Wallet onboarding without seed phrases: Web3Auth and MPC

Transcript

gmgm welcome to another episode of web3 Academy your one trusted source to capitalize on the next big phase of the internet don't get caught in the hype cycle I'm Jaybird and I believe that MPC is going to change the world that's why I'm carving a path for doers to confidently build and invest in web3 now if you're wondering what NPC is if you have heard of it you know it is the tech that makes seed phrases no longer necessary in wallets if you haven't heard of NPC and you're wondering what the heck I'm talking about today's episode is going to bring you up to speed today we have Zen joining us the co-founder and CEO of web3 auth which is

a leading wallet provider for the web3 space mostly they are wallet as a service so they're behind the scenes and a lot of people haven't heard of web3 auth the same way you've heard of meta a mask but web3 auth is really one of the key infrastructures of web3 and of crypto because we all know how much the onboarding experience is so important and Zen is just dropping knowledge in this show if you're a brand or you're a business that is entering web3 or if you're in web 3 you need to listen to what Zen the advice then gives and the data he gives on conversion rate of

wallets that have seed phrases versus wallets that don't have seed phrases whoa it's it's wild Zen also talks about a recent project they did with McDonald's in Singapore which was really cool and some amazing stuff from that and then Zen also gives us an OG story in the space because Zen started his web3 journey working at the ethereum foundation previous to that he worked at visa and Accenture so he comes from an incredible corporate background along bought on the corporate the large corporation Enterprise side and also from Visa seeing the payment side but Zen then went to work at the ethereum foundation and being early at the

ethereum foundation he was around when ethereum forked when there was this story of the Dao which if you don't remember that story Zen gives a great recap of what happened with the Dao why ethereum forked and then what he ended up working on at the ethereum foundation was the first Bridge ever built which was built as a result of the ethereum fork so he talks us through that we talk about bridges we also talk about what trends he's seeing in the space as a result of the data he has access to because web3 auth is behind over 12 million monthly active users that are

using web through us while it is a service to enter their apps to enter their wallets so you're going to want to listen to this episode because Zen is just a joyful Spirit it is so full of so much great advice as well as so much experience in the space before we jump in we'll just take a minute to hear from our sponsor modern newsletters are built on paragraph that's right paragraph is a brand new newsletter platform that combines the best parts of web to and web3 to supercharge newsletters for both writers and readers build a community not just an audience paragraph uses blockchain Tech to allow readers to collect and own the words that matter to

them this takes reading a newsletter to the next level where paragraph readers can mint collect and show off quotes from their favorite newsletter this opens new possibilities like creators sharing Revenue with fans I also love their new feature paragraph AI this integrates gpt4 natively in paragraphs create edit and improve your writing effortlessly with one click and guess what we at web3 Academy are on board and have already moved our content over to paragraph We believe this is the future of newsletters because of profound engagement it creates between creators and fans so whether you're a Creator writer or an Avid Reader it's time to

check out paragraph and capitalize on the opportunity of being early Zen GM welcome to web3 Academy hey there no thanks so much for having me it's a pleasure it's honestly the pleasure is all mine because doing prep for this show really made me realize and I was saying this to you before we hit record how big web 3 authors how many wallets you're involved with how many apps you're involved with and yet how many of our listeners I'm sure have not heard of you before so I'm really excited to tell them more about web3 auth and tell them how we're going to onboard the masses finally to web3 because we're going to improve the ux and we're gonna make it

better it's just big smiles all around for me here yeah and then we've been around for some time so I mean and because what they're off is just such a white label product and most customers prefer it to be in that way I think a lot of users for those customers not really see our brand and it isn't really presented up as commonly as you would let's say like metamask or like or like some of the top wallets and the space but we work hard on the infrastructure for it and I think the idea has always been like you know us at web throw off we were like you know I

was technical I was from Foundation my call Father technical he's a complete introvert and those team of like engineers and techies and stuff like that and like most the larger proportion of the teams like full of Engineers right so that our hypothesis has always been let's focus on getting infrastructure right let's focus on getting the infrastructure and the user experience and all all that great but what makes a great wallet or what makes a great application it's not just engineering yeah not infrastructure it's also like the business the BD The Bookmark the attraction of why somebody should use that wallet right and so like we've always focused on getting that infrastructure component super right and

