Bringing Multisig Wallets to Cardano Through Milkomeda C1 (Catalyst Proposal Completed!)
In Fund 8 of Project Catalyst, we received funding for a proposal we submitted. That proposal was called Gnosis Safe UI and was entered into the Open Source Development Ecosystem challenge.
We are extremely happy to announce that we have completed the promises made in this proposal and want to tell you what the outcome is (hint, hint… secure multisigs on Cardano) and how users of Cardano and Milkomeda C1 can take advantage of what’s on offer.
Before diving into this, we first want to thank the voters of Project Catalyst for voting for this proposal and for providing us with the funds to bring this functionality to Milkomeda and Cardano. Let’s get into it!
What Does Multisig Mean?
Multisig, short for multiple-signatures, means that multiple wallets are required to sign a transaction in order to approve it. When creating a multisig wallet, the user chooses how many owners, wallets, of the multisig they would like. They next choose how many of those wallets are required to sign a transaction to approve it. An example:
A multisig is created with 4 unique wallets designated as signatories, and the creator sets a signatories limit of 2. This means that any 2 of the 4 signatories need to sign a transaction from the wallet in order for it to be approved. If only one person signs the transaction, then it is not approved and does not happen. As soon as 2 people have signed the transaction, then it is approved and executed.
Multisig wallets are an invaluable blockchain tool that has numerous use cases in both the personal and business world and provides greater protection for the funds stored in the wallet. These can be used by individuals for extra asset security but are most helpful to enterprise clients and DAOs. Use cases include:
- Protection from rogue individuals stealing a wallet’s private key and gaining unauthorized access to the assets in that wallet.
- Protection from one individual making a colossal error and sending the assets into oblivion or accidentally selling them for much less than they’re worth.
- Security in the event of the death of the single person who controls the wallet containing a company’s or DAO’s assets.
All of these have happened before and resulted in huge losses for companies and DAOs alike.
What is Gnosis Safe?
Gnosis Safe is a multisig smart contract wallet that is used for securing and storing funds on EVM-based blockchains. It is used for securely storing a chain’s base asset (e.g., milkADA), ERC-20 tokens, and NFTs (ERC721 standard). Gnosis Safe is formally verified, open source, and trustless, meaning that only the owners of the private keys have custody over the assets in the wallet.
As a result of their open source nature, Gnosis Safe’s smart contracts have been deployed, and battle-tested across multiple (almost 70) blockchains. They have also been audited at each iteration, including the latest version that is deployed on Milkomeda C1.
Gnosis Safe is used and trusted by a huge variety of different entities, from individuals looking for extra security, to DeFi protocols like 1inch and AAVE, to DAOs and DAO tooling providers like Parcel. These individuals and companies are storing tens of billions of dollars worth of assets across multiple chains in Gnosis Safe — over $30B on the Ethereum mainnet alone at the time of writing.
Note: After a community DAO vote to split it off from its parent company, Gnosis, Gnosis Safe is rebranding to Safe.
What Was in the Proposal?
The proposal’s problem statement was: Cardano needs a wallet with robust handling of multisig for enterprise use cases and for DAOs
The solution we proposed was: We will deploy Gnosis Safe on Milkomeda and deploy a UI for it for ease-of-use
In the proposal, we stated that we would deploy an instance of Gnosis Safe to Milkomeda, modify the UI to suit the Milkomeda environment, and provide a smooth multisig experience for Cardano users.
What Work has Been Completed?
We have successfully launched an instance of Gnosis Safe on the Milkomeda C1 Mainnet. To do this, we have secured space on a single server to run the infrastructure of Gnosis Safe for both the mainnet and testnet and have made the necessary tweaks to the code to make sure that the SAFE token and SafeDAO elements of the protocol didn’t break it when it was deployed to Milkomeda C1.
We have also created a UI specific for this Milkomeda deployment of Gnosis Safe and set up the gas and price oracles in the UI to ensure that the information displayed to users is correct. Everything is ready, and we’re excited to be able to share that the Milkomeda C1 Gnosis Safe implementation is now available!
What Does This Bring to the Cardano Ecosystem?
Until now, there have been no services that offer a non-technical and simple way to create a secure multisig wallet on Cardano. Not having easy-to-implement and user-friendly multisig services can deter enterprise clients and DAOs who have large amounts of funds and will prioritize the security of these funds when searching for a blockchain to use. This lack of multisig availability has stalled the adoption of Cardano as these entities will choose to launch their products and business on other chains that offer user-friendly and easy-to-implement multisig services.
The launch of Gnosis Safe on the Milkomeda C1 sidechain means that all users of Cardano now have access to secure and easy-to-use multisig wallets.
The deployment of Gnosis Safe to Milkomeda not only provides easy-to-implement multisig services for projects and businesses that already use Cardano and Milkomeda C1 but it also makes these blockchain more appealing to outside entities who are looking for the best blockchain to integrate into their business or to launch their venture on.
A Safer Cardano: Thank You Catalyst!
With the help of Project Catalyst voters, we’ve managed to make the Cardano ecosystem and the funds stored in it more secure for all users, particularly enterprises and large companies. In turn, this has added one more favorable reason as to why they may want to integrate with, or launch on, Cardano.
We will continue to innovate and enhance the Cardano ecosystem through the Milkomeda C1 sidechain. To keep up with these innovations and everything else coming out of Milkomeda, make sure to follow our socials using the links below!
Creating a Gnosis Safe wallet is an easy, almost self-explanatory process. But it’s not something you ever want to get wrong.
Want to get started with multisig on Cardano? Here is a link to the new Gnosis Safe implementation on Milkomeda C1: https://gnosis.milkomeda.com/
Stay tuned; we will soon release a tutorial for using our new multisig implementation!
Learn more about Gnosis Safe (Safe):
Getting Started: Docs
Creating a Wallet: Guide
Creating a Wallet: Best Practices
Keep up with Milkomeda:
Website: milkomeda.com
Twitter: @Milkomeda_com
