DAPPCON 2025: Safe Labs: Building Enterprise Grade - Rahul Rumalla

Transcript

Hello. Uh, now you'll have to endure me for another 20 30 minutes on the stage. Uh, but I'm super excited to uh talk about this topic. Uh, it's been something I'm obsessively thinking about for the last uh three or four months now. Um and this talk you will see a little bit about not just what uh safe labs or safe uh we're building products next but our methodology in getting there how we're making these decisions macro and micro level and what values are sort of informing us to make those decisions.

So uh just the big picture right like uh a recap uh the total crypto market back about 3 trillion there's a a trillion in transaction volume in safe smart accounts there's a 60 billion assets on uh across all EVM on safe I mean we've come quite a far away uh from uh the magic internet money from a few years ago uh to kind of put this in perspective I I saw a very interesting tweet from token terminal on Twitter, right? Uh where it put together side by side some of the uh uh uh crypto protocols and existing like centralized

ones. And you can see the 60 billion assets stored across EVM on safe. That's that's a pretty significant achievement we've we've carried through um over the years. and where this is all leading up to, right? It's uh we've we've gone past the billions. Uh we're now in the era of trillions. Uh we're talking about the trillion dollar onchain economy and it will be powered by safe. Uh we spoke a lot about a trillion dollar security for example from the Ethereum Foundation.

And uh I often think about what does this world look like or what it should look like. Uh in my head it's when a student in uh Bogotaa let's say and a Fortune 500 company they both are using an institutional grade or enterprisegrade software self- custody. They have the same re level of user sovereignty digital sovereignty access. They have selective disclosure of uh privacy. They all have the same thing but their purpose is very different. And that's that's the one trillion dollar onchain economy for me that looks like but to this year we've had a a big uh hiccup right it was a bit of a reality check

like uh self- custody is uh very much I would say under attack and it's not just the attack itself but it's how we are being attacked u if you look at like the core principles right like how we are built upon like we have uh privacy, censorship resistance, transparency, openness. Uh the attacks are basically taking advantage of uh what our core pillars were.

uh our core pillars are being essentially used against us and that's and that's concerning because uh when we are going through the when we have the vision of a trillion onchain economy uh and this is important because when the attackers weaponize our core pillars right there our foundation shakes or quakes and our mission stalls essentially it's uh and we need to re look at the foundation itself uh before building greater structures on top of it and uh this is where the realization comes more like it's time to evolve and fortify um so let's talk about like our cypher punk values right does anybody recognize

this band sorry uh safe against the machine right yes that's accurate there will be a t-shirt about that uh it's one of my favorite bands if you haven't heard you should absolutely listen to it uh In the wake of the incident, I found myself chatting with hundreds of people uh in the industry and uh what dawned upon me is they all had very valid viewpoints. Crypto again I repeat, it's a industry with very strong opinions. But what dawned upon me is there like two polarizing camps. On one side you have the cipher punk values, right? like the grassroots where we started from and we

know like self-custody privacy you know cipher punks must code uh etc and this is just one side of the camp and on the other side with uh what I see is when I talk to more traditional like you know security is via surveillance you know compliancy log everything audit everything uh and expose that information work with regulation both are valid in the wake of incident I felt like they had very sound approaches to the same problem but it the principles were rather uh competing with each other and I didn't find that there were enough people building bridges between them.

So I I I want to make this simpler actually. Uh we're in Berlin right? So I have to use one a music analogy and uh two I have to put a DJ console up there. So, so this is my uh way of simplifying the problem. Uh so on the left track you have the signal the base of decentralization as you may call which is a cipher punk side right on the right side you have a very big harmony which is the enterprise and this little thing in the middle the crossfader basically you flip it to the left you get the signal from the left track and then flip it to the right you get the signal from the right track. What that means is that you're making a trade-off. Uh there so I call it the cross fraer of tradeoff um and uh

or a zero sum cross fader and it's the same thing. It's just not the philosophy because the way our philosophies are also reflect in the products that we build and I find that when our mission at safe which is uh easy to build easy self-custody or secure self- custody right I I that's an interesting trade-off we have to do why not make self- custody easy and secure and then how do we do that and uh and I had this realization that this trade uh the problem was not the uh the philosophies themselves it's the framework network that we operate in. It's this console.

It's uh more specifically, it's this uh crossfader. Uh so at Safe Labs, we fundamentally reject this crossfader. We've reject this notion that you have to compromise one over the other. Uh so what this brings us to this is uh we really of uh thought about what how we should actually build an opinionated product going forward which is basically preserving our cipher punk values but apply the enterprisegrade rigor. Uh we call it the the cipher price for uh you know the we had to uh there was no playbook so we had to write a playbook for this and that's what we're doing and had to coin a term and uh cipher price has a quite a ring to it. Let's say so.

