This is so badly needed in the Ethereum space. Metamask is a massive drag and a known onboarding blocker -- Hedgehog seems like a huge leap forward. Congrats team!
Check out Dapper and Fortmatic as well.
Hedgehog Ethereum wallet: Build DApps like apps, without centralized keys
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Re: Hedgehog Ethereum wallet: Build DApps like apps, without centralized keys
#12This looks brilliant, addresses a very real pain point and your landing page communicates it well with the demo. Kudos!
Will give this a try on our Dapp.
Re: Hedgehog Ethereum wallet: Build DApps like apps, without centralized keys
#13Hey all - I'm Roneil, one of the cofounders of Audius. We built Hedgehog to solve a specific pain point we faced - how can we get non crypto-native / non-technical users to sign up for a decentralized app? Current onboarding flows using Metamask and other alternatives were too cumbersome, time-consuming, and restrictive for our needs. We needed a way to generate a wallet on behalf of a user without them even knowing…
Is there any way to recover a login and password if the user forgets it?
Thanks for checking out Hedgehog!
There is not - this is the biggest deficiency of Hedgehog today. Without centralized custody of keys, it's not possible to have someone prove their ownership of a given key to a centralized party in order to unlock it. The key is encrypted, so the application provider nor anyone else can decrypt it without the user's username/password combination. This tradeoff is both a good thing and a bad thing in our view.
That said, there is a mechanism for changing your password if you are already signed in.
We are considering some mechanisms for fallbacks, eg using a threshold cryptosystem with multiple private keys and a 1 or 2 of n requirement, such that if a user forgets the way to generate one of the n keys they may still remember a way to generate the other(s). If you're curious, more on these schemes here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threshold_cryptosystem
We feel these tradeoffs make sense to enable more mainstream adoption of cryptocurrencies, but they are tradeoffs; for certain types of applications the cost of losing control of an account is too high for this approach to make sense.
Re: Hedgehog Ethereum wallet: Build DApps like apps, without centralized keys
#14Any Ethereum developers have a plan once ETH gets log jammed again? Apps will be slow to respond and take minutes or hours between updates. Is this accepted as you wait for a new solution to the byzantine generals problem?
The existing issues with ETH are why we currently use POA network for the Audius private beta. POA network has its own set of issues, but the 1) fast transaction confirmation time, 2) low fees, and 3) lack of congestion make it a great testbed for us.
FWIW, Hedgehog works with any web3-compliant API, in our case core.poa.network but could be any other one of developer's choosing eg. Infura
Re: Hedgehog Ethereum wallet: Build DApps like apps, without centralized keys
#15Certainly a much needed application in the Ethereum space.
As a blockchain game developer, I have talked ad nauseum (https://steemit.com/marketing/@steem.marketing/cache-the-gam...) about reasons why we switched away from Ethereum for most transactions (but not all).
The UX of the wallet being one difficulty for adoption. There are other even bigger reasons (in my opinion) - variable mining fees per transaction being a large one.
Re: Hedgehog Ethereum wallet: Build DApps like apps, without centralized keys
#16I guess you can't change your password (while keeping the same private key), can you?
Re: Hedgehog Ethereum wallet: Build DApps like apps, without centralized keys
#17This is so badly needed in the Ethereum space. Metamask is a massive drag and a known onboarding blocker -- Hedgehog seems like a huge leap forward. Congrats team!
This could occupy a useful space, but it is by no means a Metamask replacement (which they explain why).
Re: Hedgehog Ethereum wallet: Build DApps like apps, without centralized keys
#18Hey all - I'm Roneil, one of the cofounders of Audius. We built Hedgehog to solve a specific pain point we faced - how can we get non crypto-native / non-technical users to sign up for a decentralized app? Current onboarding flows using Metamask and other alternatives were too cumbersome, time-consuming, and restrictive for our needs. We needed a way to generate a wallet on behalf of a user without them even knowing…
Has there been any thought as to how the REST API + database side of this could be replaced with ipfs/swarm? I'm not sure how it would work, and there would likely be additional trade-offs, but it would be nice if the "D" in DApps could be retained in full.
Re: Hedgehog Ethereum wallet: Build DApps like apps, without centralized keys
#19Hey all - I'm Roneil, one of the cofounders of Audius. We built Hedgehog to solve a specific pain point we faced - how can we get non crypto-native / non-technical users to sign up for a decentralized app? Current onboarding flows using Metamask and other alternatives were too cumbersome, time-consuming, and restrictive for our needs. We needed a way to generate a wallet on behalf of a user without them even knowing…
Has there been any thought as to how the REST API + database side of this could be replaced with ipfs/swarm? I'm not sure how it would work, and there would likely be additional trade-offs, but it would be nice if the "D" in DApps could be retained in full.
There has! This could be a great approach - eg. a network of folks committed to supporting users in this manner could operate IPFS nodes that re-pin the encrypted keys.
We are also thinking about offline ways to share the key such that the centralized side is not required - eg. a QR code displayed on one device and scanned by another to propagate the wallet. This creates a problem if a user loses all of their devices though.
Re: Hedgehog Ethereum wallet: Build DApps like apps, without centralized keys
#20I guess you can't change your password (while keeping the same private key), can you?
You can! This would re-encrypt your locally decrypted wallet seed using the new credential and store it under the newly generated lookup key