Step 1: Choose a wallet. Rabby? Metamask? Coinbase Wallet? The app assumes they knows the difference between custodial and non-custodial wallets, hot and cold storage

Step 2: Download a wallet. A popup warns them: "You're responsible for your private keys. If you lose them, your assets are gone forever." No pressure.

Step 3: Write down a 12-word seed phrase. "grape monkey telescope..." They're supposed to safeguard this random string before they's even sure they wants to use the app. One typo, one lost piece of paper, and their money vanitheys forever.

Step 4: Fund their wallet. They needs to buy ETH on Coinbase, wait for 7 days to be able to withdraw to an account. transfer to their new wallet onchain

Step 5: Connect wallet, approve permissions, sign transactions. Each action triggers a popup asking their to confirm cryptographic operations they doesn't understand.

Total time: Way too long.

User Experience: Way too confusing

No wonder crypto has left a bad impression on the masses

Why Traditional Crypto UX Is Fundamentally Broken

Crypto's user experience is an adoption catastrophe. The extremely high barrier to onboarding is why much of why onchain apps struggle to gain the traction of non crypto native users.

The Security Burden No One Asked For

Traditional crypto puts enormous security responsibility on users from day one. Before the user can buy their first $10 of crypto, they must:

• Understand cryptographic concepts like private keys and seed phrases

• Become their own bank security team with no training or support systems

• Accept irreversible consequences for any mistake, typo, or moment of carelessness

• Navigate technical complexity that would challenge software engineers

Imagine every new email user having to understand SMTP protocols and manage their own email server before sending their first message. Crypto's onboarding experience not just inconvenient, it's fundamentally hostile to adoption.

Enter Embedded Wallets: The Invisible Revolution

Embedded wallets solve crypto's adoption crisis by making Web3 feel like Web2. Instead of requiring users to become cryptocurrency experts, embedded wallets handle the complexity behind familiar interfaces.

How Embedded Wallets Work

Think of embedded wallets as cryptocurrency infrastructure hidden inside familiar app experiences. Users authenticate the same way they access any modern app: with email, social login, or biometric authentication. Behind the scenes, the necessary crypto accounts are automatically created.

The magic happens through three key technologies:

Multi-Party Computation (MPC): Your private key never exists in its entirety in any single location. Instead, it's mathematically distributed across multiple secure systems. When you need to sign a transaction, these systems collaborate to create the signature without ever assembling the complete key.

Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs): Your sensitive operations run in hardware isolated secure enclaves, the same technology protecting your banking apps and device authentication.

Shamir's Secret Sharing: Your key splits into multiple shards using proven cryptographic techniques. The website and embedded wallet provider cannot create transactions without the user's authorizations

Leading providers like Privy power over 75 million accounts using these enterprise grade security techniques. This results in web2 relatable convenience with Web3 level security.

The Authentication Revolution

Embedded wallets replace crypto's hostile onboarding with familiar authentication:

• Email and password just like any other app

• Social login through Google, Apple, or Twitter

• Biometric authentication using FaceID or TouchID

• Passkeys leveraging the latest WebAuthn standards for passwordless security

No seed phrases to memorize. No private keys to lose. No cryptographic expertise required.

User's Story, Reimagined

Let's replay the user's experience with an embedded wallet powered app:

Step 1: User clicks the same trending DeFi app. A familiar login screen appears: "Sign in with Google or Email."

Step 2: They chooses Google. The app instantly creates their account and generates a wallet on base using their existing Google authentication. No downloads, no seed phrases.

Step 3: The app suggests funding their account with Apple Pay. They add USDC instantly using the same flow as any app purchase.

Step 4: They are now completely onboarded and can continue onto the app

User doesn't even realize that they just onboarded to a crypto app. They just know the app works exactly as they expected.

Beyond Individual Apps: The Network Effect

Beyond the easy onboarding, embedded wallets inherit default security benefits by default which do not happen with traditional hot wallets

Phishing Preventation: Phishing websites are obseleted since embedded wallet access is restricted to the specific site of that wallet

Self Custodial Without The Hassle: Users still self custody their embedded wallet which the site and embedded wallet provider do not have access to. However, compared to traditional wallets, they aren't exposing themselves to operational security mistakes from improper private key storage

Familiar Recovery: Lost phone? Changed devices? Account recovery works through the same familiar methods they uses for email and social media.

