DAPPCON 2025: Apps of Ethereum - Tomasz K. Stanczak

Transcript

Hi everyone. All right. So this time it will be slightly different talk. I almost never talk about apps. I almost always talk about the infrastructure specifically. And while I'm saying that I use apps, it's usually indirectly. So the organizations that I've worked with use the payments applications uh swaps and so on so on some lending protocols consistently. So there is definitely one killer app of Ethereum which is stable coins and those probably over the last few years for the organizations we have been pushing with pretty pretty sizable volumes for each organization and then when we think about the volumes on the market on Ethereum it's it's looking super good right so Ethereum is in a very nice spot

and we see the global adoption of stable coins stable coins are happening what happens next is a bit more talking about the user experience of the uh of the user that wants to just play with blockchain or use it by themselves. So specifically retail user and that experience has a lot a lot of UX problems and the UX problems and interop is one of our main concerns nowadays with Ethereum Foundation. I would like to show my own pain of coming back to the memories of few years ago in the sense recreating them because when in 2016 17 when I was creating first uh first wallets of mine then I had a lot of trouble to on board but not as many as yesterday when I was trying to prepare this presentation by starting from zero. Uh so everything that I'll be

showing here will be really unreliable. Don't try to recreate it because there's lots of potential uh losses from approaching it the way I do. Uh hint, there will be a uh a list of forgot the words to recreate the the passphrases for the wallet. So you can actually claim money from my wallet. I started with focus tree. I thought like oh let's start calm and download the application launch press the focus and then I can start working on recreating the wallet and I was creating account and this is the startnet application in Ethereum ecosystem I realized that all right we talk about privacy but there's a bit of social media app so there is a

phone number there is uh there's privacy policy first name last name and then it's encouragement to use the first name last name it has pretty nice adoption like hundreds of thousands of users on boarding on focus tree and it's uh quite popular with the new generation of students uh then want to use the app to uh to focus and it was fun actually it started being fun but I thought now I'll be going through all the processes so it gives you those nice trees and you build and then I thought I need to have a wallet I need to install a new wallet let me check what wallets are there I picked a wallet I selected new to crypto and I wanted to play with finance I tried zerium wallet and I thought like oh this is very nice and clean. And uh

this is the recovery phase phrase. So if you want like something like $50 to $100, I wonder like if I if I tell people don't do that if you're watching don't do that here. Leave the money there. I wonder if it still stays there. I I don't care. So you can but think like there's nothing protecting it and uh would you still claim it? Uh so then I wanted to onramp. So I wanted to have money in my wallet. Uh so with the zerion I realized that they're trying to uh promote the layer three I think it's a like the solution on uh zikk singh so zerion uh chain uh I had started uh I had transact for on boarding and I thought like nice soon I'll be on boarded and then I had to fill in some

details I thought okay still we don't have that privacy at all so uh but it's you know is there a problem for on boarding and then I thought like ah I don't want to fill in the details I don't want to provide my birthday. Uh so I will use the KP2P to uh to have a like on boarding which is permissionless through Revolute and I started selecting things and I realized that this is funny to select a quote because obviously there's nothing between those quotes except the prices and you select the best one and uh then I couldn't really execute it somehow. I wanted to login with my wallet on MetaMask, but it didn't allow me to on ramp because I didn't have uh I didn't have funds. And then I was able to Yeah, as you see that

error message, not not the nicest error message that you can imagine. That was through the Zerion wallet. Um so then I decided to sign in with my with my sorry, my email account. Uh and this is this is going to Revolute to claim $100. And this is a zkbased uh zklsbased solution that goes to the bank account to check uh whether you can prove that you sent $100 to on-ramp. And I think that when I was thinking about it, I could equally just send $100 to random accountant uh and just send like in the reference where where I want to send the money. But if you look into it actually there are some tricks. This is pretty nice thing. uh something went wrong at the beginning and then actually

