How the Silk Wallet Is Different from Others

Wallet choices depend on the value of assets being stored, the user’s experience level—from casual participants to power users, and the perceived trustworthiness or otherwise decentralization level of the wallet. Wallets differ in key areas such as security, user experience, in-app functionalities, and the potential incentives. They are also differentiated by their underlying technologies, such as Multi-Party Computation (MPC), account abstraction, and authentication methods that include passkeys, social logins, biometrics, and key recovery techniques.

In this article, we will explore how Silk differentiates itself on the frontiers of security and usability. We will also discuss how Silk functions as a WaaP (Wallet as a Protocol) and not a WaaS to improve onboarding and reduce the risks associated with single points of failure in self-custodied wallets.

 Are Wallets Today Security Minefields?

Each wallet type has its own strengths and vulnerabilities. Cold wallets, while resistant to online attacks, can fall prey to physical theft or blind signing attacks when used with multi sig. Browser extension wallets face risks from malware, seed phrase exposure and phishing attacks. Social login wallets, though convenient, are also convenient for many attack vectors due to implementation weakness and recovery mechanisms.

Self-custodial wallets in general are susceptible to single point of failure given the high diligence required by the user to safeguard private keys. Users often fall prey to social engineering and other deceptive methods, even if they follow the sacred commandments of “9 ways to protect your wallet”, or key rotation practices. More on wallet security here. 

Silk, Secure by Design

Silk approaches security from a holistic perspective, aiming to eliminate single points of failure with a multi-layered strategy.

• Website isolation to protect against same-origin exploits, addressing a common vulnerability in embeddable wallets.
• Human Keys, e.i private keys derived from human identity such as web accounts and biometrics. These low entropy human inputs are blindly computed on Mishti Network to derive high entropy keys, which are seedless and not device bound, eliminating related attack vectors.
• Leveraging Ethereum's economic security through the Mishti network, as an Actively Validated Service on EigenLayer, inherits Ethereum's robust economic security for continuous validation and anti-collusion design. 
• Ika’s 2PC MPC architecture splits the key between user and network, ensuring user sovereignty, preventing full key exposure, enabling trustless computation from either parties, and design space to deploy policy engines and transaction simulations for the network as a protector.

This comprehensive approach addresses various internal and external attack vectors from phishing, clickjacking, XSS attacks, malware, and malicious smart contracts, tackling security challenges faced by both cold and hot wallet designs.

Human Keys: Tied to your Identity, not Randomness or Device Bound

Silk introduces Human Keys, a paradigm approach to private key generation that allows users to derive keys from familiar and low-entropy data sources, such as passwords, biometrics, Social Security Numbers and security questions. While the math ensures brute force resistance to these keys, the simplicity of choosing familiar inputs gives the user flexibility and varying preferences. 

Seedless Key Recovery 

Most security UX trade offs happen over how to access and recover private keys. While it’s evident that seedless is best for UX, but are they good for security and recovery, apparently not.

Silk challenges this dichotomy by making key recovery as simple as the onboarding flow with zk credential based recovery.

Seedless Recovery: Silk’s key recovery process mirrors the simplicity of signing in. Behind the scenes, users authenticate with their web account to generate a ZK proof, which is validated and computed by the network to retrieve their key share. This enables seamless wallet recovery on any device in just two clicks.

Sybil Resistance: The ZK proof also acts as a sybil resistance mechanism, where the input cannot be replayed by a malicious actor even if the identity token (JWT) issued by google is stolen. 

 Simple UI, with powerful features – Embed It Anywhere

While Silk, abstracts private key management with Human Keys, and secure it with 2PC, other features make it a powerful package for onboarding – cross chain swaps, cross chain gas tank, programmable transaction, built in identity verification, customizable compliance flows, on ramps, and soon off-ramp virtual cards to pay for your Tofu in one single click. 

Onboard like a Breeze:  2 click onboarding process, taking less than 10 seconds, making it one of the fastest in the industry. 

Minimalist Design: Clean and intuitive UI, reduces the learning curve associated with traditional web3 wallets. 

Powerful onboarding features: Cross chain swaps for massively reducing the number of clicks to swap on different chains, cross chain gas tank for gas abstraction, integrated ZK ID minting for identity verification, proof of personhood and customizable compliance flows, and programmable transaction for convenience and safety. 

Social Payment: Integrated with Peanut Protocol, users can send crypto to email addresses, even if recipients don't have wallets. When claiming the funds (e.g., $10 USDC), recipients automatically get a protected self-custody wallet, simplifying onboarding.

Silk vs. Wallet as a Service (WaaS): 

Wallet as a Service (WaaS) platforms have gained popularity for their ease of integration and social onboarding, eliminating seed phrases. However, they are not secure enough to hold serious funds, hard to manage due to per app wallet creation leading to fragmented on-chain experience, and rent seeking business model similar to SaaS. Silk flips this entire model with Wallet as a Protocol for simple login and seedless recovery; with an universal account for all dApps, secure for power users and casual users alike, and free for dApps.  

Stronger Security, Same UI

• Decentralized Security: Unlike WaaS, where key management layer is naively implemented to improve onboarding, oSilk maintains a decentralized yet secure approach, ensuring that users retain full control over their wallets.
• No Subscription Fees: Silk is permissionless and free to use, meaning developers don’t need to pay for a monthly subscription to embed it in their dApps. 
• Composability: Silk’s wallet is composable to be used across different dApps and platforms, unlike WaaS wallets that fragments user experience by creating a wallet for each app. With Silk onboard once, and interact across dApps. 

Ika’s 2PC MPC for security and Programmability

Silk leverages Ika’s 2PC-MPC, the first cryptographic protocol where a user and a massively decentralized network collaborate to generate a signature, eliminating trust from individual participants. The protocol will primarily be used for authentication and signing process, where the user still remains as one of the mandatory signers, and the other signer will be a network. 

The network is programmable to enforce security with policy engines and transaction simulations while improving UX through granular transaction control and cross-chain interactions, with full user sovereignty 

Silk for all

From securing high-value assets to onboarding newcomers, Silk has it covered. With seedless key recovery, best in class security, email-batched airdrops with built-in identity flows, and many more solutions for various use cases, Silk offers comprehensive functionality without single points of failure.

About Silk

Silk is the Human Friendly wallet with instant onboarding. A protocol created by Holonym Foundation. Silk wallets are secured with Zero Trust and ZK Protocols. With Silk you create Human Keys to save, send payments, access global internet finance protocols and manage your private data.