Sign in with Zippie: Your questions answered
We’re very happy that so many people are excited about our Sign in with Zippie solution. We think it’s what dApps really need to open the floodgates to mainstream adoption. Needless to say, its release has provoked a bunch of questions out there in the community. So, we’ve put together this post to answer them for you.
1. What happens when I click the button?
First time you click a Sign in with Zippie button, you will be redirected to our onboarding process. This is where you will get a choice to either create a new Zippie ID, or transfer one from another device. Creating a new ID consist of simply accepting Zippie’s user terms, which should take no more than 10 seconds to complete. With the ID, a Zippie wallet is also created, which you can then use to connect to the dApps you want to use.
Once you have a Zippie ID, signing in to dApps becomes quick and painless, just like signing in to regular apps with a Google or Github OAuth account.
2. How does the key generation work?
Behind the scenes, a secure Master Seed is generated inside your browser. This is the core of your Zippie Identity and is kept safe inside the Zippie Vault. From there we use a deterministic key derivation algorithm (BIP0032) to generate the keys you’ll need to interact with the Ethereum Blockchain.
The Master Seed is stored encrypted, partly on the Zippie Servers and partly on the local device, and is only assembled when a signing operation needs to take place.
3. What recovery options are there?
We’re working on providing a variety of different recovery options, some of which are available today:
- Zippie Card based Recovery
- Recover from another Device
and in the future:
- Social Recovery
- Recover with a PIN secured url-link
We feel that the current mnemonic phrase-based recovery offered by many Wallets leaves too much to human error and chance. We want to offer robust, durable and at the same time easy-to-use mechanisms for people to store recovery information without resorting to their own bespoke solutions.
4. How can I transfer my identity?
We offer an easy QR code based method to transfer your identity between different devices. Simply scan a QR code on your existing device with your new device, and your Zippie ID is paired into the new device. Once paired you can also remotely revoke permissions to a device if it becomes lost or stolen.
5. What Ethereum nodes do you use?
We currently run our own Parity nodes on the Kovan test net in a similar manner to Infura. As believers in Ethereum, we think it’s important to contribute to the running of the chain, and ensure that Zippie users have a reliable experience.
6. How can you use dApps without Ether?
We’ve created a transaction forwarding system that takes a signed transaction, and wraps it in another transaction from an account with Ether.
We call this the PayMyGas service, and it allows sponsored users to interact with ERC20 and ERC721 token standards without owning any Ether at all. We believe this will help simplify the experience for newcomers to the blockchain world.
7. When are you moving to Ethereum mainnet?
We’re moving to mainnet after we’ve completed our security audit.
8. What else is coming?
We hope to share more with you soon over the coming weeks, we will have representatives @ Devcon so watch out for the Zippie t-shirts!
In the meantime, if you have any other technical questions, please ask them on our Telegram where you’ll find me and many of the dev team. You can also follow our project’s progress and join our community on Twitter, Reddit and YouTube. See you there!
