StarkWare Sessions #3 | Account Abstraction & EIP 4337 with Yoav Weiss

Sometimes, the frontier is at a crypto conference. We’re returning from our adventures in Tel Aviv with nine exclusive interviews with some of the key players in the StarkNet space. Wish you could make it to all the crypto conferences, but don't have the time? Don't worry, Bankless brings the frontier to you. In this episode, we’re talking to Yoav Weiss, a security fellow at the Ethereum Foundation and pioneer of account abstraction through EIP-4337. The future of smart contract wallets is massive—Yoav helps tell us how. ------ 📣 MetaMask Learn https://bankless.cc/metamaskshow ------ 🚀 JOIN THE NATION: https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/subscribe ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🐙KRAKEN | MOST-TRUSTED CRYPTO EXCHANGE https://bankless.cc/kraken 🦄UNISWAP | ON-CHAIN MARKETPLACE https://bankless.cc/uniswap ⚖️ ARBITRUM | SCALING ETHEREUM https://bankless.cc/Arbitrum 🚁 EARNIFI | CLAIM YOUR UNCLAIMED AIRDROPS https://bankless.cc/earnifi 👻 PHANTOM | CROSS-CHAIN WALLET https://bankless.cc/phantom ------ Timestamps: 0:00 Intro 3:45 Starknet and the Conference 5:30 Account Abstraction 7:30 EVM Equivalence 8:50 Huge Developments 10:30 Experimenting in Public 11:50 Smart Contract Wallets 15:30 The Future of Wallets 18:30 Yoav’s Interests ----- Resources: Yoav Weiss https://twitter.com/yoavw StarkNet https://starkware.co/starknet/ ----- Not financial or tax advice. This channel is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. This video is not tax advice. Talk to your accountant. Do your own research. Disclosure. From time-to-time I may add links in this newsletter to products I use. I may receive commission if you make a purchase through one of these links. Additionally, the Bankless writers hold crypto assets. See our investment disclosures here: https://www.bankless.com/disclosures

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:03David Hoffman?

  Welcome to Bankless, where we explore the frontier of internet money and internet finance. And sometimes, that frontier is at a conference. Like last weekend, where over 1,000 developers, founders, builders, and investors attended the Starkware Sessions in Tel Aviv in order to participate in growing the Starknet ecosystem. This is Bankless's Starkware Sessions series, which are nine bite-sized episodes interviewing the founders, builders, and ecosystem developers of Starknet. Every once in a while, in the crypto world, a conference happens, but not everyone is available to attend. Don't worry, Bankless has your back, because I go to basically every conference that's out on the frontier, and I bring an entire podcast studio in tow with me, in order to make sure that the Bankless nation stays on the frontier of what's happening in crypto.

• 0:45David Hoffman?

  In this episode, I'm talking to Yoav Weiss, who is a security reiter at the Ethereum Foundation and has been leading the charge behind ERC 4337, which hopes to eventually turn into an EIP, which will become a part of core Ethereum. What does ERC 4337 do? It enables account abstraction on the Ethereum Layer 1. Starknet and other ZK rollups are going to be able to beat Ethereum Layer 1 to the punch when it comes to enabling account abstraction in smart contract wallets, which is good, because then they can come back and teach the Ethereum Layer 1 about what needs to be built and how ERC 4337 needs to be constructed in order to have the best smart contract wallet experience possible. So this is the second of two account abstraction, smart contract wallet-related interviews,

• 1:30David Hoffman?

  the first being Mahdi from Braavos. So I hope that these two interviews can really take you from 0 to 60 about the world of smart contract wallets, and how they will eventually come to dominate all of crypto, starting with Starknet and ZK rollups, moving on to other Layer 2s, and then eventually to the Ethereum mainnet. I hope you enjoy this interview with Yoav, but first, a moment to talk about some of these fantastic sponsors that make this show possible. Kraken has been around for almost as long as crypto itself. As crazy as crypto is, Kraken has remained a rock for its clients, building out a platform designed to stand the test of time. Kraken is all about proof, not promises, which is why they've pioneered a proof of reserves, a system that lets Kraken's customers verify for themselves the solvency and responsibility of the Kraken exchange. And for this reason, and many more,

• 2:15David Hoffman?

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• 2:58David Hoffman?

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• 3:42David Hoffman?

  And now, let's get into the interview. Big station, once again, we are back in Tel Aviv, Israel, and I'm talking to Yoav Weiss, who taught me almost everything that I know about account extraction. Yoav, how's it going, man?