uh again transact didn't work and then what's this one then I thought like okay I start having problems with on on ramping so maybe I try the uh privy.io O I think that's how you pronounce it. Uh so I thought maybe I create my own app for on boarding but obviously after a few clicks I thought this is not the way to go. So then I went to Moon and I wanted to on ramp with Moon and I thought okay I need to fill in the details. At this point I was already used to the fact that I have to fill in some questioners and and then I after I filled that in I said okay this is just 24 hours to wait and I'll be accepted. So, not really a good solution. When I was trying to prepare for going through apps of Ethereum, I

thought, hm, maybe I go back to the wallet that I've been using for a long time, MetaMask, and it says the most trusted crypto wallet, and it's 2.7 stars out of five. And uh and I was tabbing through the uh through the passphrases and I realized that each time you press tab, you can actually go to this like show, not show uh small irritating detail. And uh then I recovered my wallet. I realized that well it's sharing a lot of information with RPC with uh with data with my IP and with the information about the tokens that I'm trading. So practically everything is shared with RPC provider.

Would be nice in the future to have very private RPC providers. Uh then I launched MetaMask and it told me maybe try Salana account. That's the first thing that you see nowadays when you're launching Pentamask. So I tried to focus again for a moment. Actually, I had to interrupt my previous focus because it was asking me for some phone operations. Uh then this if you've seen recently on Twitter, it's it's accidental that Ethereum is not on the first place and the then I thought okay so try to on board with MetaMask. So this is buying through MetaMask and uh again I managed to find a way to on board with Revolute and it asked me for a quiz of like are you are you a

good investor? Do you know really what the risks are? I failed. Uh I don't know what I did wrong and it told me that if I fail once again I'll be blocked. I'll not be able to honor them. So I just didn't know exactly what the risks of crypto are. And there then they blocked my Revellet account because they said I'm doing something something shady. So they will unlock my account after review. So now I don't have also my uh my normal banking account. Uh they haven't unlocked it yet I think. So then I went to blockchain.com to onramp and I entered my personal details again.

I was not too happy about date of birth and address. Uh it started processing. It got stuck for a while. It got stuck. Then I started looking at what I could on on ramp and I had all of those USDCs with logos. Uh and then I thought maybe I'll use the uh ramp. It's another on on ramping solution. It got stuck on this screen. Then it got stuck on this screen like properly stuck. I had to just restart everything, refresh, and then it sent me to Germany anyway. Uh but I managed to do it. But it also made me wait 24 hours. Look, this is not exactly a problem with crypto. It is to some extent, but I think the big part of the UX experience, the user experience is

that every time you try to onamp all the all the traditional finance assumes that you go there to invest, which is interesting because we are just switching to the world where stable coins should be used for simple payments for using them in the applications. I will still go there on ramping and we cannot send money there because we have to answer questions about whether I'm high net worth in investor individual uh whether I know the risks I just want to order an Uber right uh so why does it matter this is how much I paid for £75 on on ramping I paid almost one pound of fees uh and this was one one hour 30 minutes into my exploration I managed to get money on MetaMask I was super happy

and it showed me but that's okay because I'm beginner user so so someone with lots of experience probably would do that much faster they so I thought now I'll explore the applications on Ethereum I went to that router radar and uh I thought oh okay so I can swap the money now uh and I I found this something with nice logo so I thought okay I'll try Banana Gun. I went, it sent me to a Telegram and Banana Gun lets you snipe the tokens. So then I wanted to import wallet. I had to enter my private key, but I couldn't

because Metam Mask only shows the the passphrases but not the private key. So I kind of couldn't do it. So I created a new wallet. This is my private key if you need it. Uh and uh and then I wanted to go to documentation, but the documentation was missing. So, so I looked also at the prices of of Ethereum gas. It's 0.75 guay now. So, it's pretty cheap. Look, it's 4 cents for sending transactions. That's pretty nice. Come to mainet. Um and then I started having all this MetaMask signatures. And I went to unis swap and I wanted to swap and bridge a thing. So as you know unis swap is fantastic ethereum application that's been a major