This creates a powerful network effect: as more applications adopt embedded wallets, the entire ecosystem becomes increasingly accessible to mainstream users.

For Crypto Native Users: Enhanced Security, Not Compromised Security

Experienced crypto users might worry that embedded wallets sacrifice security for convenience. The opposite is true: they enhance security through application isolation and enable unique hybrid security models.

Traditional wallet risks:

• Browser extension vulnerabilities to phishing and malicious websites

• Cross-application attacks where compromising one dApp may affect funds associated to this wallet across all other apps

Embedded wallet advantages:

• App-specific isolation prevents crossapplication attacks

• Hardware level protection through TEE execution environments

• Distributed key management eliminates single points of failure

• Advanced authentication using passkeys and biometric security

Unique hybrid security model: Embedded wallets enable a powerful flow for security conscious users. You can authenticate with your most secure signer (Gnosis Safe, hardware wallet, passkey) to establish your identity and app session, but subsequent app interactions use the embedded wallet's streamlined flow. This eliminates the traditional tradeoff between security and usability. you get the protection of your secure signer for authentication without the friction of signing every transaction with hardware wallets or multisig setups.

Leading embedded wallet providers undergo SOC 2 audits and employ battle tested MPC cryptography. For high value applications, they support multi-signature capabilities that exceed traditional wallet security.

The Developer Advantage: Building for Humans

For application developers, embedded wallets remove the biggest barrier between great ideas and user adoption. Instead of forcing users to navigate crypto's complexity, developers can focus on building valuable experiences.

Traditional development challenges:

• User education burden about creating and funding a crypto wallet

Embedded wallet solutions:

• Familiar authentication flows users already understand

• Immediate transaction capability without complex setup

• Enterprise grade infrastructure handling security and compliance

Companies like Privy, Dynamic, and Magic provide comprehensive SDKs that abstract blockchain complexity while maintaining full decentralization benefits. Developers can build crypto-powered applications that feel completely natural to mainstream users.

The Invisible Web3 Future

Embedded wallets enable a future where blockchain technology works like the internet itself—invisible infrastructure powering incredible experiences.

Consider how email evolved. In the 1990s, users needed to understand SMTP servers, port configurations, and email protocols. Today, billions use email without knowing those protocols exist. The complexity was abstracted away, enabling universal adoption.

Crypto follows the same path. Stablecoins already represent nearly 1/3 of daily crypto usage as the "cheapest way to send a dollar globally." Real world asset tokenization moves beyond digital art to property, commodities, and securities. Other initiatives like decentralized scientific research funding (DeSci), social platforms, and more are being build onchain, and can open themselves to more mainstream adoption from embedded wallet user flows

These applications won't need users to understand blockchain to use the app. The defi mullet is complete with a familiar user onboarding flow in the front, with the advancements of onchain innovation in the back

The Path Forward

Embedded wallets represent more than a technical improvement. They are a paradigm shift that makes crypto accessible to everyone. By removing the hostile complexity that has plagued blockchain applications, they unlock the technology's true potential: creating better experiences for real people solving real problems.

The future of crypto isn't about making everyone an onchain expert. It's about making the onchain economhy work so well that expertise isn't required. Embedded wallets are making that future possible, one familiar login screen at a time.

• Before television, people relied on newspapers to be informed about the world

• Then, news channels dominated due to the ability to provide real time news reporting

• However, as the demand for real time news scaled, social media networks provide more accessible news reporting, with even faster real time updates about events happening across the world

• From here, the future of news consumption will transition to build off of real time prediction markets, such as polymarket

Polymarket | The World's Largest Prediction Market

Polymarket is the world's largest prediction market, allowing you to say informed and profit from your knowledge by betting on future events across various topics.

https://polymarket.com

At a Glance

• Prediction markets provide truth faster than news or twitter due to how people are financially incentivized to bet on information they know about a market which may not be priced in yet

• This results in extremely fast, unbiased news reporting for anyone browsing the website

• This revolutionary tech is already being used within bloomberg terminal and quoted by grok to provide accurate real time data about events

How it works:

• A market is created by Polymarket. Example: "Who will win the 2024 presidential election"

• People can buy and sell shares of an outcome between $0-$1 (Eg: Donald Trump wins). The price is based on the supply and demand of the market

