Speaker 1: Hey, folks, we are recording at stable Coins Summit NYC,
Speaker 1: co hosted by PayPal and borderle Us XYZ and joining
Speaker 1: me is Ellie Faresi, who is the lead software engineer
Speaker 1: at Dynamic. Ellie, great to have you, Hey, thanks for
Speaker 1: having me.
Speaker 2: Good to be here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm excited to learn about Dynamic. Let's kick it
Speaker 1: off with your background. Tell us about where you're from.
Speaker 1: How'd you get into crypto and things like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'd love to, like you said, my name is Ellie.
Speaker 2: I've been in crypto since twenty seventeen. Twenty nineteen is
Speaker 2: when I started dabbling in it. Left my tech job
Speaker 2: at NBC full time to join a Web three startup
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty, so I've been a full stack Web
Speaker 2: three engineer for I don't know however many years that
Speaker 2: is now at this point. I love building products. I
Speaker 2: love being in like a hackathon mindset. I then left
Speaker 2: that startup that I was working at to found my
Speaker 2: own company called Bellow, which was a data analytics product
Speaker 2: focusing on marketers and creators and Web three at the
Speaker 2: time to help them understand their audience anywhere a wallet touched.
Speaker 2: It was during that period that I actually met the
Speaker 2: founders of Dynamic. We were a Dynamic customer as well
Speaker 2: during that time and loved the team immensely and I
Speaker 2: left below in October of twenty twenty three four twenty
Speaker 2: twenty four, sorry dates remembering, and joined Dynamic And it's
Speaker 2: been an incredible experience building out their embedded wallets team.
Speaker 2: I lead the engineering there for embedded wallets and it's
Speaker 2: been Yeah, it's been awesome.
Speaker 1: So give us an overview Dynamic and all the services
Speaker 1: and infrastructure and solutions you offer.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So Dynamics started probably similar to the time that
Speaker 2: my company had started, maybe theirs was a bit before,
Speaker 2: like twenty twenty one, really focusing on how do people
Speaker 2: access crypto and use crypto, and that was such a
Speaker 2: big problem in still as today. Frankly, at the time,
Speaker 2: the main key point we were trying to solve was
Speaker 2: around authentication, like how do you give people an ability
Speaker 2: to log in with their email and connect their wallet
Speaker 2: and really have the access come to this off layer.
Speaker 2: So authentication was the core main focus. And as we
Speaker 2: started building, growing with more customers, more sophisticated customers especially,
Speaker 2: we realize that it's not just like how do you
Speaker 2: connect these wallets that you have. It's how do you
Speaker 2: actually give a wallet to somebody who doesn't have a wallet,
Speaker 2: an application that doesn't have a wallet, And so instead
Speaker 2: of making you have to go like get a meta
Speaker 2: mask or a coinbase, a wallet account or any of
Speaker 2: these things, you can now just like build your app
Speaker 2: as you would, log in with an email, get a
Speaker 2: wallet and a secure wallet at that.
Speaker 1: Wow. So is it kind of a dynamic wallet setup
Speaker 1: where it's generated uniquely.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So it's all based on you authenticating as a user.
Speaker 2: So you log in, whether it's with your TikTok account
Speaker 2: or Instagram or email, phone number, whatever you choose. From
Speaker 2: your authentication, it's then giving you an embedded wallet into
Speaker 2: the application, so you now have a fully functioning EOA.
Speaker 2: It's it's a real wallet. It has a it can
Speaker 2: have a private key like you can get private key
Speaker 2: if you'd want to, but from the end user perspective,
Speaker 2: that doesn't matter to them. They just want to be
Speaker 2: able to sign, transact all these things which may also
Speaker 2: be hidden behind the scenes.
Speaker 1: So is it a self hosted wallet like you mentioned
Speaker 1: the private keys, where if I want, I can control
Speaker 1: the private keys, but also if I lose those private
Speaker 1: keys like any other.
Speaker 2: So with with our offering, we leverage MPC and I
Speaker 2: will try not to go too technical because that's that's
Speaker 2: my background. But it's actually a non custodial wallet, so
Speaker 2: there is no like we as dynamic have your private
Speaker 2: keys any of that. The application developer also doesn't have
Speaker 2: your private keys. It all works with this model of
Speaker 2: share distribution where through the NPC libraries that we leverage,
Speaker 2: there actually is never at a single point of creation
Speaker 2: or signing a private key that exists. Oh wow, only
Speaker 2: when you choose to go and leave the platform. Let's
Speaker 2: say you can then bring the shares together to export.
