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Lit Protocol Community Update: July '23

Read about the latest updates from around the Lit ecosystem!

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• 5 min read
Lit Protocol Community Update: July '23
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A Monthly Newsletter on all things Lit.

Lit Protocol is a decentralized key management network powered by threshold cryptography. A blockchain-agnostic identity layer, Lit can be used to power access control, signing, and authentication for web3 applications.

Introduction.

Welcome to the seventh edition of the monthly Lit community update!

To learn more about the protocol and start building with Lit tooling today, check out the developer docs. You can also find Lit on Twitter or join the developer community on Discord.

Without further ado, let’s jump right in!

General Updates.

Dev Docs Updates

Check out the latest updates to the Lit developer docs:

  1. Authentication with PKPs: Learn how support for web2 auth methods (i.e. Apple Passkey) can be used to enable seamless onboarding experiences for users of web3.

   A. Adding and Removing Auth Methods:  Learn how you can use the Lit       Contracts SDK to add and remove supported auth methods on your PKP       cloud wallet.

  1. Session Signatures: Session sigs are a replacement to auth sigs that are used to securely connect to and interact with the Lit nodes. While an auth sig is used to prove that a user owns a particular public key, session sigs add an extra layer of security by scoping user actions to specific capabilities and resources. For example, you can set up SessionSigs to permit a user to only encrypt or decrypt a particular data set during a specific time frame. You can read more about the differences between auth sigs and session sigs in the docs above.

Session Signatures

As covered in the docs updates section above, Lit has introduced a system of session signatures to provide greater security to users interacting with the Lit network. Each session sig is generated in the browser the first time a user authenticates with the Lit nodes. This session key is then used to sign all future requests on the user’s behalf, meaning the frictions of having to “sign every time” go away. In addition, session sigs help mitigate replay attacks and help reduce the catastrophic damage associated with a stolen key (as session sigs are designed to be scoped to specific capabilities, a potential thief would have a very narrow set of actions that they would be able to execute).

You can read more about session sigs in the Lit dev docs, or by checking out this series of posts:

  1. Session Sigs Part 1
  2. Session Sigs Part 2

WalletConnect V2 Migration

WalletConnect V1 was officially shut down on June 28. The Lit SDK has been updated accordingly, and V1 has been removed. Check out this section of the Lit dev docs to learn about how you can use WalletConnect V2 to connect PKPs to all of your favorite dApps across web3!

Around the Ecosystem.

Updates from the community!

GetLit CLI Overview

The GetLit CLI is a tool that is designed to help developers quickly create and manage projects with Lit Actions. Check out this amazing tutorial created by a dev in the community that showcases the CLI in action!

LearnWeb3 Launch

A huge shoutout to the LearnWeb3 team for the successful launch of their V2 platform! Check out Lit’s mini intro course and open bounties.

ZenWatch X Lit

Zen.Watch is focused on building low-code infrastructure designed to help web3 developers build powerful cross-chain and cross-platform automations (AKA the “Zapier of Web3”). Check out their recent integration with Lit that enables devs to quickly program transaction execution across multiple EVM chains with ease!

Ecosystem RFPs

Interested in building with Lit but not sure where to get started? Additional requests have continued to be added to the Lit Request for Ecosystem Proposals page, which include ideas for projects and tooling that help advance what is possible with Lit’s suite of developer infrastructure.

Build with Lit

If you’re interested in integrating Lit into your existing project, or want to build something completely new using Lit infrastructure, check out the Lit grants program. Grants are offered to developers who have a passion for building innovative solutions to the current shortfalls of web3.

Community Calendar

To ensure you never miss a beat, subscribe to the Lit community calendar. Here you can find the schedule for Lit’s Office Hours, additional community events, conferences, announcements, and more.

Content Recap

Featured posts from the month of June.

  1. Oamo X Lit: Data Brokerage with Native Privacy and Permissioning: Read about how Oamo is using Lit for secure data encryption and providing individuals with greater agency over their personal data and information.
  2. BackedBy X Lit: Decentralized Tools for Web3 Content Creators: BackedBy is a decentralized, creator-first payment protocol. BackedBy relies on Lit Protocol to cryptographically secure content on user-created platforms, ensuring only your subscribers have access to your content!
  3. June Hackathon Roundup: The Lit sponsored hackathons in June resulted in an impressive array of projects, each bringing innovative solutions to diverse domains, from healthcare to gaming. Check out the highlights in the post above!

Hackathons and Events

  1. ETHCC: ETHCC is happening in Paris from July 17-20, with tons of events happening the weeks before and after! Come hang out with the Lit team and participate in the hackathon for a chance to win some Lit-sponsored prizes up for grabs!
  2. ETHGlobal Waterloo was a roaring success! Check out some of the amazing projects that were built using Lit:
  • Lit Paymaster: Built in a weekend at ETHWaterloo, the Lit Paymaster replaces the use of Externally Owned Accounts (EOAs) controlled by a single entity with a more decentralized and fault-tolerant approach. While current paymaster service providers often act as centralized gatekeepers to gas abstraction, this project uses a PKP as the paymaster for an AA wallet, using Lit Actions to define the specific criteria for signing.
  • Me, Emergency Scan: This project provides individuals with greater control over their health care data, which has continued to exist in centralized siloes far from the patients’ control. Me, Emergency Scan seeks to overcome these issues by enabling users to use their personal information more effectively, thereby potentially saving lives and minimizing human error. In their model, Lit is used to encrypt and decrypt the healthcare data according to certain contract parameters, which enables users to read data based on their user level and set permissions.
  1. A ton of amazing projects came out of this year’s HackFS hackathon. Check out all of our favorites here, and some of the highlights below:

   - Wallet OTP: Secure 2FA for any web2 or web3 service!

   - Ark: A platform that enables the secure trading of decentralized gaming          IDs and assets.

   - DeFi Kicks: A community-governed data DAO on Filecoin that                      democratizes data aggregation and TVL calculations.

Coming soon 👀

Here are some of the things to look forward to in the months ahead:

  1. The release of Lit’s open-source interface for managing the assets in your PKP cloud wallet is coming very soon! This will provide a home for viewing and sending your tokens and NFTs, “installing” dApps, and assigning arbitrary logic via Lit Actions.
  2. Decentralizing the Lit Network! Right now, test networks are running with a few node operators and the distribution process is ongoing.

Wrapping up…

This wraps up the July update! If you enjoyed it, you can click below to subscribe and receive future updates directly in your inbox.

Once again, you can reach out to the Lit team on Discord with any questions, concerns, or feedback.

Until next time,

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