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How Obvious Improves Wallet Security

12 OCT 2022
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5 MIN
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How Obvious Improves Wallet Security
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A cryptocurrency wallet is a fundamental piece of the crypto ecosystem, acting as a secure bridge between the blockchain and cryptocurrency users. Without wallet infrastructure, it would be impossible to send or receive coins, perform transactions like staking, interact with decentralized applications, or even have control over crypto assets. Ensuring the utmost security of such an essential aspect of crypto infrastructure is paramount.

Why Wallet Security is Important

Wallet security is a much-talked-about topic in the crypto space, as crypto wallets are all that give users power over their assets. The importance of a cryptocurrency wallet cannot be overemphasized. Whichever way you look at it, a wallet is the first thing you create when coming into crypto for the first time. Whether custodial or self-custodial, you cannot transact on the blockchain without a crypto wallet.

With the increase in crypto scams and hacks, it has become imperative to improve the security infrastructure on which crypto wallets are built. While a wallet address can receive coins online or offline, its owner cannot interact on-chain with the held assets unless the wallet comes online. Today’s internet is hardly the most secure place, with hackers and scammers at every corner trying to steal information or force their way into secure environments.

What is Obvious Wallet?

Obvious is a secure multiplatform and multichain non-custodial crypto wallet with innovative features aimed at lowering the entry barrier to web3 significantly while providing a seamless cross-chain experience for every cryptocurrency user. Obvious packs several exciting capabilities that allow users to connect their existing wallets to Obvious, with the platform acting as a wallet hub, on-chain, off-chain transfers, etc.

Obvious also supports dApp interactions, meaning you can interact with decentralized blockchain applications from the comfort of any device, as the application is responsive to smartphones, PCs, or tablets. Obvious also goes one step further to give you a wholesome view of all your assets across every source — exchanges, wallets, liquidity pools, blockchain networks, etc.

Yet, one would wonder if Obvious is all bark and no bite regarding wallet security. How does Obvious solve all the problems that could sprout from its versatility and offer excellent wallet security to its users?

Better Wallet Security With Obvious

As wallet security is crucial to the advancement of web3, Obvious has put several features in place to close up possible loopholes and provide an excellent user experience on any platform:

Imported Keys are Never Stored in Plain Text

Private keys are crucial to wallet security. While custodial wallets back up their users’ private keys, their counterparts do not, committing them to users’ hands instead. To add an existing wallet to Obvious, one must import the wallet’s private keys. Some wallet applications store the details of the imported keys in plain text, but Obvious ensures that imported keys are encrypted and stored locally in the phone. The imported keys are never uploaded to a cloud.

Generated Keys are Stored Locally in Keystore/Keychain

When opening a new wallet with Obvious, it generates a private key. Staying true to the decentralization idea and its non-custodial nature, Obvious stores private keys in the local storage (encrypted) of whatever device you use, usually in the Keystore/keychain folder.

Private Keys are Never Shared or Stored on Any Server

Obvious takes private key security to new heights with a security measure that ensures the private keys are never shared with anyone, logged on any servers (even remote servers), and are exclusive to the device on which you installed Obvious. This way, your wallet’s safety is solely in your hands, leveraging your device’s security infrastructure. Any exploit on Obvious’s servers, for instance, will not expose its users’ information to attackers.

Biometric Security

Obvious ties its application to your device’s biometric security, ensuring that you cannot launch your wallet, sign transactions, or carry out any interaction that involves your private keys unless you pass the biometric authentication.

No Threat of Deanonymization

Deanonymization remains a valid threat in the crypto space today, with several malicious actors able to tie people’s on-chain activity to their real-world identities, potentially exposing them to exploits. To protect users as they interact with several different blockchains, Obvious does not store Personally Identifiable Information (PII). PII refers to information that can be used to figure out an individual’s identity, like names, social security numbers, biometric records, etc. Obvious preserves anonymization and provides personalized nudges, giving its users a unique and secure experience.

Information From Exchanges is Never Stored

Obvious has a powerful feature that allows you to track and transact your balances and transactions across different blockchains, wallets, exchanges, etc. To use this feature, you would have to import the keys of each exchange account to Obvious. As mentioned, Obvious does not store your imported keys and, by extension, no information from your linked wallets and exchanges. Obvious may locally store information (API Keys) from exchanges with an anonymized ID if the imported keys support Read-Only or Write permissions.

MPC-based Key Social Recovery Feature (Coming Soon)

Soon, Obvious will implement an MPC-based key social recovery feature that will eliminate single points of failure through multi-party computation and ensure key recovery is always possible. With multi-party computation, private keys are split between multiple parties, and the single point of failure ceases to exist.

Closing Thoughts

Wallet security is essential to the continued growth of the web3 phenomenon. While several popular cryptocurrency wallets seem to sacrifice usability for security or make other tradeoffs, Obvious, a novel web3 wallet, delivers an exquisite user experience and improves wallet security admirably.

Obvious offers users a secure multi-chain wallet solution that brings chains, existing wallets, and exchanges together on one platform, allowing users to track all on-chain and off-chain activity from a single dashboard. Furthermore, Obvious empowers users to connect their hardware wallets with the Obvious app and experience a seamless web3 app.

To conclude, Obvious improves wallet security by:

  • no transmission of keys
  • no storing of unencrypted keys
  • no logging or PII
  • biometric lock for keys
  • connected wallets
  • upcoming MPC recovery

Obvious improve wallet security as a non-custodial solution that never shares user secrets, encrypts and stores private keys in local storage, and also planning to implement MPC-based key social recovery real soon. Obvious invites the public to gain early access to its platform. Visit Obvious to learn more.

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