Incredibly grateful for the grant we received from Optimism for our work on Forum last year! A short description of what we were awarded for, and general thoughts on the process.

Peter Ferguson and I first dove into the world of Account Abstraction via the ERC-4337 community on Telegram in mid 2022 when we were looking for the most convenient way to onboard new users into investment DAOs.

We realised that ERC-4337 would let us implement our own logic for what a valid signature to initiate a transaction would be. This meant that we could replace EOAs to let users get onchain with more familiar login flows and less chance of losing/phishing a seed phrase, with the added benefit of not having to compromise on decentralisation as the verification could be done onchain. The question remained as to what exactly would create the signatures.

After a short exploration into using MPC, we seen that passkeys were gaining traction as a replacement for passwords. Passkeys had been tentatively rolled out in iOS 15, and the iOS 16 launch gave them much more importance. Users could now create a public / private key pair which would be securely encrypted and stored in iCloud keychain, giving them the ability to sign in to apps by using Face ID.

The great thing about passkeys was that the elliptic curve used secp256r1 (as opposed to Ethereums native secp256k1) had already been implemented in Solidity - and soon after, teams like Ledger started working on optimised versions which would make it even more efficient.

Armed with the above we put together an iOS app which allowed users to create a passkey wallet and get onchain using only FaceID! We had not received any funding, had not released our alpha, and were in the process of getting our first testers. We decided to open source our work to deepen our involvement in the AA community, remained active in the ERC-4337 telegram, and gave a number of talks and podcasts to share what we had learnt.

Although less directly relevant to the grant, we also produced work on Farcaster after we both got hooked on the developer community and ease of building cool integrations. We were one of the first mobile clients which allowed you to connect with other users, and even make passkey transactions to send them funds.

Binji reached out to us late last year and encouraged us to apply so we thought it might be worth a go. At the time both Peter and I were worryingly low on money, and had taken on some freelance work to let us continue to bootstrap Forum. Getting a payout for that early work is a huge boost and really opens up a lot of opportunity for us from here - so thanks Binji and Optimism!

In 2024 we will continue to develop the app, push for the wider adoption of passkeys, and attempt to positively impact the wider Optimism/Ethereum ecosystem.

🔴🔴🔴

Incredibly grateful for the grant we received from Optimism for our work on Forum last year! A short description of what we were awarded for, and general thoughts on the process.

Peter Ferguson and I first dove into the world of Account Abstraction via the ERC-4337 community on Telegram in mid 2022 when we were looking for the most convenient way to onboard new users into investment DAOs.

We realised that ERC-4337 would let us implement our own logic for what a valid signature to initiate a transaction would be. This meant that we could replace EOAs to let users get onchain with more familiar login flows and less chance of losing/phishing a seed phrase, with the added benefit of not having to compromise on decentralisation as the verification could be done onchain. The question remained as to what exactly would create the signatures.

After a short exploration into using MPC, we seen that passkeys were gaining traction as a replacement for passwords. Passkeys had been tentatively rolled out in iOS 15, and the iOS 16 launch gave them much more importance. Users could now create a public / private key pair which would be securely encrypted and stored in iCloud keychain, giving them the ability to sign in to apps by using Face ID.

The great thing about passkeys was that the elliptic curve used secp256r1 (as opposed to Ethereums native secp256k1) had already been implemented in Solidity - and soon after, teams like Ledger started working on optimised versions which would make it even more efficient.

Armed with the above we put together an iOS app which allowed users to create a passkey wallet and get onchain using only FaceID! We had not received any funding, had not released our alpha, and were in the process of getting our first testers. We decided to open source our work to deepen our involvement in the AA community, remained active in the ERC-4337 telegram, and gave a number of talks and podcasts to share what we had learnt.

Although less directly relevant to the grant, we also produced work on Farcaster after we both got hooked on the developer community and ease of building cool integrations. We were one of the first mobile clients which allowed you to connect with other users, and even make passkey transactions to send them funds.

Binji reached out to us late last year and encouraged us to apply so we thought it might be worth a go. At the time both Peter and I were worryingly low on money, and had taken on some freelance work to let us continue to bootstrap Forum. Getting a payout for that early work is a huge boost and really opens up a lot of opportunity for us from here - so thanks Binji and Optimism!

In 2024 we will continue to develop the app, push for the wider adoption of passkeys, and attempt to positively impact the wider Optimism/Ethereum ecosystem.

🔴🔴🔴