Hello Harmony community!
Wallets has been developing rapidly in the blockchain space, with almost each L1 chain having its own benchmark wallet application. Users are getting used to using different blockchain wallets. On top of crypto money transferring, users have also generated diversified demand for swap, investment, community governance and etc. At the moment, the use of smart contract wallets has become a new trend.
AstroX’s ME wallet, a multi-chain smart wallet (https://astrox.me/) powered by advanced cryptography, provides a smooth interactive experience similar to Web2 applications. ME wallet, using biometric technologies including fingerprints and facial recognition instead of existing wallet’s private key management methods, is able to creatively restore wallets on new devices without seed phrases.
For Ethereum, there are Gnosis Safe and Argent.xyz , and for Harmony there’s 1Wallet. Even though the early adaptors have already been used to seed phrase/private key backup and management, most users, especially novice and normal users, the concept of “seed phrase/private key” is still too complicated and can lead to loss of assets if they are not careful when using the wallet. For a very long time, the problem of how to securely and appropriately manage the seed phrase and private keys has been a big problem in the crypto space.
Although there are choices like hardware wallets or cold wallets as a secure key storage method, most of the products are not convenient enough in terms of user experience. Overall, there is still a high barrier to use smart contract wallet products, and most of which do not support multi-chain assets management and transferring.
Problems to be solved
Many wallets are browser-only plug-ins, which are not compatible with today’s mobile life. If a wallet requires users to sit in front of a computer and install a specific browser in order to use it, it would add to much inconvenience. The future of wallets is bound to be for the general public, and the product experience must be close to or even go beyond those of the Web2 products.
In addition, smart wallets should also make use of cryptography to prove transactions credibility on the blockchain network. ME expects to redefine wallet in terms of security and transaction experience.
What is ME wallet
In a nutshell: ME is a smart wallet that supports multiple chains and multiple coins.
Improved user experience with a low barrier to use. ME wallet has done a lot of thinking and optimization in this area to ensure that the design is appealing, the user interface is easy to understand, the operation process is simplified, and the functional logic is secure and rigorous.
Based on our conceptual understanding of identity and wallet, ME wallet is designed to differentiate between the two: users will first register a decentralized identity and then use the wallet connected to it. The implications are twofold:
First, the user only needs to remember his or her identity to manage all the data associated with it, as if registering for a Google account allowed him or her to connect to many applications and services.
Second, users can manage their wallets with one identity (username), allowing assets to transfer freely in wallets. When users log in to a third-party DApp with a username, they can switch between wallets themselves. This is consistent with the payment experience in our daily life. In other words, the main data of all DApps (such as account level, operation records, etc.) are only associated with the identity (username), and users can switch wallets for different payments at any time.
As the bridge connecting users and DApps, ME wallet also innovates in the design of authorization mechanism, proposing three authorization login modes with different privacy levels: “ordinary/pseudonymous/anonymous”, so that users can decide whether third-party DApps can track behavioral data in or across apps.
ME wallet features
AstroX will build ME wallet with the following features:
-
Allowing users to register and log in using an easy-to-remember ID;
-
Allowing for secure binding with multiple devices (including desktop computers and smartphones) without seeding phrase;
-
Allowing for logging in with devices (including desktop computers and smartphones) that has biometric features;
-
Allowing for logging in with Ethereum wallet like Metamask;
-
Mobile client supports iOS and Android devices;
-
Supporting multiple blockchains, including Harmony and all other EVM compatible chains; supporting mainstream coins including BTC, ETH, ONE and ICP, etc;
-
Supporting third-party DApps including Web DApp and MiniDApp; and supporting authorization models with different privacy protection levels;
-
And, supporting social recovery and complex business logic of multi-signature.
Technical Breakdown
- ME uses ECDSA Threshold Signature of Dfinity, a L1 public chain to complete the signature. The signature does not require intermediate servers to provide verification and is secured by the consensus mechanism of Dfinity blockchain with reliability and efficiency.
- Threshold ECDSA is based on the further development and extension of ECDSA technology and supports BIP 32 derived standard.
- ECDSA signature is widely used in blockchain industry. This feature will enable smart wallets to have ECDSA public keys and sign transactions. After smart wallets create Threshold ECDSA, they can hold BTC and ETH and create transactions. Threshold ECDSA allows nodes to share keys. Whenever a wallet issues a signature request, different nodes can collaborate and create Threshold ECDSA signatures.
- Threshold ECDSA is dynamically changing and regularly updated to reduce the risk of share secret leakage. Even if 1/3 of the nodes are not working properly, the remaining nodes can still finish the signing.
- ME uses account abstraction mechanism with smart contract running in WebAssembly container and permissions verified in the protocol stack. The ownership of user account is in the user-bound device, and each device can be regarded as a hardware wallet. At the same time, users can add and remove devices at any time.
- Many smart contract wallets today run in Solidity compiled EVM. Users need to unlock the contract in advance, and when the network is congested, the cost of use increases and efficiency is limited by L1. ME uses ICP high performance protocol, with the block speed of 30block/s, 2s finality, in performance and Harmony equivalent.
- Smart contracts are written in a language supported by WebAssembly, allowing for customized logic of high complexity and providing more possibilities for contract upgrades and satisfying user needs.
Future Plan
In our daily life, users simply pull out their phone, open the wallet app, and swipe to pay. If the user loses their phone, they can quickly report the loss, suspend the account, and continue to use the wallet on a different phone. Users can set a series of metrics such as time, expense limit, and geographical rules to protect their assets.
This is the kind of user experience we are aiming for.
ME wallet is designed to be a smart contract wallet for the mass market. We have the full-stack client and provide a daily-life user experience such as iCloud.
We believe that a true personal wallet should have functions, data and assets that can be controlled and managed by users themselves. Users can choose their own pluggable function modules, control the flow of wallet data, and management the circulation of wallet assets, thus achieving true individual sovereignty. All of these require the empowerment of smart contracts.
We believe that in the future, smart contracts and individual sovereignty will be integrated, and personally owned smart contracts and data will be converged under the control of the user, i.e. the user becomes the owner of the smart contract, not the developer or some institution, so as to ensure the maximum decentralization and realize individual sovereignty. To this end, ME aims to provide a number of developments and updates for the future. ME is to:
-
deploy a wallet contract for each registered user that belongs to the user;
-
compile user identity-based access control policies for each running smart contract;
-
create privacy backups and access rights to transaction data, including contacts, for each wallet transaction;
-
provide seamless upgrade and redundant backup capabilities for each smart contract;
-
provide proprietary user interface and configuration capabilities for user-end software including web and mobile apps;
-
provide features for advanced users such as multi-signature, social recovery, social transfers, and more.
About AstroX Team and Harmony
AstroX Network was incubated in the Firestack Labs. In the early days of Harmony, Firestack members Brutoshi (https://twitter.com/brutoshi_) was one of the advisors and Neeboo (https://twitter.com/ghostcorn ) was one of the Harmony community developers who helped build Harmony’s early products including the SDK from scratch. The team has also done Harmony’s staking node.
After that, Brutoshi and Neeboo continued to explore in the Web3 startup space, trying to build products in multi-chain areas. Brutoshi and Neeboo started to explore wallet and decentralized identity technology and founded AstroX Network last year. AstroX was the first team in Asia to receive an official DFINITY grant in 2021 summer. After the beta launch of its product ME, it received a lot of recognition from users and the community for its smooth user experience.
AstroX Network has a long-term relationship with Harmony and a history of building Web3 projects, the team is very eager to use different technology stacks to build new products and help users. Coming back to Harmony is like coming back to a family, and we are excited to share our product with the Harmony community.