So, Cippherprise is our playbook to scale crypto to a trillion dollar vision while preserving our core values. Uh, I would say this is easier said than done, but we don't shy away from taking on the big uh problems and the challenging problems. So, in principle, how this could look like this is just a a very simplified version. So we we had to map uh where our core values are, where how our architecture should be, where we actually establish our trust anchors with the community, our users and ultimately how do we have this pragmatism to go institutional grade, enterprise grade, the scale essentially.

How do you preserve what we can and where do you monetize? Where do you not monetize and taking an opinionated approach about uh what we build not just at the product but at even at the micro feature level. So we often hear I don't know is anyone wearing a don't trust verify t-shirt? Oh you'll find them right like we at the right conference for that. Uh for us this is more than a slogan. This is a first principle. But what does that mean actually? Right? And uh before we get into that, like I had a workshop with Ethereum Foundation. I really sketch this thing out uh very quickly in the morning just to kind of emphasize a little bit on how we apply this don't

trust verify uh principle in practice. So a very oversimplified version of a transaction anatomy. You have you have a payload which is an intent you will sign and it introduces a state change. It's that simple, right? That's the heartbeat. That's the anatomy of our entire uh crypto industry. It's humans doing transactions or people doing transactions on uh introducing state change. And just within that anatomy and life cycle, there are so many different things that's going on right now. We add transaction checks, you decode, you simulate, you uh you you introduce a trust layer, you have to introduce a verification layer, and uh you want to have clear signing etc. And then ultimately you commit that transaction

on the on the blockchain, right? And what's happening here overall is that especially this year that deep diving into some of the more simpler parts of uh or accepted parts of our architecture is that there are gaps and the the way attackers think also is that they know where the gaps are and they start to kind of penetrate right into that gaps and then take advantage of the process. And our architecture and how we build has to be very very intentional into closing these gaps. So for example uh this slide it uh it shows a little bit about how we rearchitectured or redesigned our uh the very heartbeat of our product which is the transaction

flow. For example, there is a there's two layers to it right There is the left that's the trust layer where a user trusts the safe uh platform where we can scan uh uh through blockade and we we run a simulation with tenderly but what's behind the scenes uh that's going on is there's like 100 rules that uh we we work with tenderly and uh and blockade scan so there's always a trust layer with trust also comes a lot of responsibility obviously but uh what we have changed is the the one that you see on the right side which is we we have this verification proofs u so as a user you may actually decide even though you trust us you can verify us so this is

what I mean by uh uh don't trust verify how does how should that reflect in uh in practice in the feature in the product and you can verify these proofs with third party tools not relying on the safe platform at all so where does this lead us right like we take we talk about uh self- custody and we started with making surf custody easy and secure and that got us uh quite far I would say and then what's next for us uh requires a little bit more I would say we're making self- custody secure in our product like in wallet uh we will we are investing heavily into educating our users in what a secure setup should look

like and how it could look like and help them guide them to that uh thing in in the first place. I really like one of the panels earlier is uh uh there was an opinion about what is the purpose of a of a signature is to authenticate and uh the responsibility of a signature is too much right now. If you actually have onchain policies, if you set up your account things uh really well in the first place, the responsibility of a signature verification, it's lowered and very uh narrow. We're making self- custody easy. Um uh for example this is a uh our our dashboard for example what started off as safe wallet which is managing storing assets we're helping people activate

assets using self-custody as the foundation you can see like safe wallet is defy complete you can bridge you can swap you can stake you can earn the point is that you can activate these assets very freely but all based on self- custody we're making self- custody verifiable What does this mean? And we have a mobile app. So, this is our new mobile app that's going to be launched very soon. This is not just another D5 wallet app. Its primary person uh purpose is to be your secure signing companion. It is a signing companion first. It is a signing app first and a D5 wallet uh later. This is one of the opinionated ways of uh

that we reflect into our road map. We're making self- custody extendable. Uh we have launched uh a developer portal where you now have uh a way to you can access our API platform event service transaction service uh web hooks you can configure a lot of this. What does this mean is that you can not only build on smart contracts but utilizing a lot of our fundamentals that we expose by our infrastructure. You can extend it and customize it and build more complicated or more uh broad problem solving products.

