we started in early 2000s with the web one phase of the internet where users could just read and consume information just like in a newspaper then came along Web Two where not only could users uh consume information but also interact with the information online this is the first time in the history of internet where users actually existed on the internet as individuals and also when people actually started having meaningful connections on the internet and that is why we saw a huge growth in this phase of the internet and now everyone here we are all working towards building the foundations of the third phase of Internet which is web 3 where users could not only read and write information but also own a piece of the internet so we've been talking a lot about onboarding the masses to web 3 but web 2 already did that and it did it pretty well I mean it had its problems but um the majority of the world is already on web 2 so how did they actually do it how were they able to actually engage and retain so many users and the reason for that was the unit of interaction the key component the unit of interaction of a web2 platform is a profile profiles have three distinct functions these are identification of users contextualizing their interactions and personalizing their experiences however it's all inside one platform where the profile was created so identification means you go to a platform you create a profile you put up your profile picture your username some information and then everything that you do on that platform gets stacked to that profile so that's how web2 platforms identify the users contextualizing their interactions means that every profile has an attached context and reputation so for example if there is an account that has a huge enough reputation then the content that's coming from that account has more trust more credibility as compared to an account that has no reputation attached to it so even if the information is actually the same you're more likely to trust the one that has more reputation and then profiles could also personalize user experiences so every person on the internet is unique we all want different things we all have different interest different preferences and profiles could actually help personalize the experiences through curation so uh showing you the content that you want to see recommending you the content that you you are most likely to engage with or like and helping you discover the content of your choice easily and quickly and this personalization was actually one of the biggest reasons why web2 platforms were so sticky and addictive but all of it was siloed inside one platform it could be censored your profile could be deleted at any time and you had absolutely no ownership over your own profile and this is how the unit of interaction in web 2 looked like now in contrast let's think about what is the unit of interaction in web 3 that is actually a wallet so what is a wallet a pseudonymous address which can sign some transactions what a wallet does not have is any semblance of user information interest or preferences reputation social graph or anything of the sort that a profile had and that a profile used for creating engaging and retaining um experiences and that is why we have this cold start problem and retention problems in web 3 the little context that gets generated in web 3 for example through buying an nft or doing a transaction gets further fragmented across the hundreds of layer ones and layer twos that we have built which makes this problem even worse so therefore I propose to change the unit of interaction in web 3 to a profile as well and to do that we are building a decentralized profiles protocol at the intersection of identity data and wallets these profiles are self- custodial and interoperable amongst any blockchain or any web to platform even and the data in these profiles is sourced from the various web 2 and web 3 sources where the user already has a presence the idea is you create your profile once and then you use it anywhere the wallet and chain related complexities are all hidden behind the profile and you give the users the same user experience that they're already familiar with and what they've been using for the past two decades we call these as smart profiles which are privacy preserving interoperable self- Sovereign and they completely abstract away wallet and chains thank you that's all thank you Hera this is a fascinating sharing and a very important issue start with a lot of people has been trying to solve recently um do we have any question in the audience for okay the one uh I think he want to do it hello I'm angel from open World um what's the benefit to a user uh in creating one of these profiles and then second what's the benefit to someone like open world uh which is a di5 platform to having that profile available to us to kind of you know use yeah so for the user it's easier because because like right now interacting with the wallet is very difficult you have to download wallet you have to figure out free phrases you have to figure out and then when even after you do all of that when you go to a platform it's like an empty slate it's like you're starting from scratch if you already have a profile you just create it once you can take it anywhere and you don't have to worry about wallets or chains or anything like that because the abstraction layer that we are building it it it has chain abstraction built in uh and liquidity aggregation as well so user does not have to care about any of that so from the user perspective it's easier ux from the platforms perspective so for example you mentioned defi so of course different platforms can have uh different kind of needs for what kind of data do they want from the user so one example could be like reputation or maybe the kind of Trades that the user already has done so you can actually show them more relevant content on your platform and there is a golden rule for websit is called the 7c rule so you have only 7 Seconds when a user lands on your platform to actually show them something that catches their interest and you cannot do that if you if you have no information about them and this is what web two platforms have been using in order to use the same uh tried and interested proven principles in web 3 it cannot happen without having any information about the user so that's why profiles are important anything anyone else yeah yes um how are you hoping that this will incentivize folks who are not in the web 3 space at all don't have a wallet but have profiles to essentially join the space yeah so what we want to do is like uh how do you how do you explore a new web two platform for example you just see somewhere oh this looks really cool and you just go there and you you know connect sign in with Gmail or whatever and then you just enjoy that platform why can't we have the same experience in web 3 so let's say you saw somewhere on Twitter or wherever you are you saw some place or maybe some some friend told you oh this is a really nice game or this is a really cool platform or this is a really cool uh social media and you just go there you sign in with your Twitter let's say you maybe connect your existing Instagram or Facebook or if you have a lenser foraster whatever whatever you have and then boom you're in and then you're enjoying the platform without having to worry about oh I'm on salana so I need Solana tokens to do this oh I'm on this so I I I I need another token for this or even thinking about I need this wallet for this platform and not this wallet but this wallet for that platform all of this needs to go away and when we actually uh we believe that profiles are uh are a ux experience that everyone is already familiar with so it would not even uh look clunky or feel like users do not even feel the friction they would just use it as any other Web Two web2 website thank you um we have little time for one more question but that's that's thank you so we have 5 billion people using uh social media yeah and approximately they spend 2 hours daily it makes 36 days in a year and we have 800 million people in crypto okay yeah so if you go outside of this building we have billions of people not using the web threee wallets and whatever we talk about it here so how you see the user Journey how you see the on boarding the people who are not aware and do you have any Clear Vision of let's say the migration of the web to users to your platform so I believe that the users should join web tree because they're getting something interesting there right so at the end of the day it comes down to the applications that that get built because the value acral should not be that oh it's web3 it's cool just join there it should be about something about the platform or the app that they are joining because web3 also introduces a lot of incentivization mechanisms like ownership or Rewards or tokens and all of this stuff but the problem is that you even if you build apps that are good enough for or or have enough um you know functionality for people to join the onboarding journey is still very difficult so you have two problems to solve one is the onboarding journey and the second is the application Level if you can build the applications that's something that the community has to do what we are trying to do is once there is an application that the user finds interesting then the onboarding should be as seamless as any other website so you don't need to bombard them with with all the web3 related technicalities so that's our thesis at least and that's it for our time today thank you so much get up