then Hadley and then like working with the best people who really want to take this and go to market making sure that they don't have to think about anything it's really impressive that to be honest I didn't realize that you were a team and it sounds like you have more than just Engineers now but it's very impressive to hear that because quite honestly usually when engineers make a product the ux is terrible they don't think about ux they think about the code and then users come along and they're like oh my gosh this is like trying to the analogy I always use is in web 3 right now it's basically like you have to learn how to drive a car and then you

also have to be the car mechanic at the same time because you have to know how to get under the hood and 99 of the users don't want to get under the hood of tech that's Way Beyond them they have no interest in that so it's very impressive that when you go to your website and all of your branding and your social media everything is talking not about the engineering side it's much more talking about the user experience that you guys are enabling and how Tech like MPC which is getting more Technical and we'll talk about MPC in a bit and we'll explain that but you're not talking about that super techie language you're actually more talking about showing how you're doing things with McDonald's and doing

things with other with box and all these big Partners so I'm kudos to whoever is you know your marketing your BD team they're doing great well that's great it's a small tube oh really oh really yeah no I mean I think it's been the core focus of the company for a while now which is why it's translated into that way right it's the user experience issue with key management has posed to be like a huge issue right like statistically and quantitatively you know us developers and Technical people we deal with these things from SSH keys that I'm not sure if you're technical dissolved but we deal with

these things for SSH keys that we use to connect with okay Amazon or whatever and developers lose SSH Keys all the time right this is naturally going to be equivalent for just your standard use what's no less and who manages these things less yeah right there was a statistic that was going around bytech analysis that basically mentioned that twenty percent of all Bitcoin in circulation has actually been lost due to Lost public private GPS when t-shirts insane yeah it's crazy it's a crazy number that just really quantifies like how ridiculous this problem is yeah right we need to progress from seek

presence to yeah level might be like MPC account obstruction on top of it or whatever but it needs to ultimately be a better user experience for people to come on board and for PDF to lipsticks right that's where the company's Mission has always derived from we've felt that there are so many benefits to crypto and it's not just blockchain it's not just like web3 it's also just Photography in general right like end-to-end encryption we're talking about like credential passports covered there's so many benefits to crypto and making it usable and self-custodial is I think what we strive to do it's interesting you bring up

the digital identity layer because I think we will look back on blockchain you know year decades from now and I think identity will be one of the big things that everybody realizes that it gave to us that we didn't really care so much in the beginning because it wasn't speculative and so it didn't get the hype cycle that all the speculative assets got anyways you're bringing up NBC we're sort of going down that path let's go there and go there now let's start from the beginning for people who have never heard the term MPC can you give the grade four level definition and let's talk about how it solves this seed phrase problem because I think you're

just to further on that point seed phrases are known to be the largest hurdle to anybody entering the space most new users get stuck at the seed phrase what do you mean I need to write down these words and then keep it like what keep that safe like ha what you know that's my my aunt it's never going to do that we've seen converted rates on applications we'll see quizzes and applications without like post them prior so typically statistically quantifiable generally about 20 to 30 you have a 20 to 30 conversion rate on somebody who starts on your application and then it finishes the seed phase process oh guys that's a terrible conversion rate

typical application conversion rates are about 60 to 70 percent which is what you hit after you like integrate web yeah and let's be clear you're talking but you're not talking about like a conversion rate of somebody from the landing page you're talking about the conversion rate of somebody like they want to sign up they've clicked and they're just not going through the sign up Pros 20 to 30 percent not going through a sign up process there's something wrong with your sign up process 20 20 or 30 going through your signups right sorry get it yeah you're right 70 to 80 not going through right yeah that's inset so I'm in MPC it's a complex term to describe a very simple concept which is basically like a

multi-factor it's NFL today when you have perhaps a Social account they might ask you to set up like Google Authenticator or or like SMS OTP or stuff and you get multi-factor authentication from that from let's say this bank or something up web3 off is no different from that or what MPC enables is no different from that MPC allows you to split a user's poly private keypad into multiple different factors and store these factors in different locations that users on themselves so the concept of splitting it up is NPC and then these factors can be stored on