blockspace user for many many years and served many users and then I realized that when I select the unis swap wallet I no longer can select metam mask like automatically in the past I would press connect and it would detect my metam mask but now it's kind of got unis swap wallet and I thought like oh what happened it didn't detect meta mask or so I was thinking for a moment and I found this other wallets thing so when you press other wallets the metaam mask is there uh so this common problem now when we have the different L2s different applications that try to keep the users with with their branding and and it's harder and harder to feel like it's a single chain right but we would like to achieve that another question is what do we do like we force those wallet and

applications to to not to try retain users and create the siloses or we have to start creating the uh well neutral tooling but then it's like centralized tooling it's really hard question actually then I wanted to select token And I I thought there's lots of E and I didn't know all the logos. So I actually didn't and there was no hover so I couldn't really know which chain I would send it to. I I know most of the logos but some of them actually I don't I think this okay I saw Zora world not sure actually Singh I don't know the third one. Okay. Uh then I started sending money to to world chain. Uh then it

warned me that I'm sending something over the bridge. Uh I pressed don't show this again but it did show again and then this is the transaction request and I'm interacting with alert and my transaction went to this address that I've never seen before and I thought like oh what's this address? So I thought maybe I just check the the details transaction details by pressing on the explorer somewhere. I don't remember where it was but uh okay so this will be later. Here is again I was checking the selection of networks. I wanted to add the world coin uh world chain. So just to check where that money went. I wanted to see whether I will see

this on my world account and I've added everything and the world chain got added but it didn't have the token I think. Oh yeah, it showed my wrapped ether that I uh that I sent to world and then I saw all of these Ethereums and you see like because it's MetaMask I think it promotes NIA. So Lina will show even if you don't have any money there and some other chains maybe this a popular networks and I have now I managed to swap and send for bridge to to base keep something on Ethereum and move something to world but the world was not showing together with all the other tokens. So I thought I'll try some other wallets.

I'll try the Phantom wallet. Then I thought like maybe I'll check and compare it to other ecosystems. You know Phantom comes from and not from Ethereum. And then I went there and I realized oh it only supports Ethereum and B. And I don't think there was an option to add a network like uh well arbitrum or anything else. So I said okay I cannot use it for a single Ethereum network. So I went back and found Empire wallet. It gets a lot of good opinions recently. it's me and and actually it was very easy to add networks and and it started showing a few more tokens but I don't know why there's this like revoke not connected manage app um and

then I went to app catalog so it's something like the app marketplace on buyer I thought this this would be nice actually to have those marketplaces in more places around wallets because you want to just on ramp money and then start using the applications Uh so I went to un buy rewards and I could collect the loot. It was super cool and everything was pretty smooth like the the uh transactions are one or two seconds. It feels like there's low latency. So I started feeling like okay I'm I'm beyond the the worst and now I start feeling Ethereum did improve over the last 10 years. Uh it's faster. It feels faster but still I had a bit of a unpleasant feeling about all those different chains and how to send it. Uh, so I got the Empire rewards. I got five

XP today. Tomorrow I can claim again. Uh, I had to I installed the world app and they told me to write I understand I can permanently lose access to my account if I so I had to type it in. I couldn't paste it and I had to provide date of birth, phone number and share analytics. So again, this is the application that is very much focused on privacy. But then you install the only app that connects it with this application. And I don't blame the the authors. It's just the regulations will require probably to track it. So even if we create something super privacy oriented, there will be rappers over rappers over rappers of KYC and the requirements of different governments that will force us to start tracking it.

