Managing your online identities
Henri Stern
|May 6, 2024
Getting started as a new user in crypto has never been easier. With the rise of embedded wallets, users can go to apps like Blackbird, Friend.Tech, and Courtyard to take onchain actions immediately, even if they don’t have a wallet or have never used one before.
But this has also led to a fragmentation of onchain identity - unique addresses for each app, with different controls, balances and more. For Privy, app-specific wallets were always the first step: a security consideration to ensure developers can craft lovable products without putting their users at risk. As we make progress toward the launch of global wallets (enabling users to reuse their embedded wallets across apps), we’re excited to share a bit more about user-facing side of global wallets: user controls.
Global wallets and user controls are two sides of the same coin: while global wallets empower users to reuse their wallets across apps, the associated controls enable them to manage these accounts flexibly as their needs evolve.
Core unlocks
These controls will enable you to:
View assets, balances and activity across all your apps.
Seamlessly fund wallets from an external wallet, exchange or credit card
Export keys and assets from embedded wallets at any time
We recognize controls will be for power users, but these are the users who help shape a more human internet for the rest of us. By building for them, we can empower all users online.
Where we go from here
Bringing the world onchain must entail keeping users in control of how they present themselves to the world. Many of us will choose to use a single identity across all realms, a blurring of our personal and professional worlds, our online and offline worlds. Others will compartmentalize, choosing what to keep private and what to broadcast to the world. All are welcome online, and providing users with this choice is essential to keeping them in control on the web.
A little known fact is that Privy’s logo comes in a variety of shapes and sizes. Like us, it is contextual and evolves over time and explace. This is how Privy was designed: one account or many, it’s your choice.
The solution to managing your presence on the web cannot be one size fits all. The simplest option to get started isn’t always the best option as a user’s familiarity and experience with distributed systems matures. Global wallets and the associated controls will give users a default experience that lets them onboard and engage with any app seamlessly, all while giving them the flexibility to manage their assets as they wish.
15 months ago we wrote about building for users, not wallets. We’re excited to see how far our space has come and the vibrancy of the ecosystem thinking through better UX. This is just the beginning.