let's say a user's device by users social login so it could be the Google card could be the Twitter card whatever it might be and then you can incrementally add things so you can add like SMS you could add like an authenticator application you could do a manual backup if you really wanted to as well upload Cloud upload it to Google Drive the list goes on and what you do need though is you always need two factors to access your public private keypad at any point in time what this allows for is allows for user experience that goes okay the default experiences I log in with Google until I say it's on right or I log into Apple into a phone that's my first Factor my second factor

is the phone itself right so because we have two factors already set up once a user hops right in right the user experience seems they just basically log in and they're done and that's it right now then as the accrue value in the account as the add more factors and all these different things they then get more usage and this completely removes the seed phrase so I don't need to set up and store a seed phrase anymore is there still a seed phrase in the background is that what is being stored you can think of it as The Siege phrase itself is what's being

split right well the seed face itself is not stored but the different individual split factors right right okay so then I don't need to know my seed phrase though as the user I can just use these other factors why is this only happening now and what's the hurdle for more apps to be using this so I don't think it's only happening now it's just becoming a little bit more popular and a little bit more widely accepted in community you know the start they've been for example Sky weaver or I'm not sure if you've heard yes Michael Sanders from that team's been on our show about a year ago yeah yeah so about a year ago

he probably showed you sequence one and he was like okay look it's Google logins and it's Apple login and sequence started two and a half three years ago right in particular and they've had the same Music Experience since that the same Music Experience it's part technology is so partially part of this is technologists just take time to adopt and it's true for like you know passwordless for example passwordless Solutions in the traditional web 2 space where you don't use your username and password but instead you use passwordless right highly used

since like 2008 or something like that the latter part of the first decade no true right but it was only until like I don't know somewhere in I think 2014 2015 where slack really made it go crazy so that was a good six seven year gap before they saw any big break on an application on somebody who kind of yeah kind of uses it and the reasons why these Technologies just take a while to proliferate is that these Technologies are about security which means a lot of Education to do on the developer side for example right these app Integrations are a little bit more technically

complex than the seed first seed prices are complex to the end user but to the developer right seed phrases are simple it's dude I just give you a seed phrase to the user it's a nightmare right but like to the developer it's so simple right that's relative to going and like integrating like what you're off or something like that or MPC these are like you know schemes which are very very academic and very NPC is like it's huge field in itself which existed before crypto before web3 and got popularized for this particular use case actually it's education developer experience reverses you know just plugging in a seed phrase and then last

but not least it's also user education right the flowers people pioneer there's people like sequence which sequence is powered by Webster off right like the people like sequence the people like back then the this like good dollar start bot the people pioneered this right had users come to go with them and go like oh my gosh what are you doing with my kids because nobody understood nobody these guys are the Pioneers literally in the space doing this which so it's again user education yeah application and then lastly it's like the ease the developer ease of integration it's multiple stakeholders and when you have so many stakeholders

involved in new tech it takes time as you said so I want to jump back to you mentioned Sky Weaver for listeners who don't know Sky Weaver one of the leading blockchain games you can go back about a year ago listening to our show with Michael Sanders from that team and if you want to play an awesome blockchain trading card game Go play skyweaver highly recommend it you mentioned slack being a key moment to pushing people into that way of passwordless sign up for an account so it's always interesting how and this keeps coming up in the show that we're at that moment where consumer it's time for Consumer apps in the crypto and blockchain space we're finally ready we have the tech and

the infrastructure is ready is wallet ux the key and can you give us some examples of who is doing that to be honest I don't think wallet ux is the key anymore I think the wall ux is here it is actually here and we've seen different applications now that have managed to get a break in different ways step in for example I was on web they're all a couple of others right and you're seeing lots of big Brands kind of do this as well and it all feels seamless the nft Cleveland process out some of them don't scale so well like the you know because of the underlying blockchain but like

with l2s and all of this we'll give you that we're getting oh we're almost how to more or less that you know I actually think the next thing stopping us I mean I think it will come by the way it's on its way I don't think there's this is really just the uptake of what is going to be the next few use cases and because we are in a high interest rate environment for the first time in crypto's history yeah right I think what this would be what made translate into something very different from what we are typically expecting sure right