So it's it's pretty challenging. It's still much better than if we were forced to use some really uh tracked traditional solution. And then I found a mini world app that was eim and I could buy eams on the phone and I felt this is really cool. I I that was the first time when I thought oh I think I'll be using it. Uh and then and then I also started signing to Morpho which is a landing app and I thought oh this is starts to be nice experience and I started thinking oh and I'll be able to recover it with my with my eyeball and maybe I'll not lose it anymore. Uh okay. I know that probably like many people have lots of concerns about world. I think there will be was or will be one talk that is like very

negative. Uh umpire wallet still nice experience. Uh the sound I mentioned this shows again. I think I had to press it the other way around or something. Uh then this is world explorer. So I try to look at my transactions and this will be interesting because I started searching for the if that I sent to my world application. My world application lost my if I still don't know where it is like $15 a uh you know for the target user retail user of the mini app when you lose $15 and you don't know where it go goes and how to find it at all like I was not able to track it by spending probably 20 minutes on the blocks explorer. It would be pretty pretty stressful.

uh hasn't arrived yet. I may have done something wrong, but probably I'll find it one day. Um so I typed in once again. I permanently I can permanently lose money or access to account. At that time my ZKP2P arrived. Actually this was the time when it worked. So so ZikP2P took around two two hours for the Revollet account to confirm my payment. It was pending and was being reviewed. Uh so Revellet account is blocked but the payment itself got unlocked after two hours. So this way I had practically $200 now on Ethereum from two different sources. Uh this does the ZK proof of uh of this is nice because I didn't have to KYC here if I remember properly because

on all the other systems I had to uh you know like take a video of my face moving around everywhere. Uh and and this was interesting thing. I was trying to to check where it sent my money the zikk2p and this was information like because it didn't send money to my new account. It send it to entry point which means that probably this was 4337 and then it says there is this internal transaction to 0xc4. I've never seen this address before and I just started thinking did I enter my address where I want to onramp from zk2p and I couldn't remember that. And after a while I found it that actually there was additional wallet on the zikk2p page and generated for me uh an account. It would be really

easy to to not find it and to lose it and start panicking. Uh so I think I try to transfer this wallet somewhere else but then I realized I can copy private key and copy phrase. All of these are really not best uh privacy no not private security features right copying private keys and passphrases around and you've seen that on telegram you've seen it on various uh wallets still nowadays I remember the talks from 2016 where people were saying we learned something and we'll never do it again but it happens all the time it's very convenient uh on that router DAP reader they kept asking me to to uh to login to connect my wallet so I decided okay why not uh so this is the message I had to

sign to confirm to to login that's on umpire welcome sign in accept terms of service blah blah address nons uh scary as well a bit obviously uh I went to open C I thought I'll buy I'll buy something actually openc has this thing on the front end where it just rotates the NFTs all the time so they shows you some of them uh like the new ones new ones every few seconds so I pressed the one I wanted to buy and I stopped paying attention what I'm buying and I bought a different one than I wanted actually.

Uh, good. It wasn't something that I paid 100 E for. I imagine some people did it with with banks or something, but I have this larva lad. Uh, I got it and then I started checking additional chains that I could add on the DAP reader. I found something called World Shorts and I thought like I know nothing about this game. Uh, it wanted to install something on my computer. So, I said no, but maybe I'll check whether it's legit. It was. It's kind of 7.7. So, maybe it's fun to play. I guess I encourage you to try. Then it warned me that I'm too young. Uh, then, okay, it's almost the ending. I'll take this like last three minutes, I guess, not for the questions, but push everything else that I pressed. So, I

started experimenting some sport betting. Uh, a lot of lot of challenges again. Then I went to virtuals and the virtuals allowed me to buy the AXBT uh agent and then virtual sent something like M MCP no multi- aent multi- aent uh like commerce protocol or something like this. Uh then I started transferring and it told me dex aggregator services temporarily suspended. So I had to go to another app. It didn't it didn't copy this token addresses. So then I had to double triple check which token address is right because as you can imagine like the same ticker has 20 different token addresses. Uh I used error drone to transfer.

I managed to do it and then at the end I also started going to the privacy apps and this is exploration for the future. I just wanted to start the series with my own experience and sharing that with everyone at Ethereum Foundation, Ethereum community and start talking about things and each time I'll be talking about apps now I'll try to move a bit further and further and add more experiences and start feeling super aware of everything that is wrong because I hear a lots of questions about what's wrong with the UX and I think we have so much to do so much to