Speaker 2: So it's a very secure model because if a private
Speaker 2: key never exists, you can never get your private key stolen.
Speaker 2: If your share gets stolen, it still doesn't necessarily mean
Speaker 2: that you can bring all the other shares together because
Speaker 2: it needs a quorum to be introduced.
Speaker 1: And what companies or brands are you working with to
Speaker 1: help them create these wallet services for their users.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think a really great use case for this
Speaker 2: embedded wallet product is Kraken. Crackin's been around for a
Speaker 2: very long time. They've had their centralized exchange and realize
Speaker 2: that there's so many more things that they can offer
Speaker 2: their customers as they move into the DeFi space. They
Speaker 2: need a wallet for all of their customers right to
Speaker 2: be able to do these lending, borrowing, all these different apps.
Speaker 2: They're doing a ton of stuff on chain right now,
Speaker 2: and each of them need a wallet. Kracken doesn't need
Speaker 2: to be responsible for custoding or making their end users
Speaker 2: have to have like hold the private keys themselves. That
Speaker 2: wouldn't be a great devx or UX. So what they
Speaker 2: do is leverage Dynamics embedded wallets, where again their customers
Speaker 2: just log in with email, they get a wallet.
Speaker 1: Wow, that makes things so much easier because you know
Speaker 1: you mentioned earlier, if you want to get people on
Speaker 1: board on chain in Web three, you need to make
Speaker 1: it easy. The on ram has to be seamless. You
Speaker 1: highlighted the connection of web through platforms like TikTok right right.
Speaker 1: That would make it a lot easier for the average
Speaker 1: Joe and Jane, who you know, they may be scared
Speaker 1: of ce phrases like oh my god, I have to
Speaker 1: remember this and things like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I think TikTok and that those kinds
Speaker 2: of places are a really great use case, both as
Speaker 2: the end user, but honestly more as the creator platform.
Speaker 2: Because what does TikTok do with creators? It pays them.
Speaker 2: And what do you need to get paid, either right
Speaker 2: now a bank account or if you're using stable coins,
Speaker 2: a wallet, And so if you could log in with
Speaker 2: your TikTok account and you just automatically get a wallet,
Speaker 2: and now as a creator, you can start getting paid
Speaker 2: via this stable coin. You don't need to know it's
Speaker 2: a stable coin, it's to you, it's a US dollar.
Speaker 2: You really just start opening the opportunities of where crypto
Speaker 2: can actually start being the fundamental layer under all of
Speaker 2: these social apps, other financial apps, et cetera.
Speaker 1: And I don't know how much you can reveal here,
Speaker 1: but I'm curious, are you using AI in anywhere? A
Speaker 1: plan to use AI to assist in the walla generation
Speaker 1: or assistance and things.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So one of the big focuses as we launched
Speaker 2: this new embedded wallet with NPC was actually offering a
Speaker 2: server version of it. So what that means is that
Speaker 2: if you're building agentic use cases, if you're saying, like
Speaker 2: I want a trading bot that's like built using some
Speaker 2: LM in the background that it can also be non
Speaker 2: custodial because previously to have a trading bot, again, where
Speaker 2: do you store those private keys if you're managing them,
Speaker 2: like maybe you literally just have it on your computer,
Speaker 2: but that's not the most cure way to do it.
Speaker 2: So with with Dynamic, you can leverage our embedded wallet
Speaker 2: infrastructure to have a non custodial wallet where you don't
Speaker 2: have to worry about the private keys. And now you
Speaker 2: can start doing agentic use cases. And you can combine
Speaker 2: this with the end user like login experience and a
Speaker 2: server wallet, and so this the way you can do
Speaker 2: this essentially with Dynamic is what we call delegation, where
Speaker 2: you can have a wallet, say on TikTok or any
Speaker 2: any financial app to like, you go to your banking app,
Speaker 2: sure you get a wallet as the as the end user,
Speaker 2: and you can delegate permissions to the application, so to
Speaker 2: TikTok or too wells Fargo or whatever your your application
Speaker 2: may be. Where now you can say I'm going to
Speaker 2: allow them to perform actions on my behalf. So say
Speaker 2: every Monday at eight am, you want to set a
Speaker 2: payment to go to your UH or every month I
Speaker 2: have like a rent payment that goes because my rent
Speaker 2: is old Florial in New York, and I have to
Speaker 2: send a check, so I have to do a build
Speaker 2: pay that way, that kind of system can exist now
Speaker 2: through automation that they create in their back end that
Speaker 2: they don't need to have your private key to do it.