you've got your standard social applications that you know far Acosta lens cyber connect which are attempting different forms of identity or social network you've got friend attack which is a new form of like you know consumer application so so and so forth you've got that segment of consumer applications that people are you know experimenting and trying with and maybe something that would make a huge break friends great I don't like you know like 100k users is nothing compared to your typical yeah it's already falling it's already falling off a cliff that's that's basically it that's and they all need another big break they'll be you'll need to innovate and they'll need to make it yeah and people are forking it and I I do think that it could go

somewhere but it's it's small audience right now it's just got a lot of attention in a short period it's a great start don't get me wrong yeah and yeah I hope that they make another good break right yeah I actually think Tech is here it's all about the use case yeah and I agree it's so interesting to hear I didn't expect you to have that answer I was expecting you to say that while ux is the key in that you know web3 auth is the solution to that so basically so that's it we're not like I don't know if you're a developer I do think it's not like with new you know and no I think that the it's the users and the new users where their first

interaction with blockchain is not going to be buying or selling crypto it's usually going to be a free nft or something free that they gain from a an existing brand or from playing a game it's free first it's usually I think that's the path that we're going to take and then they'll start to spend money and so if it's free first I don't really want to set up a wallet and do all these complex things that's not what I'm here for I'm not here for self-custody right you know I think nft is all styled nfts or pfps what's your definition there I I mean I think they're relatively the same I

think both are kind of Jeff is Sound a bit fresher but nobody knows about them yet in mainstream yeah it doesn't really matter but I think loyalty programs that come out of these things are the new form of nfts the new formal number like people are just calling the nft drops now because they're free and their points so they're fungible even if they're non-fungible they're like badge something like that right but people collect it's just loyalty programs yeah like I think that quite a few different exciting loyalty programs I've been seeing but I've been seeing a trend that like okay all nft projects are basically pivoted to call themselves I build retention I build I help you with attention right I think something else that might be quite an interesting

use cases also you know a lot of people say like D5 is dead and they say all device dead because because it's scams it wasn't a bad ux blah blah blah but to me I think it's not that device that it's still functioning it's still there it's so great they're still great great constructs being built but the fires it's no longer as worth it to keep your money in D5 because of a high interest rate environment right but as much as that was negative for Unchained TVR I think what we've been seeing is a Resurgence of well basically Stables yeah Stables have been going nuts because of

the high interest rate environment you just issue stable get interest rate maybe even pass off to some of that interest rate to the end user and then you have stables and and a stable functionality can be payments it can be a capability it could be anything and you skip a whole bunch of Regulation around your money it's nice right I think so as much as it has deprecated so and loaded TBR on some other constructs like Mobility pools all those that used to give decent yield right and now people would rather just put in treasury bills it has flourished a different segment that is like Stables yeah and Stables is arguably the best thing that

blockchain has given us in terms of impacting the most amount of users globally there is there's so many people now who rely on stable coins as a method of payment for their job a method of moving money in and out of countries across borders like these are the volume of usdc and the volume of usdc is the same as Visa nothing it was the truth it's it it's mad Visa is the largest credit card processing company in the world which means that Stables have already displaced the Visa Network

by 50 Jesus that's that and we're just getting started we're just getting started wow what's also really crazy is this is with a transaction per second time of stables versus Visa like we wouldn't even be in the same ballpark right like crypto is still way behind and we're on layer twos and we're getting faster but our scale is nowhere close to what visa can do so you think about how much more we'll be able to handle when there's more block space and when we're growing getting bigger I want to come back though to wallet ux because you guys did an end to nfts and loyalty because we brought that up you worked with McDonald's recently we talked about it on the roll up I loved

it because I think Grimace is a great character of McDonald's he's like the purple guy who will eat your hamburger I always love that character when I was a kid and you partnered with McDonald's Singapore and produced an incredible user experience can you tell us about that yeah so I mean that was more that's just an app you drop right it wasn't very much they'll also not have many so they'll block unhappy people no but what is that no about two thousand of them that dropped so like it basically got minted in 15 minutes and it was done that that's it like and they were free right they were also free right it was a big brand of McDonald's right why the user experience like so other than the

