DAPPCON 2025: Safe- Mission, Vision, Achievements and Announcements Safe{CON}3 Track

Transcript

Good morning everyone. Uh, can you all hear me? I'm waiting 10 seconds for people to catch a seat. Uh, oh. All right. Uh, welcome everyone to to Safecon. Uh, this year we're doing things a bit differently. Uh, for those who were at Safecon in the past years, we've been at the other side of uh, of the river. Now, we thought we're integrating Safecon within Dapcon to make it easier to go back and forth. Um, now Safecon is a one-day event. Uh, we're expecting up to 400 people today and uh it's all about self- custody. Um,

so we got people uh from different parts of of the industry uh different types of people like researchers, builders, users or just general self-custody advocates. Uh but what combines us uh the goal that we share is that we want to make uh altogether uh have self- custody be secure and easy and uh yeah uh it's it's never been more important that that we are able to to make safe custody secure and easy than today. uh with uh geopolitical conflicts across the world with constant data breaches of of intermediaries and with uh custodians for some reason sponsoring military

parades. Uh I think it's it's crucial that people in the world they have the ability to take control. um they have uh yeah the right to self- custody and they have the possibility to exit a system that they find themselves in and that needs uh everyone of us that needs the entire industry in order to make this possible. Um but also at the same time self- custody itself is being attacked and I had a a talk yesterday at Dcon uh about the bybit hack and the learnings that we should take from that and uh a little bit the details uh so I'm not going too much into uh the nuances there but just a high level uh what uh what we

should learn from from by bit which happened about three minutes three months ago uh definitely self custody and secure self custody is a constant battle. um like we haven't solved secure self custody yet and it's questionable whether we will ever solve it because um yeah self- custody means that you defend yourselves against malicious actors against adversaries that would like to somehow compromise your account and they constantly change their tactics their tools uh the environment changes the the tech stack changes and it's something that never stops like this battle is really something that's ongoing forever and we need to make sure that

we're always uh raising the bar in terms of this and that we're always giving users better and better tooling in order to defend themselves against attacks. Um it's also a very unfair battle. Um because in custodial solutions you have the case uh and what what we also u challenge or what we we don't like is that uh there's one institution responsible for custodying all the assets. Uh but that also means that the the cost of security is socialized across all those users. uh because it's essentially the institution uh responsible for the security there. In self- custody the security is very

unique per user and the investments into security have to be kind of appropriate uh for for each user. Uh but it also means that the the types of defense mechanisms and the types of tooling needs to be different for for for different users. And it's unfair because uh on the other side there's nation state actors like the Lazarus group which easily can spend millions of dollars as investment into trying to compromise one single user uh because if they succeed actually it is a uh like yeah a lucrative investment uh still and yeah that's something to to keep in mind. Another learning is that self- custody is relying on two main pillars.

On the one side, you have the infrastructure. Uh yeah, the the transaction supply chain basically all the different tools that users essentially use in order to to make transactions. And that's the operating system, the device that they start with, the laptop, that's the front end that that they use, the application that they use, and like everything in between like the RPC, the indexer, all the off-chain infrastructure. And yeah, unfortunately we are at a point where we've built very cool web 3 technology, but then we add a thick layer of web two technology on top uh which is uh adding a lot of complexity from a security perspective and uh yeah just increases the attack surface um for for uh hacks to happen.

Um so the resilient infrastructure making this uh really uh secure is getting harder and harder as this transaction supply chain is growing. Uh on the other side uh the second pillar is the transaction verification which is really the last line of defense self-custody. So um yeah we always say don't trust verify. Uh but that is easier said than done like we see that um yeah many users don't verify transactions in a in a very appropriate way and it is because it is complex. It is not uh like clear signing is not something that's propagated across uh the ecosystem. Uh many people verify maybe what they see on on the front end

but they don't verify what if the the payload is what they intend to do on the the the hardware device. And then suddenly out of these two assumptions uh what can happen is that um yeah if uh the transaction verification is not done properly the infrastructure and the transaction supply chain becomes the single point of failure and that's something uh where definitely we need to have more investments. We need to have investments into hardening the infrastructure, working on decentralized uh alternatives, uh working on client diversity, front end diversity, uh increasing the bar in terms of standards, uh security practices, OBSAC, um all of that. But on the other side

