Note: There were some other nouners proposing as Nouns Wallet after we gave out our idea for the wallet. Please don’t confuse us with them. We are NOT Proposal 255. We are the original proposers for Nouns Wallet and our products differ vastly!! We are a completely different team of expert cryptographers, scientists and engineers and have invented our own threshold MPC algorithm for the wallet. Read the Description section below and watch the attached video to know the value proposition of our product! Scroll down below to look up our background!
TL;DR
Project: Nouns Wallet is a nouns-branded and nouns-themed web extension wallet with latest untrusted (t, N) threshold MPC cryptography that can be utilised for empowering active crypto users and pushing the crypto ethos forward by making security accessible to all in a Nounstandingly simple and agile way.
The threshold MPC algorithm is developed in-house and has various advantages over other implementations of threshold MPC (explained in the “How is our threshold MPC different from others’?” section below in the proposal).
Funding ask: total of 275 ETH over 2 rounds (inclusive of 200 ETH for code audit)
Estimated Revenue from project to Nouns treasury: Conservative estimate between $3M to $5M a year (plus increased recognition for Nouns) until the wallets industry undergoes the next major revolution. Basis for this estimation is explained in the “Estimated revenue to the Nouns treasury from this project” section below in the proposal.
Description
Hot wallets have low security unless linked to an external hardware wallet (eg. Ledgers). Well, we have a way to significantly improve the security of hot wallets without having to link them to an external hardware wallet!!
With our credible cryptography skills, we have an innovative collaborative proposal to offer — a nouns-branded web extension wallet system with threshold MPC options incorporated into it. The wallet will use our in-house untrusted (t, N) threshold cryptography, the latest threshold cryptography, to construct a system that simultaneously solves security and agility problems for active crypto users. Having an untrusted (t, N) threshold MPC wallet system where signatures are split among different devices, will reduce the risk of single point of compromised keys. Multiple wallets will need to sign a transaction, in order to make transactions valid. The entire key will NEVER exist in its complete form - neither during generation nor during signing. The 1 minute video below explains the value proposition of our product (PLEASE WATCH):
Below is the UI for the Wallet which we are open to changes for:
How is our threshold MPC different from others’?
The following feature summary compares our approach with the traditional and the other modern approaches.
| Metric | Traditional Approach | Modern Approach (eg. Binance, CG’18) | Our Approach |
|---|---|---|---|
| Portability | No | No | Yes |
| Security | Severe risk of exposing the private key as the key is known by one entity. | No risk at all as the private key does not exist in real life. | No risk at all as the private key does not exist in real life. |
| Key Refresh (without changing the group public key) | Not supported | Supported | Supported |
| User Addition & Removal | Not supported (doing so would change the group public key) | Not Supported | Supported (without affecting the group public key) |
| Signature Generation | Fixed t entities can participate in the signature generation. | Fixed t entities can participate in the signature generation. | Any t entities can participate in the signature generation. |
| Key Generation | Generated by single entity | Jointly generate by all the entities | Jointly generated by all the entities |
| Anonymity | Not anonymous | Not anonymous | Both versions - Completely anonymous and Non-anonymous |
| Key Storage | Secure storage | Secure storage | Secure encrypted cloud storage |
| Key Recovery | Not supported | Not supported | Supported |
| Communication between users (key generation) | Requires secure channel | Requires secure channel | Works with any public channel |
| Communication between users (presigning) | Requires secure channel | Requires secure channel | Works with any public channel |
| System Setup | Supports online/offline | Supports online/offline | Supports online/offline |
| Knowledge of the set of presigners during signing | Yes | Yes | No |
(For less than t participants)
Funding Rounds
-
Round 1 - 25 ETH (to be delivered within 2 months from date of funding)
- This round will deliver the proof of concept via testing in an internal network of users, on the following signature schemes:
- ECDSA
- EdDSA
- BLS
Note that the proof of concept will be given only using laptops. Inclusion of other devices like mobile phones is part of full scale development which will be done in Round 2. Front-end will also be taken care of in Round 2.
- This round will deliver the proof of concept via testing in an internal network of users, on the following signature schemes:
-
Round 2 - 250 ETH (timelines TBD; dependent on resource availability and time taken by audits)
- 50 ETH for Production-ready code:
- Front-end and Back-end
- The revenue generation model through swap fees - a percentage of the swap fees going to the Nouns treasury and the dev team for maintenance.
- 200 ETH for code audit - this is necessary to gain credibility in the market
- 50 ETH for Production-ready code:
If proof of concept (round 1) is not completed within the given timeline, Nouns DAO is welcome to discontinue funding this project.
Estimated Revenue to the Nouns treasury from this project
MetaMask average daily revenue over the last 2 months from fees looks like around $200,000 a day (translating to $70M a year approx) from eyeballing this chart. More details on daily and cumulative swap fee revenue for MetaMask is on this dashboard and this article.
Exodus quarterly revenues for the last 2 year’s Q3s have been $18M and $11M respectively, details on this page.
We aim to compete with MetaMask and other hot wallets by offering the latest threshold MPC system built into a web extension hot wallet.
Going by the numbers above, we conservatively estimate that this project could eventually start generating $3M - $5M per year as swap fees. It could go as high as $70M like MetaMask.
A major portion of that revenue would keep going to the Nouns DAO treasury and a small portion to the devs team for maintenance.
Open-Source
The code for our project is open source enough to prove that we can do MPC, not enough to be usable. That way we can protect our core algorithm which has many advantages compared to other threshold MPC implementations in the market (as described in the proposal above). Key generation, pre-signing and signature are open source for EdDSA (which is Cardano, XRP and Polkadot). You can track our progress on GitHub - O-RD/ths_monorepo
Disclosures & background of contributors
The contributors of this project are creators of a subdivision (the R&D department) of the cryptocurrency exchange ZebPay. We are spinning out of ZebPay as the “Insaanity” group, and hence looking for independent funding.
A year and a half ago we began the crypto R&D journey with few principles and beliefs that brought us together. Insanity’s first goal is to reform the financial infrastructure of the world through crypto. Building this threshold scheme is just one of the many contributions we plan to bring to the crypto space in order to help spread the crypto ethos.
The people behind this project are:
Prashanth Irudayaraj (Ex — KEEP Network: Research Manager & Head of Operations, Ex — Tesla: Senior Program Manager, Current — ZebPay: VP of R&D, Current — Founder: Insaanity)
https://ca.linkedin.com/in/pirudayaraj
Dr. Sharmila Selvi (PhD Computer Engineering, Principal Scientist at ZebPay R&D specialising in cryptography, blockchain and cloud security)
https://in.linkedin.com/in/dr-sharmila-s-07315b42
Roshan Noronha (Senior Developer & Research Engineer for wallets at ZebPay R&D)
https://in.linkedin.com/in/roshangregorynoronha
Arya Shah (Product Manager for wallets, Senior Data Scientist, Quant Lead and Tokenomics expert at ZebPay R&D)
Krina Shah (Senior Data Scientist and Tokenomics expert at ZebPay R&D)
https://in.linkedin.com/in/krina-shah-00945916b
Naqiyah Dhariwala (Senior Data Scientist and Web Developer at ZebPay R&D)
http://www.linkedin.com/in/nakiyahdhariwala98
Pratiksha (Senior Developer at ZebPay R&D)
https://www.linkedin.com/in/pratiksha-a2a073183
Aasif Javid (Junior Developer intern at ZebPay R&D)
http://www.linkedin.com/in/aasif-javid-091
Rana Singh (Junior Developer intern at ZebPay R&D)