Introducing the Wallet to the Root of Telecom: Public Testing at Devcon

[Chiali]

Background

This year, Privacy and Scaling Exploration (PSE) has supported an innovative project: a blockchain-powered eSIM. Three grantees, Arpit, Tanmay, and Manul, are developing this project.

The project has been supported by PSE for the following reasons:

• Introducing cryptography to the telecom industry, particularly in virtual network operations.
• Using cryptography for secure remote provisioning of eSIMs.
• Enhancing privacy with zero-knowledge proofs.
• Scaling Ethereum for widespread adoption using account abstraction and other smart contract methods.
• Allowing day-to-day users to experience owning a crypto wallet without overwhelming information.

Blockchain-powered eSIM, Technology detail

The tech stack includes Smart Contract and Ethereum, Passkeys and Account Abstraction, Proxy Backend Server and react Native.

• Smart Contracts and Ethereum is responsible for issuing smart wallets for eSIMs. The eSIM Wallet smart contract suite consists of a group of smart contracts which work together to deploy, record and maintain eSIM related data and functionalities. Using the smart contracts, the user can pay for their data bundle subscriptions. There are multiple smart contracts that make this possible:

  • Registry Contract - Responsible for deploying both the factory contracts (Device Wallet Factory and ESIM Wallet Factory). It also acts as a registry for keeping note of all the Device Wallets and ESIM Wallets deployed and marks them as valid. Any Device Wallet or ESIM Wallet deployed outside the contract suite might be unknown to the Registry and will be considered invalid. Users can interact with the Registry contract to deploy their first Device and ESIM wallet.

  • Device Wallet Factory - Responsible for deploying device wallet smart contracts and maintaining device wallet related data.

  • Device Wallet Smart Contract - Every user (ETH address of the master keystore created by the eSIM wallet app) has a unique device wallet per mobile device.

    Users can use the device wallet as their personal smart contract wallet to store ETH and other ERC-20 tokens and have full ownership of the wallet.

  • eSIM Wallet Factory - Responsible for deploying all the eSIM wallet smart contracts. Only the eSIM smart contracts deployed by this factory will be valid smart contracts.

  • eSIM Wallet Smart Contract - Each eSIM is associated with a unique eSIM wallet smart contract. This eSIM wallet is an on-chain representation of the eSIM and allows user to buy the data bundles.

• Passkeys and Account Abstraction is responsible for smart wallet that allows users to do more in crypto space other from purchasing eSIM. Users can use it as normal ERC-20 smart wallet.
• Proxy Backend Server is to interact with eSIM Provider APIs for managing eSIM, storing sensitive information in a centralised database and others information on-chain.

Broadly, the user flow will be:

1. Launch Application
2. Generate User Unique Identifier
   This Unique identifier is derived using only users’ mobile device attributes and does not use any personal information. The identifier generated is used on the backend to enable eSIM provisioning, data top-up and other such services. No user activity is logged in the process.
3. Generate User Master/ECDSA Keystore
4. Fund User Master/ECDSA/Ethereum Wallet (not necessary for DevCon as we will having pre-purchased data bundles)
5. Users proceeds to claim coupon code and install the eSIM
6. Enjoy the data services!

Proposal

As the project progresses, we aim to use Devcon as an opportunity to release the product to the public and test it on a large scale. Since this is a non-profit product with the ambitious goal of onboarding the next billion users, we want to ensure a smooth UX and adhere to ecosystem principles.

Objective

Our goal is to test the application flow, provide a smooth UX within the telecom industry, and generate awareness among digital nomads. We hope to gather enough feedback to iterate and onboard the next wave of users.

How does that look like?

• PSE will sponsor this test for 2,000 attendees at a cost of $19,800.
  • We welcome the Devcon team to sponsor more attendees.
  • The fee covers costs payable to the telecom partner, such as Airalo or eSIM-GO.
• We will collaborate with organizers to distribute “claim codes.”
• Attendees will download our app via Google Play or the App Store.
• App will generate a device wallet in the background by using Device ID.
• Enter the “claim code” in the app.
• Install the eSIM data plan by following the instructions.
• Arrive in Thailand ready to enjoy free data for 10 days (50 GB).
• Submit feedback to the team.