also educating users about how they can verify transactions, providing better tooling to verify transactions. Um educating also about secure setups and and processes all of that. But also I think uh oh and there there's going to be a very interesting panel on this later today about the current status quo of uh of transaction security and u transaction verification. So make sure to check that out. Um but I also think this might not be enough. Even though we can invest more into these two pillars, we might need to think about additional layers of security. And uh one proposal that I have here uh that I would like to also

discuss with you uh later um in talks uh is execution guarantees. execution guarantees ma essentially meaning that there's certain logic that is part of how the user interacts on chain that is being enforced even if uh if the transaction supply chain and transaction verification fail the outcome should not be catastrophic there should be ways that uh there's certain guarantees given that just certain invariance that cannot be broken and uh that can be implemented in different ways I've talked to people here at Dcon they work on uh a way to have assertions being enforced by sequencers, for example. Uh there's possibilities to have hooks as part of a modular DeFi protocol that enforces

these these guarantees. And uh in the case of of safe uh the safe smart account, there is a possibility to do that via guards, which is plugins that essentially do checks on transactions, pre and post transaction checks. And uh that's something that's super underutilized. And like we've talked in the past a lot about modules and modules being able to create new recovery mechanisms and like other things. But I think what we should actually focus on more are these guards because they they enable to create these execution guarantees and they can come in the form of a co-signer. So a trusted party uh or uh even like a network maybe of

co-signers that uh runs logic uh and and kind of enforces certain rules for example that your uh account can only be upgraded to a certain set of singletons for example or um that your account can only transfer a certain amount to another uh address that like the rules are pretty arbitrary there like you can implement or co-signers can implement anything really like security checks, compliance checks, whatever. Um there can also be policies enforced via guards which can live onchain, which can live offchain uh which are user defined which are provided by the application. Uh the range there is also broad um or resource locks which is a fancy way to say escrow

uh and escrow logic which can be enforced on transactions. Um I'm glad some some teams some of them are are also here today are working on this. Uh they they work on additional guarantees execution guarantees as as guards also uh like the hibernative team uh blockade team working on on cosigners as their traps uh kind of framework uh and and others. I think I would just advocate for for people that are especially building on safe to take this seriously. look into guards, look at the possibilities, also talk to these teams and their experiences because I think that's something we need to to to do more in.

Um, few short announcements, there will be more across the the day. Uh, one is uh that the team is finalizing the uh the safe smart account version uh 1.5. Uh, which the big change there is that it introduced also module guards. Uh, so guards that actually run on modules. So you can have al execution guarantees running uh on on on modules which just open up opens up more uh opportunities to create these uh security mechanisms and a bunch of of of smaller uh changes. Um essentially the idea is that 1.5 becomes like the long-term support uh or kind of yeah the the last 1.x version. Um, and that's then any future version would

then be like most likely like a bigger uh change like a v2. Um, so that's that's the idea there. So we kind of packaged whatever we think makes sense in the long term to be included in the 1.x version and and have this be most likely the the final one. Um, then also interesting that uh the safe smart account is now being pre-eployed by all major L2 stacks. Uh so whenever a new L2 launches with any of these uh stacks, they actually come with the safe smart account be pre-eployed there. That just enables better multi-chain support. Um rolling out products to to many networks more easily. Um and yeah, also uh reduces u yeah central party deploying these

contracts there which which helps decentralization. Now uh bittersweet uh announcement uh after by bit we uh temporarily paused the development of safenet for those that remember safeet was announced as a as a vision last December uh the initiative for safe uh to work on interoperability uh to create uh unified balance across networks. And like when the by- bit hack happened, we we needed some time to think about like what is

actually uh the the best focus for us in this situation. Like is this really the problem that we want to solve? Is this really us needing to solve this? And we realized like there is bunch of teams working on inter interoperability right now. um like chain abstraction at some point was like pretty much every every team pivoted to chain abstraction. Um so there's a lot of development there and there's uh even uh yeah initiatives from L1's from the Ethereum Foundation uh from from L2s to create native interoperability. Uh so and and finally u g given kind of our realization that

now is is the time to invest into security rather than convenience u all these three things together made us realize that we we it's not the right time to bring safet as envisioned uh to the market and it's sad for for myself because uh a lot of blood and sweat went into this and we have we we've made quite some progress and we want to make sure that this progress isn't going to waste. Uh so next weeks we are open sourcing uh safet hoping to get uh feedback and um signal there in terms of like how to take this this forward uh with with the ecosystem together. Um and there are very interesting learnings there from safet uh especially on these execution guarantees that I mentioned uh