high level you know what contributed to so much that just going so fast is this integration was actually in the McDonald's app itself it was inside the McDonald's app like if you had the McDonald's app already if you'd been I'm actually a loyalty Point collector for me at all I love there's this bug in Singapore called like spicy that's just like no other bug it's spicy you feel it the next morning when it comes out the other way but no singaporeans love it you have to try every convert but like uh so every everybody like me who is a fan of mcspicy or fan like who ate McDonald's maybe once a month or something like that yeah that'll happen that fall and it's just click open up you click that went through office that bull log in it

done that's it and that was the whole experience right well it's just simple when you're taking a look at it from a user's perspective but actually a lot of work went into making that so seamless if you think about it it's no additional application download yeah it's it's inbuilt into the app itself yes you didn't you don't have to you don't have to sign a transaction in your wallet right like the whole experience I don't think anybody listening to this has probably ever experienced this I've never seen this I've never seen another app do this I don't live in Singapore so I couldn't do it with McDonald's but I've seen the videos that you guys put out about this and it's amazing the Simplicity of this it should be right

that's that's the angle I'm glad to see a difference because it should be how it is moving forward right if you want I'm not sure if you tried like friend.tech that's the experience these are the consumer experiences that people expect and yeah and we should get it yeah well and that's one of the things that made friend deck dot Tech so great is the app itself feels very beta right it does it feels like the design and the UI of it so it's very beta but the web 3 part of it is so well done because you're not connecting with your wallet and doing you have to do a little

bit at the beginning because you have to deposit some liquidity into friend.tech but beyond that it was very simple and that's again it comes back to this is the point that I think we're making here is if you're an app you need to consider the onboarding ramp and then said you said it yourself if you don't do this well you're gonna lose 70 to 80 percent of your conversion in the sign up process which shut your business down like there's no point well I can tell you so many interesting basically when you have that cell conversion rate you're only

attracting your top biggest most fans right increasing your conversion rate simply just increases when somebody downloads an application or thinks about using your app right we all have like brains of monkeys we have super short attention spans right you either provide to me value within the first 10 seconds while literally leave the application and I'm done right and I'll never come back right and like what whether often these experiences allow you to do is allows you to capture that 10 second window set up just those hardcore fans that would sit six minutes straight onboarding process yeah yeah so so important okay I want to

shift gears I want to talk about bridges because you built one of the first Bridges I believe when you were at the ethereum foundation or maybe just after you can tell us about the time frame when you built that so and bridges are they're one of the biggest problems we face in web3 most scams and hacks I think I don't remember what the number is now 800 billion I think I don't know it makes me sick that the number of money that's been extracted as a result of hacks and bridges we had a podcast a few weeks ago where we actually talked about l2s and bridges and that problem so if you want to go back you can go deeper into the problem what I want to ask you Zen is what it

Bridges now and like what are they going to be in the future is how are we going to continue as Bridges will we have Bridges is there going to be this competitive Marketplace or will Bridges be extra abstracted where do you see it going so I definitely think bridges are going to be quite distracted Maestro Bridges is quite technical less BD or less push-up related whiteboard was as part of my stand as part of my time in serum Foundation I was doing off-chain scalability in general back then when plasma was cool you know that polygons built on and then optimistic rollups take took over and made irrelevant but back then plasma was super cool that's what I was

working on and then one of the projects that I also got looked in on or basically actually met was This Thing Called Peace Bridge which was the first Bridge actually between evm Jets the reason why it's called Peace Bridge is I'm not sure are you familiar with Etc by any chance PC yeah a therm classic no oh yeah a serum classic yep okay okay so like I think this might be interesting to viewers because yeah please what might have forgotten about it anyways so like back when the theorem we just started right that was this dial and it was the first dial and it was called this dial was going to be a venture studio and a big Venture fund that would

basically be the first dial but at the same time invest in other applications other use cases that would be on the phone now this dial went on chin it was the biggest thing everybody put money into it Joe Lube in Africa oh everybody was because there's nothing to put liquidity to into it that one imagine the world without you know swap without any of the other constructs no nfts nothing people just had eat them they were very happy transactions and this new shiny the doll comes out where you could put in the online and you invest in the future wow which ruin the money but I know what happened was the Smartwatch I got hacked and I think there was something like 80 million dollars back then at that