And lastly making surf custody enterprise grade. Uh this is a product that we launched recently. It's called spaces. This is what it could look like essentially very in the very near future is to we see uh people that manage hundreds of safes or thousands or tens sometimes and it's because they they rely on it for various reasons and uh we needed a very specific product that we want to build for them ultimately. What does that mean in in the future, right? Like we're looking at multiple networks being end to end encryption, web hooks, getting sock to compliancy, onchain uh roles, policy or

orchestration. These are terms that you've heard, right? And these these terms that don't get mentioned much in the when we talk about uh grassroots and cipher punk and self- custody much and this this is essentially where we're heading. Uh I I like to call this uh the safe labs is a place where you can forge cypher punk ideals and enterprisegrade rigor. Uh it has to happen because that's that's what unlocks the power of the trillion dollar onchain economy. And uh with safe labs uh the cipher price stack is coming and if you like this mission please join us as well.

Thank you. Questions? Yeah, we have one question here. You mentioned that your goal to have a student in Bogotaa using the tools and resources. How are you going to facilitate that that they're aware of the resources and tools existing? How are we going to make them aware? I think first thing is make it accessible.

Make it available and accessible. And I think I like uh uh at safe one of the things we haven't done and we will be doing a lot more is speaking about what problems it solves, what and who it solves for and what it can do. for example, and really speaking the language of the user and the problem they are speaking. And this is something we intend to do a lot better. But that's that's what we intend to do is to kind of speak their language and unlock their problems. And uh this you can expect that from us in the coming future.

Enterprise pragmatism. Yeah, enterprise pragmatism. Yes. Uh that's a good point. Um often I find that when we start to architect a lot of our products essentially uh we are very much serving a certain user segment right we are I I I remember this notion like not so long ago uh someone told me very strongly if you're building in crypto you build for crypto first uh and I I say this quite often when you build for everyone you're building for no one in particular sometimes And you have to know uh what you're building for. And when what we're building for is essentially an

enterprise grade, it's the scale. It's the it's thinking for scale, but also there are certain specific elements that makes that scale happen. And it could be as much as uh visibility into what what what the policies are, who who sets the policies for example, and who's transacting, ease, ease of access. It can be uh it can permeate in various different layers but the point is that when you design something you're not excluding that scale aspect of it not just building for a certain simple user segment for example. I hope that answers your question.

There's a question. Hi. Um you showed that you want to um create um a second product basically on the designer functionality. Um is there like a way to use um basically double signature verification such as like using a QR code or so to automatically validate um the transaction data because it's sort it looked like it was still like a visual check, right? Where you have like a string of maybe digits that you have to control. How can I envision that? Could could you repeat that just a little bit louder, please? Sorry. Um, if you have a

two interface logic with the new product that you're developing um for like a serer and verification of the transaction data. Um, is the user having like the interface and the what that you just showed like is there a way to automatically verify the data designed in this process where for example you scan a QR code that automatically detects if the data is matching or is this a visual check of the digits that are seen in the call data and call hashes? That's an interesting question.

we're very much in this early stage of actually uh asking those questions but also how much of that problem do we have to solve. uh but ultimately like if I uh if you remember the the slide that I showed you that the the gaps it's uh there is a gap in the signature verification process in the signature process between even though uh uh when the transaction is ceued and when it's signed we want to air gap this as much as possible but this air gapping is is so much more than have just providing a uh prescribed experience. What we see is uh uh enterprises again the question about what is that enterprise pragmatism uh is

what we see with safes is that a lot of people are setting up a bespoke architecture they want the custom policies they want their own on-rem sometimes they want their own architecture so when they introduce uh a device a hardware device like a phone for example to verify uh and the the the key question that we're asking is the same is like how do you close that gap but it starts with a question I think and uh this is very much the ripe time for us to even uh uh hear from people like you that that this is an important question actually. So uh stay tuned I would say we have time for one more question.

Hey for the talk u you said one of the u of the first principles was verify don't trust. Do you see a future in which this could because verifying is often times very cumbersome and kind of a difficult uh journey for anybody. Uh do you see a future where you might say hey we'll actually work on some other Yeah I I love that question. uh and uh it's one of those foundational principles I try to like uh keep it warm in my head is uh what aspects you want to trust and what aspects you want to

verify and what is your verification means but the important thing is actually not not just having a trust layer and a verification proof layer but we know it's our ecosystem that's so opinionated what stands very true is users care about having a choice rather than a prescription and uh people want to have choice about what they can do and they what they cannot do as for for example but it ultimately we can be opinionated we can be loosely held opinionated we can prescribe but I don't think we can we should restrict to for uh to to a large extent and I think this needs to reflect even in our core ethos is like build uh build modularity

modularity over monoliths, right? And that should permeate all the way to uh the end user. But I think the most important thing is designing for choice. Okay. All right. Yeah.