because that was also part of uh of the road map how can actually be execution guarantees be enforced on crosschain transactions as well. So there's uh very uh good learnings there, insights also tech that can be uh built upon in the future as we focus more on the security aspect. Um yeah, also we've uh uh yeah we wanted to to go forward into next phase with uh a better structure within safe. Uh so that's why we announced safe labs which is really the the product uh side of things. Um this uh yeah it's it's a fully owned subsidiary of the foundation. Uh so it's

very much ecosystem aligned uh but it has a mandate to to productize and also commercialize technologies uh around safe um and especially bringing uh raising the bar in terms of enterprise grade enterprise readiness and uh really scaling the the solutions that we already have uh to more audiences. Um yeah, this team is being led by uh by Rahul Rumala who's also here today um focusing uh particularly on on the safe wallet and safe API technologies uh and products that we've been working on over the last years and uh yeah he will be here doing a talk at 1:30 uh so if you want to hear about what's what's next

for safe labs what's uh what's the newest developments make sure to to check that out. Um but yeah on the one side we uh we thought it's it's important to really take the next level in terms of a product uh but we also want to look ahead and uh really work on the things that make self- custody self- custody and that is really what the ecosystem originates on like these cippher punk values which we want to push forward and really work on the hard problems of self custody. So we uh we're also having the safe research initiative going forward which is led by Richard Misner and this initiative really focuses on the core values of

Ethereum which is censorship resistance security and privacy. So that's always this tension when you build up products. Uh do you focus on simplifying things, great UX, mass adoption, or do you actually work on the less uh shiny, less uh marketable aspects which are nevertheless the more the or at least equally important uh aspects to to uh yeah to building a product which is censorship, resistance, security and privacy. And there we want to have a team that's purely focusing on long-term challenges uh that we can solve. And uh yeah there Richard will talk a bit more about already the initiatives that are

in progress right now but also going forward and the uh also mentality that we want to apply to this research um because it should be also practical research that uh supports the ecosystem. Um yeah and they're at two make sure to to check this talk and yeah so generally uh we want to be uh focusing in with different mandates on different aspects uh but with one shared mission uh so we will have going forward the the foundation uh which uh I'm leading with uh the mandate of fostering really the safe ecosystem and generally the self-custody ecosystem uh safe labs which is productizing technologies uh and also commercializing

them, taking them to the next scale and uh safe research which is pushing for cipher pump values and uh solving the hard problems of self- custody safe labs by Rahul and and safe research by Richard and the shared mission and what ties everything together is really to make self custody secure and easy uh and yeah this needs these different focuses uh yeah there's going to be a lot of other announcements throughout the day and and talks and panels. Um, make sure to to hang around here. Um, very interesting. Also, at 5 uh 5 5:00 p.m., uh, Shiaei from the Ethereum Foundation will come here and talk about making

DeFi cipher punk again. Uh, so that's a an interesting one, but also very interesting panels on security, uh, on onchain organizations and and many more. So glad to have everyone here today. um looking forward to also chats on the side one to one and yeah thanks for being together with us on the battle to uh to make SE custody uh real. Thank you. Oh do question.

Yeah I mean Sure. Sorry. I mean you need to always anticipate it like it it like honestly like we should always uh operate with the assumption that someone at this very po point tries to compromise your systems and so yeah it is something we need to anticipate predicting it's it's hard like at least not in this scale in this in this in this exact format Because if you would have anticipated that attack vector, it would have been possible.

More questions. Would you say the problem mainly was Ledger needs a bigger screen? Sorry. Do you say the problem would you say the problem is mainly that Ledger needs a bigger screen? uh see the whole payload. I mean that there's not one single problem especially in in this case uh it's probably a few a few links that got broken like if you imagine a chain like uh sometimes the chain breaks and then it's it's easy to point like these are the points where the chain breaks it's hard to predict it before where are the weak links uh I think

clear signing and being able for people to to verify transactions is is is one aspect that needs to be worked on but also the uh infrastructure security is another thing and just missing fail safes is is not another thing. I I don't want to say I don't want to weigh them against each other. That would be bad.