point it was a lot of money because mind you ethereum had just done their fundraise which is like about 20 not in in total this 80 million amount was crazy everything and so this one contract was hacked the funds were being stolen and there was a decision that was married because the thermal's so oddly and this was such a big milestone the vitalik made the decision to basically freeze the chain he told all validators okay but look we are rolling back this thing we're rolling back the hack it was like a war room everybody was on board we're rolling back the hack all validators please update we're rolling it back

right and that's what happened and the tell us once the first few things bitcoiners went oh look at Serbia not decentralized okay so you rolled back the chain but I think from a very Quantum perspective it made a loss from the pure content perspective yes but coin is all right but the world is utilitarian and I mean I very strongly believe that that was the right decision why should I guess 80 million that just yeah straw it's a community back then at that point and so the channels rolled back but of course you had the tractors to that decision right some people felt that like hey it should be the true chin obviously something that probably might have been

the hackers themselves but basically so a thumb split into two chains thorough and ethereum classic in the therm classic the hack happened in ethereum and that was a whole the split initially was about 80 20. 80 of the community went with the firm and 20 of whatever Etc so a decent job decent chunk yeah yeah this is ETC and that was like marketing volume so that was a uh lots of fiascos that occurred during that time but like Fast wood maybe about six months nine months right actually like yes there was a lot of animosity on both sides but you know

most of us just kind of want to have peace and work together and so ball funded this project called the Peace Bridge which for me was a fun thing to do as well which was one of the first few ridges that bridged ethereum and a therm classic basically and it was a chain of proof Bridge so what we mean by Chain of proof is that there are different types of bridges right and one of the more safe construct of bridges incredibly inefficient and up into why is Bridges which relay Blockheads and this only works in proof of chain proof of work chains by the way

it doesn't work on any other chains it only want for proof of watch it so back then everything was proof everything was truly worked yeah so the way it works is you relay block headers from one chain to another chain and you have basically like a Markle root proof that derives from the Block header and that your transaction was included on the other chain and that it was a valid transaction and the way that you would prove this is that like your proof of what headers which are being related to this chain is the longest chain just like how standard proof of what works yeah you would have to wait for maybe

five confirmations five headers before it went but this is incredibly slow um right you have to wait for five errors it's also expensive if not enough people are using the bridge incredibly expensive when it comes to gas well it was great it was a fun PLC it was very secure though yes it was very secure it's one of yeah it's a very down-to-earth stable implementation and it worked and we did Bridge like at all maybe a couple million here and there but like that's it Bridges back then we didn't have as many chains we didn't even have twos back then yeah so like right we're just weren't like as big as

they are today and I was like five to six years ago when it comes to your questions on Bridges today Bridges today are not built on the same construct that we talked about in the construct is inefficient the most naive bridge is built on company this is boring by the way the mobile Bridge sometimes I give it too technical the most naive bridge is built on like multi-six or other multi-6 or MPC in particular all right basically you're trusting either the MPC or the multi-sig to transfer funds across different Bridges I mean different

chains these include literally all of the custodian gens today every construction so like custodian Bridge you're talking about like the bridges that Biden still the bridges coinbase Bridge built the bridges that Circle built all of these MPC multisuits and MPC multi-six work they work decently the biggest problem the NPC or multi-syncs is that like your trust lives with the multisig and how secure that multi-cigarette right for example so the Ronin Bridge hack happened because there are multi-sigs got compromised yeah engineering and so on

so forth right so it's just very important to secure multistake and compared to my first implementation the implementation of peacebridge it's not trustless right you still need to trust them obviously right then there's been more modern chains that have been cropping up which basically you know how Roll-Ups are relatively trustless because you provide an aggregated ZK approved across to the other side these bridges are built basically on this same concept of aggregating like signatures and proofs and tossing it to the other side and the other side kind of like verify verify that yeah it's still a level of trust required which yes there's no level of trust

required well I'm actually skipping one the state channels and then there's this but let's just skip State channels no reason to stay Channel anymore so this one in particular it's like Roll-Ups on both sides now this is relatively trustless and it's great but just like how Roll-Ups are really hard to implement and roll ups themselves have been compromised on different levels Bridges which are complex in this nature are also being compromised I think that was how Wormhole was affected and a couple of others right so where where do we go from here are our current Bridges long-term sustainable or I think to the best that

