1/ In the past month, we have made deep research on improving current social recovery solutions. After our internal research & development, we are excited to introduce Universal Recovery: A Social Recovery Solution that utilizes ZK-Email to enable to use of emails as guardians.
2/ The current social recovery solutions are cool, but they need to be improved if we aim to reach the next billion users. The process of social recovery is so simple: users add their friends' onchain addresses, and if a quorum is reached, the recovery process begins.
3/ Only a small percentage of web users own an onchain wallet. But what if my friends don't have an onchain wallet and I want to add them as guardians for my account?
Since the majority of web users have an email account, using emails as guardians could solve the problem.
4/ Thanks to
@ZK Email, we now have the ability to trustlessly use Email accounts as onchain accounts. This means users can nominate any Email address as a guardian for their account, eliminating the need for an "onchain account requirement."
But how does it work?
5/ Imagine a scenario where Alice wants to send an email to Bob. How can Bob be sure that the email was written by Alice and hasn't been changed during the road? This is where DKIM comes into play. DKIM, provides an authentication method to address this issue with cryptography.
6/ Each email consists of an RSA signature, a public key, and a message. This opens up a way for users to verify the email onchain and create a smart wallet with it. However, if users directly verify the signatures onchain, their privacy will be compromised. This is why need ZK.
7/
@ZK Email's Zero Knowledge protocol enables users to verify the signatures of their emails without compromising security or privacy. The relayer takes users' email signatures and provides a Zero Knowledge proof that can be verified onchain.
8/ We have developed POC a recovery mechanism that is compatible with 4337. It utilizes passkeys for onboarding and uses Universal Recovery for the recovery. As previously mentioned, this feature enables users to designate their "all" friends with an email address as guardians.
9/ Demo time:
@ZKAlimSahin c will explain how our proof of concept works and provide a live demo.
https://youtu.be/iMAaHEYyuxA