Chain-Key Cryptography: Scaling Blockchain with ICP | Dominic Williams

[00:00:01][Music] okay so we're here at hackers Dan inmo uh really excited to be here in Turkey uh first time for me flying all the way from Mexico so it's kind of like a first but I reckon for for you it's been you've been all over the place we move around a bit that's right and so for us what brings us here is mainly all about shanki technology and I reckon that's something that um well came from your team and yourself leading that so tell us a little bit about that how did that technology came to beond main at and more importantly what's the ne the best use cases for chain key and um yeah let's take it from there well the the history the history is um that back in uh you know 2014 I was researching ways to build faster blockchains and as was probably the first person using like what's not as classical uh bantine full tolerant consensus math anyway a lot of these protocols uh need to be driven by a random number and even actually Bitcoins driven by random numbers you know that the proof of work that people produce is a random number that selects who who gets to produce the next block anyway uh we did that using threshold cryptography so you got to you know if you have a group of nodes um they create a signature that's a random number and then the next group of nodes signs the previous signature and they put a new random signat you get a chain of random numbers and what's cool about BLS threshold cryptography is that it doesn't matter which subset of the nodes combine their signature shares the the the resultant threshold signature is always the same it's always the same number and um this was very important anyway so you know way back uh all of since way back all of my blockchain designs uh were powered by um random numbers created using BLS threshold cryptography but over time you know um we use thresold cryptography for more and more purposes within uh you know within the overall protocol and uh today the internet computer relies on this chain key as we call it chain key cryptography to scale so you internally the internet computer is composed of lots of individual subnet blockchains and these subnet blockchains uh are transparent to the smart contracts the canister smart contracts but the more subnet blockchains there are the more canister smart contracts you can host and the reason the internet computer can just scale out by adding new subnet blockchains is that each subnet blockchain has its own chain key yeah it's a kind of threshhold signature and so it can it can sign transactions it's sending to other subnets and it can res it can sign the results of uh transactions that you receed from other subnets and actually the the network the internet computer network has a master chain key which uh is held by the network nervous system subna and it's a 96 by number right and if you have this 96 by number you can verify the signature on any transaction coming back um and the reason it's possible to scale is that these subnets don't need to see each other's blocks once they've seen that the subnet has a chain key that's signed by this master chain key they can validate this the signatures on messages coming in and um and and and that tells them that that's a valid message from the subnet and when they send a say a function call a transaction to another subnet and the result comes back and it's signed by the other subnet the transaction the sub you know the signature on the transaction tells them not only that the message hasn't been changed but that the other subet is working correctly so now all of these subnets can interact directly without having to see each other's blocks yeah and that's the secret of scaling on the internet computer and of course it's also important for things like crypto sessions we don't have a wallet model we have a user session model and within you know a user creates a session with a small contract and within that session the user experien is crediting transactions um and verifying transaction results transparently and that as well depends on on on on this chanky system and actually it's the the reason it's called chanky not threshold cryptography is actually it's a whole you know enormous assembly of cryptographic protocols and and in order to do chain um you need to be able to establish these things called key shares on the noes and for that you need something called a non-interactive dkg non-interactive distributed key generation protocol which is a complex thing I think we have the first in the world we proved it as possible but you also need to do things like rotate the key material exactly to make sure that uh you it's not possible for an adversary an attacker to steal bits of key material one by one from the nodes and eventually get the whole yeah eventually get enough material to to sign themselves so so what's happening is that key material's constantly being churned and recycled and recreated and so the only way that you can um make a signature yourself is to get a snapshot of a large part of the nodes in the subnet blockchain which is almost impossible to do so you know all of that together is is chain key and and that's you know Central to have the internet computer network runs but we realized at some point that we've got all of this infrastructure and we could tweak it and adapt it so that now these subnet blockchains can create transactions and other blockchains yes if you like without a private key so an internet computer smart contract can create an an EA an ethereum account a public key um for which there's no private key instead the private key is the blockchain itself and the blockchain can sign for that ethereum public key so now you can have a small contract