they can be and that they are now on the best technology yeah some teams will get hacked some teams won't get hacked they're actually trustless at this point it's about the implementation of making sure the implementations are secure and the best team that doesn't get hacked and builds a secure implementation will continue to reap the rewards of of the bridges you know and there are enough teams building at such that there will be one which yeah which there'll be enough clients there'll be enough yeah such that there'll be one that proves it and I mean you also have to focus on getting volume on your Bridge right that's that's about it yeah it's so interesting with you being in the space for so long and at the inner level of starting at the ethereum

foundation I know you started your career previously to that but that was sort of your first role in web3 you've just got such a broad perspective and now being at web3 auth and founding that business you know with you have I think 12 million monthly active users you're seeing a lot of on-chain activity any data you can share with us of what do you look at regularly anything you're seeing that you think that no one else is seeing yet in terms of on-chain activity so when we say 12 million months active users not all of these guys are transacting to chat available active uses uh 12 million people logging

it and using their wallets in a month yeah and that doesn't necessarily mean doing a transaction although yeah like you could log in and use your use a token to access a community yeah before you can log in and there's some off-chem transactions for yep quite a few games which is just like it's never goes on chat it's just yeah level introductions I think the loyalty programs thing is definitely one thing that we've seen from a lot of applications joining loyalty programs quite a bit of success and they're a little bit more long-term looking relative to nft draws right now one thing done that's it and people have stopped paying for adaptives that's why I've noticed this as well people no longer just want to pay for nfts like you I mean right rightfully so a pfp

that some businesses can get royalties off of is not as you know for people trading it back and forth It's not a sustainable business I mean pfps vault is yes perhaps but like I think it's just the value that people provide through these nfts and these yeah like the values is not that like the value yeah it's just the value is made through speculation made through getting up a community hyped up about it yeah and we've seen so many of the best nft communities just for all like loyalty programs are big because like in the web 2 space because these Dolce programs Drive spend and drive traffic to Airlines to to golf clubs to yacht

clubs whatever it might be right it drives and nfts haven't been doing that right at least not to a large enough degree just yet that's something that I've definitely been seeing I've also seen a large uptake of financial applications so traditional Financial applications looking to do something in D5 Stables you'll start to see a large traditional Financial applications issue their own wallet imagine like a bank I already have distribution people banking with me I issue my own wallet I can then issue Stables right right tables are basically New Age banking because what does a bank do today right a bank keeps your money for you gives you a bit of interest rate

and keeps your money safe that's all they do and let's take your money and they put it elsewhere and they earn an interest rate that's how much they earn that's their capacity what is the stable a stable is only gives you money you issue them USD they still get liquidity on that dollar in particular but with you you get Fiat you put that Fiat into like two bills earn an interest rate and get money yeah it's just a new age Mike it's the same thing so I think that's it's just the next disruption that that's just clear you think we will see Trad five banks issue their own wallets not just Banks it's all about digital wallets it's all about

reversing PayPal if you own yeah PayPal did the stable we talked about that a lot on the podcast that which is built yeah it and you'll start to see like lots of them Falls but PayPal's PayPal's fintech they're a bit more new age like just the concept of you know I'm trying to imagine like JP Morgan or Bank of America issuing a crypto wallet seems crazy JPMorgan is super focused on it I mean RX1 crypto and I think you'll find a lot of people on the team really wanting to do it but because of the regulatory environment I think it's not going to come from the U.S interesting any other trends that you're seeing that you're excited about I think

payments have been starting to crop out payments is something that's interesting and then just it would just be a standard kind of like social networking applications and stuff like that there's this one for me I think traction is the biggest thing that I look for and when it comes to traction does this one can be called sleep I'm not sure if you've heard of it no so so basically it's LinkedIn for web3 can you spell it it's Sleek so s-l-e-k but the website is well sleek.io so s-o-l-e-e-k I've got the link in the show notes for everybody listening yeah so Sleek Hilton web drop I only show things I'm just kidding oh good job good