• 3:53Speaker 01

  Going great, thank you.

• 3:54David Hoffman?

  What brings you to Starkware Sessions all the way out here in Tel Aviv?

• 3:58Speaker 01

  I actually live here.

• 3:59David Hoffman?

  Oh, okay, so it's down the street from you?

• 4:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, like literally 20 minutes from here.

• 4:05David Hoffman?

  Well, that's super convenient. I am very jealous. It took me 12 hours to get here. So what's going on as it relates to just Starkware, Starknet, and what brings you here specifically? Like, what is going on here in this conference that really interests you?

• 4:21Speaker 01

  So I've been focused on account abstraction, as you know, and StarkNet has this embedded in their chain. So it's great, and it's been great collaborating with them. So I'm here to talk to people about it, to help people understand it, to learn about it from people, to talk to wallets. There are many wallets here that are worth talking to.

• 4:46David Hoffman?

  And so, as far as I can tell, really, the StarkNet is really where the account abstraction is actually coming into fruition. It's kind of a conversation of EIPs on the Ethereum Layer 1, but on StarkNet, it's actually being developed as teams. And we have the Argent team, we have the Bravos team. So what's it like watching a lot of this account abstraction theory turn into practice here on StarkNet?

• 5:11Speaker 01

  So I've been also involved in that. I'm not watching it from the sidelines. And StarkNet account abstraction is actually based on the same ideas as ERC 4337. It uses the same protection, the same ways to decentralize things. So it's just easier when it comes to when we are... When building a new network, it's easier to build it into the network. So we started the ERC in the form of an ELP, because it's easier to standardize it across different networks. And then StarkNet has been the first network to actually put it into the consensus.

• 5:54Speaker 01

  But I expect that the same will happen in other Layer 2s. And over time, we'll even get it to Ethereum, but this will take time, you know?

• 6:01David Hoffman?

  So what is the frontier of account abstraction? The frontier of smart contract wallets? What have you learned? Or what are you experiencing perhaps as a result of this conference specifically? But overall on StarkNet, what's the new thing in the world of account abstraction?

• 6:16Speaker 01

  So we see different use cases. These use cases have been discussed before, but now they become more feasible. And when it's done at the network level more efficiently, it really opens up the design space. The design space has been there all along, but now that it can be done more cheaply and efficiently, we are starting to see it really happen.

• 6:39David Hoffman?

  And can you just walk me again and the Bankless listeners about the synergies between specifically a ZK rollup and account abstraction? Why is ZK rollup such an awesome fertile ground for account abstraction?

• 6:53Speaker 01

  I'm not sure it has to do with the fact that it's a ZK rollup. It could be done on another rollup, but the EVM rollups try to stay EVM equivalent initially, so it's harder to make changes and DVF on the start. And in the case of Starkware, since it's not EVM to begin with, it's easier to experiment. You don't have to obey any past rules.

• 7:22David Hoffman?

  Okay, so yeah, I want to unpack that a little bit, because I think that's a good way to learn something cool about the world of Ethereum and all the also its layer twos. Both Arbitrum and Optimism attempt to be EVM equivalent. And now if you want to be EVM equivalent, you have to follow like what is the EVM on the Ethereum layer one? And Ethereum layer one is not account abstraction enabled, because that's something that we're working on. And so perhaps why account abstraction and smart contract wallets like Bravos and Argent have built like some, actually like planted their feet in the world of Starknet, is that Starknet never intended to be EVM equivalent. They always forked off and made Cairo, or just like where EVM, perhaps not even compatible, they were just a different EVM chain.

• 8:07David Hoffman?

  And that's why they've been able to kind of leapfrog in the world of ZK of account abstraction. Is all of that right?

• 8:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, it certainly made it easier for them. But I think that we'll see other layer tools, the EVM equivalent layer tools. We see them as a fertile ground for innovation too. I expect that in the future, many EIPs will be experimented with. I mean, EIPs not as in ELCs, but actually protocol changes. I think we'll see more and more experimentation on other EVM networks. And it's quite likely that we'll see optimistic rollups also spinning up a separate rollup to experiment with this protocol over account abstraction.

• 8:53David Hoffman?

  How are the people that are working on smart contract wallets and account abstraction, how are they leveraging you and your expertise here at the Starkware sessions? How are you helping with them? What are their conversations like?

