Imagine a world with 100s or 1,000s of L2/L3 operators and where Smart Accounts have become the norm - everything will be right in the world.
But let's ask ourselves... is that really a perfect world?
If we take a step back and really think about it, the Superchain puts the "super" in super complicated.
I recently published "Scaling The Superchain - Getting Serious About Interoperability" which highlights important work done by the Optimism Collective to reach interoperability between L2s.
But that's just the tip of the iceberg... it goes even deeper.
Smarts Accounts in A Superchain World
The problem (or rather challenge) with the Superchain is every L2/L3 is an isolated execution environment. And that means state is siloed inside of each of these execution environments.
And when it comes to smart account ownership management that's a total pain in the ass.
From a user experience perspective the Superchain experience should feel unified and seamless.
It shouldn't require 100's of transactions to update a smart accounts owner. But if nothing changes that's where we're headed - not very based if you ask me - a billion users won't be happening anytime soon.
Syncing State Between EVM Execution Environments
About 6 months ago Vitalik published "Dedicated minimal rollup for keystores" which outlines the steps required to support Ethereum's Rollup Centric future and overcome these challenges of a unified Superchain experience.
Dedicated minimal rollup for keystores - HackMD
Dedicated minimal rollup for keystores Account abstraction wallets will need to allow users to st
Account abstraction wallets will need to allow users to store funds across a large number of L2s. They will also need to support the ability of a user to update their keys, without requiring a transaction on each L2, especially L2s where they have not yet deployed their account contracts.
The simplest way to achieve this is to store a keystore contract for each user on L1, and have users’ account contracts on the various L2s read the user’s keystore to determine the current public key that they need to check the signature against.
At this point in time I think we can all acknowledge it's Vitalik Buterin's world and we're all just living in it. A fact the Coinbase team also seems too recognize. Because since Vitalik published the "quasi-specification" for a minimal keystore rollup, they have started to make that specification into a product.
Minimal KeyStore Rollup spec - HackMD
A spec for Vitalik's Dedicated minimal rollup for keystores.
We create a new Minimal KeyStore Rollup (MKSR), which is a based rollup that stores its merkle tree state root on L1. It is an implementation of the ZK-SNARK proof solution outlined in the deeper dive post.
If a user wants to change their SCW signers, they can submit a SNARK that proves access to the current signers of their SCW. Users can choose to submit this proof to a separate MKSR mempool, or directly to L1 which provides a forced-inclusion mechanism. These proofs are verified in-circuit, to save gas costs of recovery operations.
If you want to skip reading all of those documents I don't blame you, but one thing you need to be aware of is in the future it's very likely every smart account transaction will need to be accompanied by user generated zero-knowledge proof.
Understanding the Basics
The specification and implementation are both highly technical - it's actually quite incredible! And really a testament to how forward thinking Vitalik Buterin and the Coinbase organization are.
But what does it mean for the average user?
It ultimately means every smart account transaction will also need to include a user generated zero-knowledge proof. A huge departure from today's normal transaction signing.
It's like going from smashing rocks together to launching a rocket into space every time you want to execute a blockchain transaction or what I affectionally refer to as "moon math" for trading memecoins.
Coinbase's Perceived Unfair Advantage
This post is primarily to highlight upcoming technical changes for Ethereum and the Superchain, but I want to take a moment to acknowledge the elephant in the room. I personally love the new Coinbase vibe, mostly because of Jesse Pollak, but I'm also a natural skeptic who likes to think about worst case scenarios.
Coinbase is playing the long game - exceptionally well.
They're thinking months, years and possibly even decades into the future. And it's not obvious that any of the other team/companies are even aware of the scale they're playing at... let alone able to keep up.
I love Ethereum and I want to see it scale.
I want Coinbase to succeed, because I think they represent our best chance of making that happen, but if left "unchecked" they're going to "dominate" the blockchain user experience. From the outside it appears as if they have right intentions, but as they say "No good deed goes unpunished." which I think can be applied to the current situation.
If we as a community let Coinbase, a publicly traded company, become the dominant force in the Ethereum/Superchain ecosystem we expose ourselves to unintended consequences. Not necessarily because that's the intention, but because that's how "karma" and the laws of cause and effect work.
Arguably in the next 2-3 years most Smart Wallet teams won't be able to keep up with the innovations required to meet the demand of bringing a billion users onchain. Naturally this gives way for Coinbase to find itself becoming the de-facto wallet for all of the Superchain.
A potentially dangerous situation...
Conclusion
Ethereum's future is bright. The Superchain will scale. It's going to be difficult, but it will happen.
The "minimal rollup for keystores" is an example of that.
The Superchain vision demands innovation. And innovation requires investment. We need Coinbase the company, just like we need Vitalik the cypherpunk.
But we need to make sure the scales never tip too far in one direction.
As we move towards the future of increased complexity and "moon math" solutions we need to make sure both companies and cypherpunk values flourish.
I don't have the answer to what that looks like, but I do know that conversation is becoming more and more important.
If @vitalik.eth is right, in the future every smart account transaction will be accompanied with a user generated zero-knowledge proof. /coinbase is helping us get there... but will there be any unintended consequences during this transition? https://paragraph.xyz/@kames.eth/smart-account-transactions-and-zk-proofs