Multi-Party-Computation(MPC) has been a hot topic in the non-custodial wallet space since it was brought up in the field just a few years ago because of its capability to distribute the ownership of a wallet to multiple parties/factors. Threshold-Signature-Scheme(TSS) approach has gained even more popular recently since it allows a distributed key generation process which further increases security and reduces on-chain actions. Generally, people believe that the keyless experience achieved by the MPC TSS technology represents the future of Web3 and could be the trigger point of mass adoption.
Many big players have joined the space, and some successfully launched their products recently. However, the interesting thing is that the market has yet to identify any such wallets to be the optimal design of an MPC TSS wallet product and you may realize that the approaches from different players vary drastically based on their business strategy and product design principle. Here I would like to spend a little time sharing a simple comparison of some of the typical 2C (product that serves retail customers) MPC TSS wallet products in the market and hope it will provide some insights to you.
TL;DR
Before jumping into the details of the comparison, here is the TL;DR version of the comparison results.
Product Selection and Brief Introduction
3 products were selected for this comparison since their characteristics are pretty unique and we can identify different product design strategies of their approaches to the problem. This can help us think further on what is the best way to utilize MPC TSS technology in the non-custodial wallet space and what is the best value that we can bring to crypto users with this technology.
The 3 selected products are ZenGo, OKX wallet, and Web3auth, below is a brief introduction to the company and its MPC TSS product:
We can see that the 3 parties come from very different business backgrounds. ZenGo is a web3 native pioneer in the development and promotion of the MPC TSS technology. OKX Wallet comes with strong CEX background and customer base. Lastly, Web3auth chose to play a 2B2C role instead of running its own wallet product.
Let’s see how each one of them designs their MPC TSS Shares Management based on their positioning.
Some of the choices of product design could significantly affect the characteristics and value proposition of the product. For example, 2-out-of-2 vs 2-out-of-3 shares management schema, choice of using personal cloud for share storage, and exactly which share to be stored on the cloud, and many other examples.
Let’s keep in mind the different approaches here and conduct some analysis on how these features will affect the product’s User Experience, Security, and level of Decentralization.
Ratings on User Experience, Security & Decentralization
We use a 0–5 scale here to rate the product from various aspects. A score of 3 is given if the product delivers an average experience or neutral value on the specific judging criteria, a score of 1 indicates a worse performance and a score of 5 indicates a better performance accordingly.
The first set of judging criteria focuses more on the experience of using the key features of the products and barriers to onboarding for the mass public:
There are many implications for the security and the level of decentralization of the product based on the different approaches that the companies took. Here we try to lay out the exact impacts that the customer of the wallet could face when using the products, this will further affect the potential target customers of the products:
Conclusion
It is obvious that no product can be considered the best after conducting the above comparison. Actually, it is really challenging to aim to achieve the best scores from all of the above aspects and therefore we realize that the companies tried to tweak the product in a way that best meets their business strategies and target customers. Here let’s quickly summarize the learning that we got from analyzing the 3 products, and also their strength and weaknesses.
ZenGo wallet provides a pretty simple onboarding and usage experience, little additional info does the user need to memorize. Also, little additional technical knowledge is required to be learned in order to start using the wallet. However, the usage of the wallet relies on some personal info such as email and Face scan data which could be a concern to users who value privacy. The dependency on ZenGo as a service provider is also the highest among the 3 products and this could introduce doubts about the non-custodial nature of the product
Overall speaking, ZenGo is a great product for users who wants to enjoy MPS TSS security without understanding it and has little concern about privacy and platform dependency.
OKX Wallet’s onboarding experience is very friendly for existing OKX exchange users. The 2–3 design gives users more control over their assets and reduces platform dependency, other Shares related capabilities are complete. New users’ onboarding requires quite a few additional steps. Some technical terms still require the user to learn and understand such as emergency exit. Also, the fact that the usage of the wallet requires logging in to the OKX exchange account introduces doubts about the non-custodial nature of the product.
Overall speaking, OKX Wallet’s 2–3 design gives users some confidence in self-ownership, but the mix between wallet and exchange features introduces concerns and doubts. Its experience is great and complete for existing OKX users, but new users may need to take extra efforts.
Web3auth provides one of the best onboarding and usage experience by using OAuth and Torus network. Its Shares related capabilities are complete. The product relies heavily on the stability and privacy management policy of the Torus network, it is decentralized but with only 9 node operators, so there could be some concerns about how node operators may handle user info in the future. Also, the final product experience still depends on the implementation of the wallet provider that utilizes Web3auth services and therefore there is still some uncertainty.
Overall speaking, Web3auth provides a well-built 2–3 MPC TSS framework that has most of the capabilities that we anticipate and the user experience is also great. Wallets built on top of this framework can well serve the users with Web2 habits while enabling them to enjoy MPC TSS security.
Lastly, the above comparison does not cover all the available 2C MPC TSS wallets in the market, nor could it point out the best of them. The idea of using MPC TSS technology is still an exciting direction with tons of possibilities and I wouldn’t be surprised to see many other such products coming from great industry players in the near future that vastly differ from the ones we have today. At the same time, some players are also exploring other ways to address the same blockchain accounts management issue such as using Account Abstraction. This further complicates the wallet landscape but is also interesting to keep an eye on how the competition goes and how these technologies could separately or jointly deliver better blockchain account products to the mass public in the future.