on the internet computer that can create an ethereum account and can create ethereum transactions yeah interact with the main chain precisely and and you know we also um this is ethereum integration something in progress the first thing we did was uh Bitcoin integration yes and we're really excited about that in Latin America for example in Salvador which is legal tender and when we first started working with that with the internet computer protocol we saw like the big potential for for it right so tell us a little bit about ckbc I think you you've already done an implementation Lugano and so definitely it's like first world use case right and people are actually using CK BTC yeah I mean um the gun is very exciting um and there's more work going on there to um integrate that and drive adoption um I mean I don't know when you got into crypto but you know I mean bitcoin's what brought me in what brought us most of us to be honest right yeah I mean anyone who's been in crypto for a while probably got drawn in by Bitcoin um I I actually saw a a paper by guy called we diey in 1998 it was called B Money the reason was I was using a library called crypto cryp Plus+ and the web the web page is still up there and you can still see B money and that was one of the antecedents of Bitcoin but for various reasons I was um involved in other entrepreneurial Ventures and so I didn't buy Bitcoin in 2009 which is a great shame well like many of us I pivoted I pivoted full-time into crypto at the end of 2013 and I spent most of 20130 trading Bitcoin um but you know so it was a kind of First Love and um internet computer has been used to create Bitcoin twin it's trustless there's no Bridge it's just based on cryptography and math and you can think of it as like a lar two for Bitcoin um and you can transfer Bitcoin with one second final um and it's deterministic finales so you know after a second you can be sure transactions happen or not and the fees are almost I I forget what they are but they're TI yeah they're not Bitcoin big bigco transaction fees so that's for Latin America that's really important right that it creates in it enables adoption and this is many many people right now that are listening to us will are struggling right now right so I I'm going to I want to hold Bitcoin and I want to pay for something of course you're using SATs right or Satoshi uh that's what's been used right now in Salvador but it is a steep learning pure for many folks right like retailers for them to accept Bitcoin they need to be comfortable no I'm not going to send you Bitcoin I'm going to send you satoshis right and so it's all of these things that I believe seek kbtc enables right it enables fast finality like you said the most important the secure the security of it that's something that's really maybe for the end user they don't care but for Builders that are building on top exactly it is it is one of the main issues that we found in crypto right yeah and on the internet computer you know you can power small contracts or power defy system or power social F system using Bitcoin and small contracts are amazing new kind of software and one of their powers is they're Unstoppable you can make them autonomous they're tamper proof you know you don't need a firewall and verifiable which is very important right you know the cryptography is verifying it there's no a back door exactly doing something strange uh but you know if you're processing Bitcoin with that kind of autonomy then all of a sudden the Bitcoin loses its value because it's been hacked and it's a it's it's really wrapped Bitcoin on a bridge that's bad because the nature of smart contracts is they assume that that doesn't happen exactly and so it's very important I think when cring like forms of Bitcoin that can be um transfer more quickly and at lower cost that they don't depend on centralization they don't depend on a centralized Bridge or something like that so the internet computer achieves that also makes Bitcoin available for people building these different kinds of web 3 services and it's possible to create user experiences that you know enable adoption to occur in places like Salvador it it's immensely exciting I mean one of one of the important points for those listening about Bitcoin is about cheny Bitcoin is it's not like a separate system you um send Bitcoin to a chanky Bitcoin address you've got chanky Bitcoin but you can send chanky Bitcoin directly to a Bitcoin address you don't have to go through a bridge and I think that sometimes people miss that right people think oh chy be well that's kind of like lightning I'm like okay let's just go two steps back right so it's not a channel there's no centralized point of of of of failure when you're using lightning yes you are basically trusting who built that bridge right that channel sorry and so I think that's one of the best things about chanky Bitcoin and so the other stuff that of course we're really excited right now that we're at dep connect as well and I'm really grateful for definity for sending us Diego pratz over to Ether Mexico and talk about CK and about the um the new wallet by bitfinity as well so I think can you talk a little bit about like where is the roadm heading Ina in regards to CK eth how's that's going to look like where do you see the low hanging fruit for Builders as well right but that because we're talking to them right right and and more importantly we want we want more Builders to build on top of IC and so some use cases or some tips and tricks there so our vision is really um you know complete integration with ethereum so uh you know the Bitcoin integration involves internet computer nodes talking to bitcoin nodes and cryptography that's it and actually there's a