Speaker 2: You can just get a share of the wallet that
Speaker 2: they can operate to some degree with limited permissions.
Speaker 1: Got it? Are there any risk or vulnerabilities? And you
Speaker 1: guys probably thought of all these things, but with the
Speaker 1: connection of these social platforms being able to log in
Speaker 1: that way, or you maybe could talk a bit about
Speaker 1: the security layers.
Speaker 2: And yes, I think about security all day, all night.
Speaker 2: I dream about these problems. So I love this question
Speaker 2: and that's really where I think what we do at
Speaker 2: Dynamic with MPCTSS architecture is the best solution because it
Speaker 2: is not saying that if you lose access to your
Speaker 2: TikTok account, let's say that you whoever the bad actor is,
Speaker 2: automatically gets your wallet. It's saying that they could potentially
Speaker 2: get access to a share one single share, and one
Speaker 2: single share on its own does not give you permission
Speaker 2: to export a private key to sign a message, to
Speaker 2: transfer any of that kind of stuff. It has to
Speaker 2: be this combination so that on its core with TSS
Speaker 2: NPC gives you immediate level of security that doesn't exist
Speaker 2: with again traditional other providers that are working in the
Speaker 2: embedded wallet space. On top of that, I think for
Speaker 2: us as the people building the product, then it's how
Speaker 2: do we take that a step further? Like the fundamental
Speaker 2: is there secure? How can we then say what are
Speaker 2: we detecting? When can we just detect that someone took
Speaker 2: your account? We should be why can't we know that?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: And so can we block requests from even attempting to
Speaker 2: be happening? If someone do we see a suspicious activity,
Speaker 2: we're like, hey, this doesn't look like they're signing in
Speaker 2: from their account. Immediately block the ability to export a
Speaker 2: private key. And so there's all of this laundry list
Speaker 2: of items that we're thinking about and crossing off and saying,
Speaker 2: what can we do to ensure protection fully for this
Speaker 2: end user?
Speaker 1: Oh? Absolutely, yeah, And I know it's a delicate balance,
Speaker 1: right of usability and security and all these things. You
Speaker 1: have to think about so many situations and scenario the
Speaker 1: fun problems though, Yeah, for sure. Well, you know, and
Speaker 1: it's such a critical component for you know, we talked
Speaker 1: about it earlier adoption. Yeah, on rap right, it has
Speaker 1: to be easy where mom and dad can say, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is like using Facebook or whatever.
Speaker 2: They don't even know. I think that the end goal
Speaker 2: is invisibility. Yeah, if you can just if there's zero
Speaker 2: knowledge that there's crypto, a wallet, any of the stuff
Speaker 2: that's existing. That's that's how you know we were able
Speaker 2: to reach MAT's adoption. Whether or that does it on
Speaker 2: its own, I think there's other things I think to
Speaker 2: get there, but it's that fundamental layer of invisibility that
Speaker 2: needs to exist to reach it.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, And is it you know, at this point in
Speaker 1: time it has to feel a little bit like Web
Speaker 1: two but have Web three function and al in the background.
Speaker 1: But still we're so used to the web to interface.
Speaker 1: That's the way to go at this point in time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's this I always think about, like
Speaker 2: the idea that you expect that we expect as crypto
Speaker 2: developers or native users. I should say that most people
Speaker 2: are gonna ever write down a seed phrase or like
Speaker 2: know how to to wear Like we all are operating
Speaker 2: in Web three with just like this crazy security hat
Speaker 2: that we don't even know that we're wearing, right, because
Speaker 2: the rest of the world doesn't do that, and they
Speaker 2: it's not that the like they they don't do it,
Speaker 2: like they will never do that. And I think that
Speaker 2: they that it's this expectation of like emulating meeting the
Speaker 2: user where they already are in terms of security. And
Speaker 2: I always look at personally at like some of the
Speaker 2: features that Apple has launched as a north star for security,
Speaker 2: because I think they're one of the people at the
Speaker 2: forefront of security and user experience for small things like
Speaker 2: being really the biometric scanners. Introducing face I D Pass
Speaker 2: keys huge win for people out all the everywhere. It's
Speaker 2: a now this MFA that's built into your phone where
Speaker 2: you just scan your face and it doesn't really impact
Speaker 2: your your day to day. It's also not like you're
Speaker 2: not losing any security because you're not giving the developer
Speaker 2: access to your face. Yes, right, So they're they're digging
Speaker 2: doing the hard problem of thinking of how can we
Speaker 2: make this easy because millions of people all over the
Speaker 2: world are going to use this, Right. There's a laundry
Speaker 2: list of examples from that to UH to hide my email.