• When the event resolves, the winner(s) of the market can redeem each winning outcome they own for $1/share

Why it works

• News from the media is often biased, where certain stories are amplified and others are downplayed or omitted based on the media company's agenda

• By attaching a financial outcome to a news event, people can put money on what they believe or know

• Advanced actors who have insider or early information have financial incentive to bet on that information, which updates the market outcomes to better reflect the actual probabilities of each outcome occurring, based on ALL information available. Example:

  • Market called "Will Taylor Swift drop a single today" is created

  • Advanced user goes to Taylor Swifts website, and sees that it was recently updated to market the new single that launched, even though no information has been posted to social media or music platforms

  • Recognizing that the Swiftie team is now preparing to release the single, the user can bet "YES" on the market

  • For the average user, they see that the market for Taylor Swift dropping a single has spiked in probability and can reasonably assume that Taylor Swift is most likely dropping a single today

• Having financial incentive to trade on news you know means prediction markets better forecast events compared to news organizations.

  • For the 2024 presidential election, polymarket had effectively priced in the outcome of the election prior to 11 pm on election day (with outcomes moving towards the singularity since 6pm)

  • In comparison, AP news was not able to call the election until 10:34 am the next day

    

    

Why do it onchain?

• The resiliency of a prediction platform relies on the reliability on the platform to resolve the correct outcome, and create a variety of controversial markets

• When done in a centralized manner, the platform is more susceptible to censorship from a government from publishing a market which may portray them in a bad light

• When resolving markets, subjective resolutions are at the mercy of the company to decide. When decentralizing the resolution process, outcomes can be decided by a broad "What does the average person think"

• An open platform for market creation allows for anyone to create markets on any number of controversial issues they want the truth on. Examples

  • Chance of a ceasefire between India and Pakistan

  • Who will be listed in the Epstein files

  • Chance of tariffs being implemented

Conclusion

• Financial markets often indicate the macro state of the world with all pieces of information "priced in"

• By harnessing the same incentive structure and applying it to predictions, we get accurate, real time forecasting of news in an easily digestible way

• By building this on blockchain infrastructure, we get unbiased, un-censorable markets in which we can base as the true source of truth

Shushant ▵ | Definitive

@0xShushant

Polymarket is the first place i look for election odds. Its that simple

make an app that is easy to use and reliable. Secure it with finality onchain.

Everything else is vapor

7

11:54 PM • Aug 20, 2024

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• evm version specifies what opcodes are allowed to be used by specifiying the hardfork name.

• For example, selecting shanghai as the evm version will make use of the push0 opcode along with opcodes introduced in previous hardforks.

  • This opcode enables significant gas savings, making both deployments and execution cheaper.

• On ethereum mainnet, you can safely use the latest hardfork as the evm version. However, other L1s and L2s may not support those opcodes

• Its important to understand if the EVM equivalent chain you are deploying to supports all the opcodes specified at your evm version. Deploying with an evm version you chain does not support will lead to failed deployments

• Note: you are able to set the highest version of solidity on whatever chain you are deploying to as long as you specify the correct evmVersion supported on that chain

• Dencun → Fork from Mar 13, 2024

  • Ethereum

• Shanghai → Fork from Apr 12, 2023

  • Arbitrum

  • Avalanche

  • Base

  • Optimism

  • Polygon

• Paris (POW to POS) → Fork from Sep 15, 2022

  • Blast

  • Binance

  • (Nearly all EVM chains support paris hardfork)

https://ethereum.org/en/history/

Ethereum’s endgame is one step closer…

TLDR: Dencun is a hardfork occuring on March 13, 2024 at 13:55 UTC. This fork enables a quite of EIPs which results in cheaper transaction costs on Layer 1s and Layer 2s

• Hardfork: a block where new EVM logic is implemented into the Ethereum network

• EIP(s): Ethereum Improvement Proposal(s)

Ethereum is a constantly evolving network, but it is also decentralized as many different teams created node software which finalize transactions. Therefore, new EIPs must be given enough testing and enough time for everyone to properly update their software. The specific block in which new EVM logic is accepted is called a hardfork

• Cheaper transactions on L2s such as Arbitrum and Base. These chains will now post transactions via BLOBS to mainnet ethereum compared to congesting the regular transaction flow with other users. Since rollup costs are shared among all users, gas fees per person will be lower

• On mainnet ethereum, rollups are usually the highest gas guzzlers and inflate the cost to get transactions included. With L2s posting in blobs, the transaction cost will be lower per user

• Also, contracts you interact with using solidity version 0.8.24 with evmVersion set to dencum will make use of new opcodes which make your transaction cheaper than before (on L1s and L2s)

  • This only applies to contracts deployed after the hardfork

• As part of the Ethereum endgame roadmap, blob transactions (EIP-4844) are one of the first big steps towards the “endgame” described by Vitalik Buterin (creator of Ethereum)

• “The Merge” was completed in the Paris hardfork on September 15, 2022.