smart contract on the internet computer that keeps track of the EXO set because you know bitcoin's got a special model um you know you might imagine that the integration with ethereum is easier it doesn't have utxos um actually it's harder it's more more challenging and there's a bunch of reasons for that um one of them is that you know ether often times tends to be more centralized so yeah um you know if you want to query uh ethereum events and things like that you're typically going to talk to infura and Alchemy exactly um whereas internet computer needs to to spech you know independent ethereum nodes and more of them so that it can get a high level of security and then it turns out the standard Bitcoin clients you know the node software doesn't reveal all of the information that he want so anyway uh there's quite a few things like that including the gas model that make the integration complicated having said that you know progressively we're getting there um recently we released this thing called the oy wallet which is more of a demo which is uh a wallet in a web browser yep not a Chrome extension a web page that's a wallet yeah yeah people were flipping out with when Diego was showing it at e Mexico so was like how's this possible right and you know this because normally you know if you're on a phone for example and you want to use Unis swap you open the metamask app and then you open a sub browser in the metamask app exactly um and it's all a bit clunky and weird and frustrating and what's going on and make sure to to copy copy in the safe plate the seat phrase right if you're on boarding is is a mess that's right you've got this the seed phrase then if somebody steals your seed phrase you're done yeah and and actually that seed phrase or the key is typically you know live inside the browser EXT exctly it's not safe at all so um you know with this oyy wallet you know it's it's an internet cre a smart contract that creates the user experience and your ethereum account now doesn't have a private key yeah it's a chain key private key and you authenticate yourself to the Oz wallet using internet identity which is typically you know your fingerprint or whatever your face yeah and now you tell the smallart contract to execute you know to create these transactions so uh currently you know uh o can you know you know show your you know give show you you know your ethereum assets at the address you know ec20 tokens and so on and using wallet connect it works with Unis swap or whatever other um D app you want to use and it's all inside the browser so um the lovely thing about that is all uh centralizations removed there's no centralization left other than the domain name itself yeah yeah that's normal yeah no we we are actually don't worry definity is working on that um but apart from the domain name which is um yeah bet no D only I can has the RO um yeah it's still it's still a censorship point right designed that it's very much designed to allow America to take control of the internet of course so anyway aside from this um it's fully decentralized so it's more secure um there's no seed phrases floating around that can get stolen um and the user experience is better you know you can open your phone yes uh you can open o in one tab you can open unistop in another you can link them and um there's not an app in sight so there's nothing that has to be downloaded from the App Store exactly that can be censored yeah exactly or or indeed or used in a malicious way as well yeah use it a malicious way and it's the same too with with you know even on the desktop you D have to download Chrome extension so we're pleased with that and you know we're going to actually we've decided we're going to do some more development work on oy it was really you know produced as a sample app actually but we're going to push it further show people how to add very sophisticated kind of multi or multiactor authentication with complex rules and things like that um as you know as an alternative to something like goosa safe wallet yeah um and uh maybe even perhaps list some other kinds of asset in there too and you know there's there's there's also now ICP erc20 um it's not in production yet but you know um the the the step one right step one is that all of the internet computer tokens like chass and ports and ICP and all all these internet computer tokens um they they will exist in erc2 form on ethereum yep and eth and ec20 tokens on ethereum will have chain key equivalents on the internet computer that's step one um step and it'll of course just like with Bitcoin be very easy to go back and forth there's no real Bridge or obstal um step two is we'll have bidirectional calling for smart contracts so you know there'll be a way for ethereum smart contracts to call into an internet computer canister smart contract and vice versa and that means the ethereum projects will be able to fully decentralize very very easily um um within a very sort of Rich platform you know it'll be possible for an ethereum uh defi app if it's so wishes to store gigabytes of user data on chain yeah because you know single canister smart contract on the internet computer can can have up to 96 gigabyt of memory Pages wow so now all of that kind of uh functional it's now available for ethereum developers exactly available for ethereum developers internet computer smart contracts can process hdp and credit user experience um as you know they they run in parallel and they scale very well and they're very low cost um so so now you know within that theorem environment um the systems that exist there can either if if they're already fully on chain you know just become much richer by extending onto the internet computer or if they're relying on you