Ethereum hackathon project could lead to Optimism wallet with account abstraction

An Ethereum hackathon project went viral on Crypto Twitter over the weekend as it showcased how to create a wallet with two much-desired features and said it planned to make this wallet a reality.

The open-source project is called Opclave and it lets iPhone users use the secure enclaves in their devices as crypto hardware wallets. On top of this, it brings in a concept called account abstraction, which is designed to allow wallets to perform a much wider range of functions and have more security options.

"We, the Opclave team, have created a smart contract wallet that implements the most optimal solution by leveraging the capabilities of Account Abstraction, Apple enclave, and OP Stack to offer a better user experience on blockchains," said one developer known as Dogan on Twitter.

How does Opclave's wallet work?

The project was built as a proof of concept and was presented at the Scaling Ethereum 2023 virtual hackathon. It was created by five pseudonymous developers, each identified by public Ethereum Name Service names. The wallet is an application-specific blockchain running on the Optimism stack. 

The iPhone secure enclave stores important data that can only be accessed through biometric identification. This enclave only supports one type of elliptic curve cryptography, while Ethereum uses another, Dogan explained. As a result, the team implemented a way to go from one to the other using its own Optimism-based chain. This means iPhone users would be able to store their crypto using the secure element within their phone — reducing the risk of exposing their private keys.

The project also supports account abstraction. This moves from normal crypto wallets that only let you send and receive transactions to more complicated ones that can be customized in many ways. With account abstraction, wallets can implement features like social recovery — where you have multiple parties that can work as a backup for your funds — or features like daily spend limits.

Going ahead, the team wants to add more account abstraction features, such as two-factor authentication and email login. Plus, it wants to expand to other chains, including Starknet, zkSync and Fuel.

"We want to take this [proof of concept] to the next levelop and develop it for the mainnet. Developing a wallet is such a hard process but let's see what this hackathon will bring us," said Dogan.