Ethereum’s Pectra Hard Fork Could Focus on Retrieving Lost Private Keys

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Ethereum blockchain developers are consistently making strides in technology, introducing innovative features to the mainnet. A noteworthy development is the ongoing work by Ethereum‘s team on a new user-friendly feature: “social recovery” for private keys. This feature will be implemented through the Pectra hard fork as part of the Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) 3074 upgrade. Confirming this addition, Tim Beiko, Ethereum’s lead developer, posted on April 11 that EIP-3074 will indeed be included in the Pectra hard fork.

An upgrade to Ethereum wallets would result in enhancing their functionalities with advanced smart contract capabilities, allowing users to regain access to their assets as detailed in a blog post by Ethereum Foundation expert “Domothy” last month.

To utilize this social recovery feature, users need to initiate a transfer of asset ownership to a designated invoker contract via a digital signature first. Once completed, this contract will manage subsequent transactions and function calls on their behalf.

If a user transfers ownership, they can retrieve their assets using the message contained in the digital signature, even if they forget or lose the seed phrase. This functionality will depend on adding the “AUTH” and “AUTHCALL” codes as explained by cryptocurrency expert Cygaar in his April 11 post on X.

The “AUTH” instruction is responsible for checking the authenticity of a user’s signature and intended operation. Once this step is completed with approval, the subsequent “AUTHCALL” instruction triggers the transaction to begin. Notably, it identifies the user as the one initiating the call instead of the contract that was initially invoked.

Ethereum Users Need to Be Careful

Domothy has issued a caution: Should users transfer their assets to a potentially harmful invoker address, they face the possibility of losing all their funds. However, with the Pectra update, there will be several invoker contracts that have undergone formal verification and thorough auditing made available.

In recent times, people have unfortunately misplaced or lost access to digital assets valued in billions of dollars due to the loss of their private keys. Cygaar pointed out that this issue could significantly boost mass retail adoption by making transactions more efficient and convenient. Furthermore, it enables various actions to be carried out within a single transaction.

Currently, before exchanging tokens on Uniswap, users have to authorize Uniswap to use their tokens first, and then carry out the swap. Cygaar pointed out that this is not an optimal flow. But with 3074, these two steps can be merged into a single transaction.

EIP-3074 was just approved to go live in the next Ethereum hard fork.

“This Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) will significantly transform user experiences on EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) chains, resulting in easier-to-use wallets with reduced costs and enhanced capabilities.”

Here’s a high level overview of EIP-3074 and how it’ll change the game 🧵:

— cygaar (@0xCygaar) April 11, 2024

As per the market expectations, the Pectra hard fork shall come by late 2024 or early 2025.

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2024-04-12 12:57