As a follow up to the article around the basics of AA, now is a good time to discuss current projects in flight that are utilizing AA. Note, we’ll focus on the main ones you’d encounter and there may be some wallets that don’t get covered. Please DM and suggest any you’d like covered! We’re starting with Ambire, Avocado, and PatchWallet first as the main early options - each one as a separate post. Up first is Ambire:
Ambire - 0xProdMan grade: A-
Let’s deep dive into Ambire because it’s pretty neat and showcases a lot of what is possible in the world of AA and smart contract wallets. The key features include:
Dedicated gas tank that saves money on fees
Ability to batch transactions quickly and easily
Easy to get started with email or a web3 wallet
Easy to add additional security measure such as multi sig (using email or web3 wallet) and MFA using authenticator
Honestly, doing transactions with Ambire feels right. It has a layer of security that should have been in hot wallets to begin with.
Using authenticator to commit a transaction is very comforting
That said, there should be a way to set a threshold where that’s required because it does get annoying to do it every time.
Adding signers from a different web3 address is great to have. It’s a super simple way to turn your wallet into a multi-sig Safe
An ‘earn’ section that is really quite smart and picks up what you’re holding and suggests the APY you’d get by doing that transaction
In many ways the Ambire earn tab is a better interface than Aave or Yearn itself and its very cool to see. Let’s hope that trend continues!
Dapp catalog that connects your wallet to services such as Uniswap, Aave, Balancer, Lido, and others.
It’s not as integrated as the Earn section, but its still a cleaner UX than having a new tab open for every dapp you use
It utilizes an iframe experience where walletconnect is injected into the frame - very clever! This can expand to any service that uses walletconnect, and you can create your own connection within the tool. Much easier than copying and pasting a walletconnect link
Turns the web3 experience on its head a bit (from find → connect to connect → find) and ensures safe browsing into those approved tools
There are some other nice elements in the ‘dapp store’ like favoriting and ‘hot’ (although not sure how that gets determined)
Really nice notifications! 100x better than metamask.. Things such as balances increasing from a transaction or interest earnings show up in plain English. Yes, you’ll see transaction notifications, but I found them much simpler and cleaner. Definitely a strength of the wallet.
Address book where you can store addresses that you send to often. A little bit scary on this one, but going back to the security of Ambire - I feel safe doing this and its really nice to have.
Mobile app which is a nice complement to the desktop version
So, yes Ambire is very feature rich and feels like a brand new Web3 experience - similar to what you’d expect from a Web2 banking experience on steroids. But its still not perfect. Areas that could use improvement:
dapps aren’t quite ready for batching transactions. Yes, in theory I could do an approval for token balances and then send them to a pool - but the Uniswap FE is waiting for that approval before it asks for the next step, so it doesn’t work. The transaction builder might work, but the target audience won’t use this tool. This is why creating a new native AA experience might have to happen (whether the wallet does this or the dapp devs - someone needs to build it)
Ambire supports many chains, but its still not perfect when it comes to that experience. There were still a few moments when you click on a chain, see $0 balance, and have a small heart attack. Assets across chains should probably be grouped into the same dashboard. Avocado is probably a better experience when it comes to multichain, but that’s because you have to be on their own chain itself (which has its flaws)
The backing up and recovery process is a bit scary. Since keys are stored in local storage, you could find yourself in trouble if you cleared your browser without backing up the account. The recovery process isn’t bad (read more here), but it needs to be done on all networks and includes a 3 day waiting period where you’ll be without your account.
Ambire the entity has a confusing company structure. There’s Ambire Wallet which is fairly new (2022) and then there’s Ambire AdEx which is a blockchain advertising solution which has been around for a while (2017). They both live under the same umbrella, but there seems to be no real connection between the two. And there are two tokens ADX and WALLET. Who has rights to what as a token holder? This isn’t really a knock on the product at all and doesn’t seem nefarious, but in the world of trust, Ambire as an organization is a bit confusing which doesn’t help.
In summary, 0xProdMan highly encourages people to try out Ambire wallet! A- is pretty good in a space that is very new - it’s hard to be perfect right now. If nothing else, users should test out this wallet to see the new possibilities in this space. It’s drastically different it is compared to the other non-custodial experiences out there today and Ambire is a good tool to show you that difference.
Up next is Avocado wallet by Instadapp. Can’t wait to share the review!