Predict's Wallet Functionality, Explained

We built Predict as a platform for both crypto and new-to-crypto users alike. In other words, we set out to create a venue with seamless UI/UX, reminiscent of the Web 2.0 flows everyone’s already familiar with.

Below, we’ll outline how our stack, leveraging Privy and ZeroDev, abstracts away wallets so you can focus on what counts: making bets and earning yield on your deposits.

The Pain Points

Don’t get us wrong, we love crypto. But you know who doesn’t? Anyone not involved in it.

Indeed, for those who just want to bet on future outcomes, the ‘traditional’ crypto approach might ward them off: you’ve surely witnessed friends’ reactions as you explain to them how dApp transactions come with blockchain fees, required approvals, waiting times and more. 

All this before they’ve even had a chance to interact with the platform!

Crucially, our approach sets out to hide all this complexity, while making transactions both faster and cheaper. 

The Ultimate Onboarding Experience

We identified a handful of points of friction above, each of which must be addressed with different technologies. 

The chain

Let’s begin at the lowest level: the network. In our research phase, Blast came out on top for a number of reasons:

• As a layer-two Ethereum chain, Blast is unencumbered by block times and high fees (making actions faster and cheaper)
• Its “native yield” functionality, which enables users to earn yield on assets bridged to the chain
• Its long-term points and “Blast Gold” incentives, which unlock $BLAST airdrops for users
• Its EVM compatibility, allowing us to tap into a wealth of tools and resources developed over the past decade

The sign-in flow

For those unfamiliar, Privy has been changing the game for user-friendly Web3 companies thanks to the concept of embedded wallets. 

With these, users can sign up and log in with the methods they’re used to — via email, X, Google, or even existing Web3 wallets. Upon sign up, a pair of private/public keys are generated and tied to the account.

Make no mistake — these wallets are still “theirs.” We cannot access them, and users retain the ability to export the private keys that grant them control over the funds. However, now they can enjoy sign-ins without needing to cryptographically sign a message.

The wallet stack

Concurrently, we leverage ZeroDev’s infrastructure to create a smart contract wallet. This is, as the name might suggest, a smart contract deployed on Blast, which encodes the user’s public key as an “authorized signer.”

Important to understand is that users’ funds reside in this smart contract wallet — not within the embedded wallet, which you can think of merely as a ‘key’ that unlocks the safe. Manually withdrawing USDB or ETH requires following a couple of steps, outlined here.

With the smart contract wallet, the crypto experience is entirely abstracted away. When users perform an action (buying or selling in market/limit orders), it triggers a Predict bot that pays the gas required to submit the transaction on-chain. 

Note that our ‘gas tank’ will cover user fees up to a fixed monthly amount. If this amount is exceeded, users will need to top up their smart contract wallets with ETH to pay for gas.

The Result?

All the benefits of the crypto experience (self-sovereignty, transparency and on-chain incentives) without any of the hassle.

With our UX-first approach, we aim to make Predict the ultimate venue for betting on future outcomes — whether it’s your first day in crypto, or your tenth year.