UX Audit of EIP-7212: secp256r1 curve support

[depatchedmode]

What are the use cases of the “secp256r1” elliptic curve?

• The secp256k1 elliptic curve, which is the only cryptographic primitive to prove ownership in Ethereum, does not offer flexibility in onboarding new users via new solutions. Adding this new elliptical curve will allow biometric and hardware authorization solutions to be easily executed on-chain.

• Many hardware and software solutions use this elliptic curve as signing algorithms, such as TLS, DNSSEC, Apple’s Secure Enclave, Passkeys, Android Keystore, and Yubikey, which can be used in the EVM.
  Why is this precompile recommended, and how do we believe the user/developer experience will be improved?

• The addition of this precompiled contract improves efficiency and gas affordability in the EVM. With the improvement, the gas costs are reduced alongside the computational load decreases, and the block gas limit is maximized to enhance the transaction throughput and overall network performance.

• Supporting an elliptic curve with a precompiled contract provides a uniform and standardized way of operations. So that potential confusion and errors that occur from different implementations can be avoided. The curve operations can be made in reliable implementations in terms of security with precompiled contracts.

• Enabling this precompiled contract improves the developer experience by allowing effortless integration of the curve signatures and building applications on top of it to provide interoperability with different solutions using the curve, resulting in more user-friendly products.

More Details here: https://ethereum-magicians.org/t/eip-7212-precompiled-for-secp256r1-curve-support/14789

Let's assess the impacts this proposal would have on UX, and help ensure the standard encourages client implementations that would maintain security, safety and agency. Things we'll want to consider:

• threat models
• multi-modal accessibility
• localization
• trust indicators
• role and impact of trusted UIs

We can share notes, sketches and prototypes in this thread.