job all right so like slick it's webbed through for LinkedIn and you know how the whole of web series on Telegram so Sleek built a telegram bot and how you share this algor and bought this file like a name card or QR code that you might share an event to like for somebody to remember you what do you get from that telegram about is you get a whole CRM you get a list of like everybody who you talk to at the conference plus that telegram bot is actually it's your target login linked to wallet when that whole list is you know your crl and kind of like the network so I felt that out it's a very interesting distribution strategy I can imagine that I'm really collecting a lot of web through professionals

through just this process of being Advanced having people scan these codes and providing that real value and that utility right and then whatever they build off that I can imagine them going through it doesn't really matter what they build off that because they can go through different Avenues and try to it could be jobs it could be ads it could be okay I hope they don't go through that yeah jobs it could be like credential verification right are you actually from this company did you actually work here well host of things but traction is what matters most right yeah yeah fascinating okay before we wrap up here I got a couple speed round questions to have some fun although we've had fun throughout here but I want

to give you a chance to give a little bit of a show for web 3 auth there as part of being part of ghost Sleek but I want to give you a chance to tell our audience a little bit more about web3 auth where can they find you guys online how can they learn more yeah so if you liked hearing these applications and these consumer-based applications and these use cases check us out typically I think a lot of the applications that integrate us are very very consumer facing and like ux focused in particular that's the demographic that would typically attract and we love to walk with teams that are just targeting real value right I think I'm so sick of like the the 1R drops the one of like airdrops stuff building

I'm locked in and curious on like yes hype is important but the value that they were providing behind that couldn't agree more yeah and uh like hit us up and webbed it off the aisle or you can follow me on my handle on Twitter zenzen you other than that's pleasure being here man yeah yeah we'll put the links that you mentioned to web3 Arts website into your Twitter in the show notes so people can follow you and message you if they if they want to get involved couple final questions just to have a little fun here usually I ask what's an nft you'll never sell but now I'm curious if you even purchased any nfts or got caught in that hype cycle at all

uh I think for me it's just a crypto kitties like just because they're worth nothing now or because of the sentiment I like cats and cats are cute and they are at a reasonable price I actually saw that you in your Twitter bio you like cats key management and Krispy Kreme I think those are three things that go great together well yes always yeah do you have Krispy Kreme in Singapore we do we do and it's what just the standard Krispy Kreme the standard donut thing it's all they want they're incredible they're incredible we got Tim Hortons here in Canada and I I like it I'm a fan but it doesn't it doesn't hold

a candle to Krispy Kreme Donuts maybe different way different I don't know how they just design that okay one thing you've bought recently for under 100 that brings you Joy way does not be a digital product I bought this uh Kappa okay it's just Posh black pepper from sarawaksh and and you know black Papa goes in so much of all foods right like it's so fragrant it's crazy it's mad it adds such a different flavor and uh I've just been really enjoying it I love that I love that that's a very specific good answer well done okay that would cost

somebody 30 dollars perfect perfect last question if you had a billboard that one billion people were going to see what would you write on it I would write I would just write web throughout the marketer the marketer comes out and then maybe a QR code in the corner to set up your first wallet with MPC or to redeem an nft for free and then set up your wallet yeah something come on something something like that oh we would pop no it's like McDonald's the back door to get your own Grimace I mean yeah exactly then thank you for the time it's been a

pleasure really appreciate ever you sharing all these lessons with the space and with our listeners appreciate you and your team for everything you're building we need everything you guys are doing and all wallets and apps out there basically all brands out there that are considering getting into web 3 should be getting in touch with web3os because you make it a great experience for the users thank you and all it's just an absolute pleasure thanks for the kind words and yeah and if anybody interested out there also we're hiring so it'd be interested in engineering roles as well as a social media role actually we're actively looking all right cool we'll make sure we post those roles in our Discord for our community to check out lots of people listening are looking for opportunities

in web 3 and not a lot of people are hiring right now so it's great great to hear that you are Zen thanks again for the time thanks so much for listening in everybody have a great day thank you for listening to web3 Academy your one trusted source to capitalize on the next big phase of the internet if you enjoyed this episode please share it and subscribe or follow so that you don't miss the next one while you're at it there's a link in the description for a free newsletter where we provide timely and relevant web3 insights so you can confidently build and invest in web 3. make sure to subscribe today one final note this podcast is for educational purposes only and nothing we say is financial advice crypto and Webster are risky and you should never invest more

than you're willing to lose thank you friends and see you in the next one