Roadmap

Currently, the project is under development. We are integrating account abstraction into the smart contract.

Key milestones

1. July to Mid-Aug: Flush out mobile app with front end and backend eng
2. Mid-Aug: Submit the contract for audit by the PSE audit team.
3. End-Aug: Conduct internal testing for QA.
4. Sep: Scope out how to add zero-knowledge proofs to the OPEN Remote Sim Provisioning
5. Mid-Sep: Complete the audit.
6. End-Sep: Release the first wave of closed beta testing and bug fixing.
7. Oct: Release the app.
8. Mid-Oct: Open for the public to download and claim the free data plan.

Additional information

The blockchain-powered eSIM (app named Kokio), is a fully open-source project aimed at addressing long-standing issues in the telecom industry using cryptography and zero-knowledge proofs. The product requires partnership with telco aggregators such as Airalo for development.

For at least the next 12 months, the project will not generate any revenue and will only request users to cover costs payable to the aggregator. Although a KYC will be required, but we are using zero knowledge proof to verify the customer to ensure user’s privacy. The only data stored will be the user’s device ID and the output of KYC: nullifier.

Sign up for closed beta testing at: https://www.kokio.app/

[catturd69]

How is this any different than using crypto to buy eSIM with a passkey wallet through Mobimatter.com Buy travel eSIMs with Crypto | MobiMatter or DENT app which also uses eSIMGo and many other central eSIM reselling providers?

Besides the fact that the research arm of the Ethereum Foundation is dogfooding centralized businesses with $20k? And adding KYC? What move’s the needle here? And where are the missing open source repos, like the proxy server…it dosen’t seem to be in the public github.

[ligi]

Also really wonder why KYC is needed here when things like https://silent.link exist. Would expect more focus on Privacy from the Privacy & Scaling Explorations (PSE).

[Chiali]

Excellent questions. The uniqueness of Kokio (blockchain-powered eSIM) is we are creating a semi-cold wallet right on the user’s device that acts as the master wallet. The process is as follows:

• The user initiates the first step: creating a device wallet, a semi-code wallet that leverages the phone’s microchip.
• The user now buys any data plan, and the app installs an eSIM profile on the microchip and creates a child wallet for the user.

In short, this is very different than Mobimatter.com, as well as in DENT. We do not issue any token like what DENT does, which is required to interact within their app. The team has reached out GSMA to gain permission to directly handle the provisioning without a “reseller” such as Airalo. Since their business model only works with large telecom companies, working with reseller at this round helps us speed up the development. We also have plan to onboard directly with telco companies to reduce the middleman.

The 20K will be used to bulk purchase and fund the paymaster, we also expected to have a good amount of reserve that continue to fund the paymaster to self-sustain any upcoming new users. There will be no profit generate for the team.

Our research & development targets the stagnant telecommunications industry, one of area we are planning out is on Open Source Remote SIM Provisioning (OpenRSP). The focus is around uses Identity-Based Cryptography (IBC) to enhance the security and efficiency of eSIM activations. We aim to integrate zero-knowledge proofs (ZKP) to authenticate devices and users securely without exposing sensitive data. We expect to publish our findings by January 2025, and I’ll share more details at a later date.

Regarding the proxy server repo, it’s just a conduit to the eSIM provider’s server, and while there’s no harm in making it public, the current content doesn’t add much value for users. We’re considering adding new features and identifier-based logic that may make opening up the repo more worthwhile in the future.

We have reached out to Anon Aadhaar to scope out zkKYC, but unfortunately, it did not meet our requirements; we are currently targeting to use zkPassport to process the KYC and continue to ideate and research better UX.

[Chiali]

This is a fun site, thank you for sharing.
From what I read. How silent.link can improve my privacy/security? : Silent Link
I don’t see they provide solid anonymity or security; everything they noted there seems very basic about how eSIM functions. I will need to investigate more.

The telco networks must comply with the government’s regulations, and only certain countries require KYC. When you purchase directly from the telco network, they will enforce more on this point. Resellers such as Airalo will store certain user info, but Kokio doesn’t store any of that, only device ID and nullifier.

I think telco is a challenging industry for us to tackle and improve, there are many regulations.

Please do let me know more questions.