• 9:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I've been talking to them about use cases since I've been thinking about account abstraction for a few years now. And I'm talking about how they could use ERC 4337. There are some limitations during validation which are absolutely required in order to be able to decentralize it. So sometimes it's not trivial to work around these limitations. But so far, we haven't encountered any use case that couldn't be solved with some creativity. So when I'm talking to wallet developers, I often find myself helping to design around these constraints without sacrificing censorship resistance.

• 9:48David Hoffman?

  Do you think that because Starkware seems to be, or Starknet seems to be kind of ahead in the world of account abstraction, that a lot of this learnings here is going to be exported out to the rest of Ethereum? Is that how you think it might go?

• 10:01Speaker 01

  Yes, I think the wallets that are being developed for Starknet right now are going to show up on other networks as we make it more possible. And that's part of the reason why it's so important to standardize it so that we have feature parity. Because wallet developers, usually they don't have the resources to develop many different wallets. So we should try to standardize it at the chain level so that wallet developers can deploy their wallets everywhere.

• 10:32David Hoffman?

  And so there are multiple wallets, I've named a couple, Bravos and Argent, that are using smart contract wallets on Starknet. And I'm assuming because there's already a growing ecosystem on Starknet, we'll actually be able to learn from their learnings, and they're going to figure out what the best form factor for account abstraction is on Starknet. And because just the pace of iteration on Starknet is so fast, that's actually how we're going to learn how to apply this to the rest of Ethereum. Is that a fair take?

• 11:02Speaker 01

  Yes, I think experimenting through actual products and actual users is the best way. We shouldn't do it in a vacuum. So having Argent and Bravos and others doing this is absolutely essential for making it happen. They're also adding use cases that I've been advocating for a long time and are really difficult to do without protocol level changes. For example, Bravos is doing, they let you sign from the secure enclave of your phone, which is something that we already saw in implementation back in Bogota. One of the Hackathon projects implemented this in Solidity and deployed it on an EVM chain.

• 11:44Speaker 01

  But it's really expensive to do if you don't have support for it from the network. So I think that we're going to see more of these use cases, and people will optimize them and will see them moving to other chains.

• 11:57David Hoffman?

  So I've noticed, I was at the Hacker House, my first day here, and a lot of the computer people, like I was watching developers tinkering on their computers, and instead of the MetaMask icon, they have the Argent icon in their top right as their extension. And so, do you think that actually being able to innovate at the smart contract wallet level, is that going to be the thing that actually is pretty disruptive to the MetaMask dominance across the rest of Ethereum?

• 12:24Speaker 01

  Yes, I think the move to account abstraction is an opportunity for disruption in the wallet space that could definitely benefit from some disruption, some more variety of projects. But I think that we'll also see MetaMask doing a lot of interesting things in this space.

• 12:45David Hoffman?

  Is MetaMask going to be doing account abstraction?

• 12:47Speaker 01

  Well, you should ask them, you know, they are here, but I believe that we'll see some innovation in that space from MetaMask as well.

• 12:55David Hoffman?

  Okay, well, the competition is on. Yoav, what else is going...

• 12:58Speaker 01

  Why competition?

• 13:01David Hoffman?

  Oh, it's always... Competition is always good for the user, right? Like, we all... All of these people want to have, like, as much mindshare as possible. Do you think, like, wallets might stratify into, like, different use cases? As in, like, maybe this isn't exactly right, but Braavos is the gaming smart contract wallet, and Argent is the DeFi smart contract wallet, or does that not really make sense?

• 13:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, it does make sense, because with account abstraction, you can make the wallet as simple as you like or as complex as you like, depending on... For example, if you have a complex authorization needs, or you need to enforce certain policies, then you might want a more complex wallet. But as a new user, you just want the simplest possible wallet where you add your phone, you don't know what the private key is, and you can move and you can just start using it. But what's more important is that with account abstraction, you'll be able to set the implementation, you'll be able to upgrade. So as a new user who doesn't know anything about crypto, you'll probably want to start with the easiest one to use. But maybe as you accumulate more value in the account, now you have assets, you need to protect them, and you have better understanding, now maybe you're going to upgrade it, and

• 14:06Speaker 01

  you're going to upgrade in place, you're not going to move your assets elsewhere. You're just going to switch from a very simple wallet to one that gives you more optionality.

• 14:16David Hoffman?

  I really like the idea of a wallet, a smart contract wallet, can be as simple or as complex as anyone really wants it to be. But we're starting, of course, at the very beginning of this story, because we're still so early in the world of account abstraction. What are the first use cases that you think are really going to be onboarded into these smart contract wallets?