• With the introduction of the Dencun upgrade, Ethereum is closer to completing “The Surge”

• TLDR: the goal is to make Ethereum as decentralized, scalable, and beneficial as possible. Each implemented box puts the network closer to this goal

https://twitter.com/antonttc/status/1767571772327756259

https://blog.ethereum.org/2024/02/27/dencun-mainnet-announcement

• EIP-1153: Transient storage opcodes

• EIP-4788: Beacon block root in the EVM

• EIP-4844: Shard Blob Transactions

• EIP-5656: MCOPY - Memory copying instruction

• EIP-6780: SELFDESTRUCT only in same transaction

• EIP-7044: Perpetually Valid Signed Voluntary Exits

• EIP-7045: Increase Max Attestation Inclusion Slot

• EIP-7514: Add Max Epoch Churn Limit

• EIP-7516: BLOBBASEFEE opcode

I kept this entry simple to highlight the gas savings part for the end user. Its hard to say preemptively how much gas will be saved, but its predicted that gas on L2s may go down by 90% (WOW). See the following market for a better idea of the gas savings to expect

https://polymarket.com/event/gas-price-per-blob-1-month-after-eip-4844?tid=1710287418877

If you would like to see a more in technical entry for Dencun or anything else feel free to contract me:

tg: shushant0x

twitter: 0xShushant

If you found this entry helpful, please consider subscribing. Its free to you and means a lot to me :).

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Make sure to SMASH that like button

- 0xShushant

• Note: this tutorial assumes you are on desktop

https://accounts.coinbase.com/pick-your-account?origin=coinbase.com

• Its important to pick a CEX which you can depend on as it will be the early onramp from fiat into crypto.

• Coinbase is my recommended Centralized Cryptocurrency Exchange (CEX) as they are reliable and make it easy to purchase Ethereum

• Go through the onboarding flow. Note that you will be asked to

• On Coinbase, go to Settings → Payments → Add a Payment Method

• On Coinbase, go to Buy & Sell , select Ethereum as the asset, and select the payment method from last step as the source

https://rabby.io/

• Coinbase is a centralized party which holds your ethereum for you. In reality, you do not need the intermediary to hold your assets for you. With a browser wallet. you can self-custody your ethereum

• download the extension and begin the set up process

• Choose Create new seed phrase

  • Seed phrase / mnemonic: This 12 to 24 phrase is the most important thing about your account. Think about it like your social security number. If someone is able to access this, they are able to take over your account

• Set a password

  • If someone is able to access your device, they still need to get pass your local password. Set this as a strong password that you will remember, as you will be using this password every time you want to use the browser wallet

• After acknowledging the responsibility of self custody, select one of the addresses to add to rabby and copy the address to your clipboard.

  • All of these addresses are derived from the 12 word seed phrase from the beginning. You only need 1 address for now and can add more addresses to rabby at any time

You are all set up now! by clicking on the rabby extension, you can see the set up wallet

• Go to the main page on coinbase

• Click Send & Receive

• Select Ethereum as the asset to send

• Click the to field

• On the network tab, click the Ethereum network

• Paste the created wallet address from the last step

  • On the rabby extension, there is a copy extension at the top to copy the address to keyboard

• Select the amount of ETH (or max for all eth) and click preview send

• Click Send Now

• NOTE: the ETH may take up to 20 minutes to appear on your wallet. You can periodically check the rabby app to see if it has been received

You now have self custody ETH which you can use to interact with the many apps built on ethereum

A more in depth guide to ethereum and how to interact with Dapps (decentralized apps) will be posted soon.

If you benefited from this guide and want more, I would greatly appreciate a subscription (its free!).

For additional questions and inquiries: find me @WardenJakx on twitter and telegram

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