know centralized traditional technology like cloud services Amazon web services um which presents reliability and security risk and of course means that users of the service can never really be sure what's going on it's not transparent have back to Keys all that stuff yeah that will be another opportunity for big opportunity for development uh ethereum developers um and then there's a step three actually and the step three is isn't really so important but it's it's like a replacement for oy it's called Duality and uh this will be really cool because when you have ethereum assets like e ec20 in your Duality wallet which is on the internet computer fully decentralized no Chrome extension they at um when you put ethereum assets into that wallet um they they'll then be simultaneously both on the uh uh both on ethereum and on the internet computer so it won't be necessary to take your eth and then send it to a chain Key eth address right there won't be any kind of there won't be these two different two different forms um each ethereum asset will be simultaneously in two different forms okay so and you don't need to do anything special if you go Duality wallet you just you know send send your ethereum assets there you've automatically got chain the ACC and the reason that's possible is the reality wallet of course is signing the ethereum transactions and so it it can keep track of what your real balance is so you know um let's I've got a duality wallet you send me 20 okay actually my wallet now has 20 e and 20 chain Keith at the same time right but I I can't use the the chain key for 12 minutes because there's a a theum after 12 minutes um I can send you know Ricardo over there um five chainy E to his chanky address it it'll appear in one second tiny Fe um of course just the same as with cheny big like Ricardo can send an eth back to you and because you've got a just a standard EA account yeah um it'll go directly there's no delay and nothing special needs to be done um but you know there'll be a fee involved yeah of course somebody has to pay for the party yes exactly exactly so uh but but the cool thing is that you know uh the The Duality wallet behind the scenes is able to keep track of all these things so um you as a user don't need to think about it you you've just got an ethereum wallet and now you've also got these same assets and change forms so if you send those assets to somebody who's got uh chain key enabl wallet the transfer takes one second the fees are negligible um but you know you can also just send it to someone with standarda account yeah still works I mean final is a bit later um you have to pay the fees yeah and it's all completely again fully compatible with all e theum Dy um Denny Jing special so um yeah I'm kind of looking forward to that that we are also looking forward to that right and I think one important aspect here is that IC is going to enable the the mo about the one on boarding 1 billion users because that's not going to happen with the current state that eth is at right they rely on l2s and you have the the bridges and you have all the sort of uh Hoops that a normal person is not going to go through and nobody in Latin America is going to pay a $5 per transaction gas fee is not going to happen that's right it's it's really for you know defy transactions exactly so I think that's um you know where the internet computer is going to add so much power to ethereum um and and you know internet computer project um set out really you know um to create a future version of ethereum but in actual fact it's not a future version of ethereum it's something completely different exactly that's why it became a separate project but it's designed to work on theum nice and you know one of the reasons why um we you know invested so much time and energy into like chain keepy crypto and making chain crypto work with other chains is to enable this kind of world computer vision where everything's built end to end on blockchain um and different blockchains can communicate directly with our bridges um and it's not just about communication it's about integration really like seamless integration like this idea that you're in a eum developer um you like your synchronous environment because it's better for defi but now for whatever reason you need to create a user account and that user wants to store this data in that account um that's fine just call into an internet computer canister smart contract and store that data that oh you want to spin up user experence well you know you can't do that in but you know just call into internet computer can a smart contract and um and have it produce the US so even you know soon uh you know there's some basic large language models a AI models running on the internet computer um we're leaning into that there's work underway to create a new kind of node spec for the network you know because the internet computer runs on dedicated Hardware um and currently uh nodes are just very much optimized with respect to running this can small contracts but um there's new there's a new node spec coming uh which is more more optimized for running AI models and smart contracts um among other things so you know again like you know you're ethereum smart contract call into uh an AI smart contract you're enable that for ethereum developers right so at the end of the day like we're really excited what um the definity team is building what you are leading and more importantly for us is like where can we where is the next bounce of the ball right is it it AI will be enabled that's it there's no I think there's not a question in anyone's mind around that so anyhow thank you very much for your time really appreciate you and well enjoy Istanbul there you go there you go