• 14:34Speaker 01

  So we already see things like social recovery that Argent has been doing for a long time. And social recovery is often misunderstood. It doesn't necessarily mean that your friends are going to recover it for you. It could be a ledger device in a bank vault that you're only going to use if you lost access. And we're going to see some use case such as, for example, session keys is something that I really like. That since you can have authorization, not just authentication, meaning that you can add that each key can be authorized to do certain things. It makes sense that, for example, you have an NFT that you want to use in a game. But you don't want the game app to be able to transfer it.

• 15:18Speaker 01

  So you could have a key that the browser keeps, so you don't need to manually sign each transaction. But the key can only interact with the game. And if you actually want to transfer your NFTs, that's a separate key and it requires manual signing. So we're going to see such use cases as well. But really, the possibilities are endless. And I can talk for hours about different use cases here.

• 15:44David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I'm sure. I'm getting like this image of a smart contract wallet that really starts off as like a blank slate. But you can plug more and more stuff into it. Is it logical to think of there being like a plugin store for your smart contract wallet? Is that like a coherent thought?

• 16:01Speaker 01

  Yes, that's something that we've been talking about. We didn't want to push it into the same ERC. But I think we will need an ERC for it to standardize the way plugins work. And then you'll be able to get plugins. The way I see it, the plugins should be associated with a certain authentication, with a certain key. And then the session keys are actually just a sub-use case of this. It's just one plugin. And then you can have a plugin that allows, for example, performing trades. If you want to implement a more efficient DEX with an order book. You could let it, you could authorize it to perform trades without you actually signing it. But so and there can be, there can be many such use cases and each of these, I believe, should be a plugin.

• 16:45Speaker 01

  These plugins will not necessarily be written by the same person who wrote the account, you know, who wrote the wallet. For example, for example, Uniswap could write a plugin that helps you do things on Uniswap and you could add it to any of the wallets that support a standard. But this is, this requires, this requires some thinking. For example, these wallets will all need to use a diamond storage. It's an EIP that, that helps you, helps you make sure that different contracts running in the same, in the same address space don't step on each other's toes. So I think that, and I've been advocating it to all, telling them that they should be, they should be using diamond storage from the start so that later they can use such plugins.

• 17:26David Hoffman?

  Will, are, will wallets always be in this like browser extension form factor? Or do you think other like will access our wallet in a different way? Cause like to me, the browser extension wallet is kind of annoying. Is that's going to be the future or there's going to be something else in the way that we engage our smart contract wallets? Do you have any thoughts on this?

• 17:44Speaker 01

  Uh, I think it doesn't, it doesn't have to be a browser extension and I like, I like having mobile apps do a, do this kind of, this kind of work. And I think it should be, and it can be done for the browser. It can be done even from a, from an app running on your PC or your Mac. But I think, but I think it's important, it's important not to, not to lock yourself into a mobile app, for example, because since I really, I really hate censorship and I think that both Apple, both Apple and Google have a permission system where if you want to, where they could eliminate, they could eliminate the wallet from their app store if they want to. So I think you should have a way to recover from it and to switch to a new implementation. So at the very least, you should be able to do this from your browser.

• 18:29David Hoffman?

  Amazing. Yoav, I know you're always like heading to the world of account abstraction, but what in addition to account abstraction have you been paying attention to lately?

• 18:38Speaker 01

  Sorry?

• 18:38David Hoffman?

  What in addition to account abstraction have you been paying attention to lately?

• 18:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I'm a security researcher and I've been working on other security-related projects. And also, I also care a lot about censorship resistance in Ethereum in general. So I'm thinking a lot about PBS, about proposal build separation, and about inclusion list. And the whole thing is going to come together at some point, because with account abstraction, we'll also need to have inclusion list, and it's much more complicated to do in this context. We won't get into all the complexities right now, but it's... So there are some interplay between these topics.

• 19:20David Hoffman?

  Yoav, if listeners have gotten their interest piqued about the conversation that we've just had and they want to learn more, where do you recommend for them to go? Any resources that they might... should be pointed to?

• 19:31Speaker 01

  So, we are building a website for ERC4337, but it's not up yet. And they can also follow me on Twitter. I occasionally tweet about some ideas. We have some Telegram groups where there are very active discussions about account abstraction.

• 19:50David Hoffman?

  Yoav, thank you so much. I appreciate it.

• 19:52Speaker 01

  Cheers.