Speaker 2: Those types of behaviors that like they're they're doing the
Speaker 2: job of making the most secure best UX. And I
Speaker 2: think that's what a dynamic we really try to emulate
Speaker 2: is how can we make sure that the security is
Speaker 2: number one? Like it is, there's nothing else that's more
Speaker 2: important than protecting users and their funds and providing that
Speaker 2: UX on.
Speaker 1: Top of it, and what they're doing compliments you know
Speaker 1: what you're trying to build because in parallel the A
Speaker 1: the hardware is being built with the software exactly use
Speaker 1: your behavior.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would say part of what we've been working
Speaker 2: on a lot is like how can we leverage pass
Speaker 2: keys in MFA because that's that's always going to protect
Speaker 2: you more. Yes, whether everybody does it today has MFA
Speaker 2: on their phone, like you all should encourage everyone to
Speaker 2: and so incorporating features like that where you're just you're
Speaker 2: immediately going to get more security the second that. So
Speaker 2: you want to go sign a message that or sign
Speaker 2: a transfer that's over one hundred dollars. Let's say you
Speaker 2: enforce MFA and you say you have to now you
Speaker 2: have to do face ID to actually be able to transact.
Speaker 2: That's going to be way better for the end user
Speaker 2: to provide that.
Speaker 1: So on that note, hard question for you. It's twenty
Speaker 1: thirty five. What does a crypto wallet look like? Is
Speaker 1: it integrating all the things you're saying where advance the users,
Speaker 1: the customers are educated about the technology, the phones are
Speaker 1: up to par, and it's that and more.
Speaker 2: I think so. I mean, I think it's back to
Speaker 2: that simple word of invisibilit like it doesn't exist to
Speaker 2: the end user. It is just an account that you're
Speaker 2: logging into. And I think that these devices will get better.
Speaker 2: I personally think biometrics will we'll get to a new
Speaker 2: place as well. But it's really just how can you
Speaker 2: ensure And I think it will become increasingly more important
Speaker 2: with the rise of agents via AI to have these
Speaker 2: biometric capabilities because you want to make sure you are
Speaker 2: who you are who you say you are. And so
Speaker 2: I think that's the key thing that we'll hopefully see
Speaker 2: twenty thirty five. I can't say I know for sure, but.
Speaker 1: Oh absolutely, what's on your roadmap? What can you share
Speaker 1: that's on it for the year.
Speaker 2: I think some of the areas like we've kind of
Speaker 2: spoken about that we're really excited about is back to
Speaker 2: this protecting of the user in terms of policies, in
Speaker 2: terms of access controls. This is something that exists to
Speaker 2: some degree in different financial apps and Web two. And
Speaker 2: we've already done a lot to launch policy engines preventing
Speaker 2: like certain addresses you can send to in those types
Speaker 2: of things. There's gonna be a lot more in the
Speaker 2: policy world that we're very excited about. And I'd say,
Speaker 2: there's there's a bunch of things around, uh, providing more
Speaker 2: access to more places. I should say, sure, but we'll
Speaker 2: leave it.
Speaker 1: We'll leave it at that for Yeah. I mean, eventually
Speaker 1: I would hope to see the biggest brands integrate crypto
Speaker 1: functionality Walletfacehan Theater.
Speaker 2: I'd say in the last Yeah, in the last year
Speaker 2: or so, we've had conversations with some of the biggest
Speaker 2: financial institution's, biggest just applications. People building in this outside
Speaker 2: of crypto like traditional Web two, uh, and everybody is
Speaker 2: curious how how to build in it, build in it securely,
Speaker 2: and it really brings out some really fascinating use cases
Speaker 2: that I don't think traditionally in crypto we've we've thought
Speaker 2: about or maybe if i'd act to all we've all
Speaker 2: had a pipe dream of it, but now it's becoming
Speaker 2: a reality.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's exciting and I'm really really excited to see
Speaker 1: the future utbates around dynamic and you know which brands
Speaker 1: integrate these things, because they're going to be big on
Speaker 1: rams to bring people on chain. One hundred percent awesome, Ellie,
Speaker 1: thank you so much.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this has been fun. Thank you so much for
Speaker 2: having me.
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