BNB Chain Spotlight: Web3Auth

Today we're bringing you an interview with Web3Auth on BNB Chain. Web3Auth provides solutions that make crypto accessible to the masses. By aggregating Web3Auth on Web3 apps and wallets, Users can easily set up their Web3 wallets and dApp accounts, simply with their social media account like Google, Twitter, and Discord.

Without further ado, let's get into the interview!

IMPORTANT: Please note the following content does not constitute an endorsement or approval of any of the products or services of the project, organization, or individual.

Q1. Please describe Web3Auth to those unfamiliar with it. What's your vision and mission?

Web3Auth’s goal is to make crypto so accessible to the masses that even your grandma can use it.

With Web3Auth, passwordless auth meets non-custodial key infrastructure for Web3 apps and wallets. By aggregating OAuth (Google, Twitter, Discord) logins, different wallets, and innovative Multi Party Computation (MPC) - Web3Auth provides a seamless login experience to every user on your application, be it Gaming, DeFi, or NFT.

You can integrate Web3Auth into your application with a couple lines of code and allow users to connect to any blockchain. With web mobile and Unity SDKs, you can customize its look and branding specifically for your application. Alternatively, fully white label and take charge of your UI/UX. For Web2 applications, Web3Auth easily extends your existing auth setup to seamlessly onboard your mainstream users into the decentralized ecosystem and connect native users via their wallet of choice (i.e. Metamask, Phantom, Coinbase).

Q2. When was the idea behind Web3Auth born, and what led to it?

Zhen and Leonard, our co-founders, both went to the same school and even worked at Visa as software engineers. Still, it was only later, when Zhen was leading Peace Bride, and Leonard was working at ENS when they both connected and realized that Private Keys posed a single point of failure for the user. Around $150 billion dollar worth of Bitcoin has been lost, due to forgotten seed phrases. They knew this problem could prevent crypto from going mainstream. From this emerged the idea of Web3Auth to eliminate the need for seed phrases for users.

Q3. Tell us something about your team's background.

Zhen and Leonard, both have experience working in tech and finance - a combination that would naturally culminate in love for crypto.

Zhen has formerly led the Peace Bridge funded by Ethereum Foundation and ETC Cooperative. Leonard has prior experience working at ENS. They both have worked as software engineers for Visa among other corporate stints before founding Web3Auth together.

Q4. What are the main advantages of Web3Auth for the user, compared to a similar project from a mainstream financial market?

With Web3Auth, applications and wallets find:

• Simplified onboarding leads to higher conversion rates by as much as 64%
• Key recoverability and availability via enhanced non-custodial 2FA resulting in an 80% reduction of support tickets
• A robust infrastructure that currently already supports 15M users(3.3M monthly active users), enterprise-grade MPC, and uptime guarantees
• Plug n play Web3Auth Integration for a quick 15 min setup for developers.
• Enables social and conventional login methods, so that even your grandma can use your dApp.

Q5. What is the Security Strategy of your project?

Base Web3Auth Key Infrastructure guarantees​

With Web3Auth, users handle keys similar to a multi-factor account, where they use their OAuth login, devices, and other factors to manage their key pairs. In this example, the user starts by generating a 2 out of 3 (2/3) Shamir Secret Sharing. This gives the user three shares: ShareA, ShareB, and ShareC.

1. ShareA is stored on the user's device: Implementation is device and system specific. For example, on mobile devices, the share could be stored in device storage secured via biometrics.
   
2. ShareB is managed by a login service via node operators: This share is further split amongst a network of nodes and retrieved via conventional authentication flows.
   
3. ShareC is a recovery share: An extra share to be kept by the user, possibly kept on a separate device, downloaded or based on user input with enough entropy (eg. password, security questions, hardware device etc.).

Similar to existing 2FA systems, a user needs to prove ownership of at least 2 out of 3 (2/3) shares, in order to retrieve his private key. This initial setup provides several benefits.

Non-custodial​

Using Web3Auth, the user is always in control of ownership and access to their cryptographic key pair. Login services only ever have access to one share, and thus it's not possible for the provider to retrieve the user's private key on their own.

Incremental security​

Users can increase security on their key by increasing the 2/3 threshold to a higher threshold. For example, a user can increase the threshold from 2/3 to 3/4 and add yet another authentication factor like a hardware device. This might be necessary if the user has high amounts of cryptocurrency on his private key.

Q6. Let's say I want to start using Web3Auth. Where do I start? Where can I find some how-to guides?

Using Web3Auth  is simple and takes only a couple of lines of code to get going. Developers wanting to integrate Web3Auth can check our comprehensive documentation for an easy to understand how-to-guide

Q7. Why did you decide to migrate/build on the BNB Chain?

Our vision has always been to onboard the next billion into Web3. In order to achieve this, supporting the BNB Chain became a no-brainer because of the sheer number of transactions that take place on the chain. Also, the number of applications being built on the chain is phenomenal.  It is also with this common vision to make crypto mainstream, that we are currently the default log-in solution for Binance Extension Wallet on Chrome.

Q8. What do you hope to see next from the BNB Chain community?

Common feedback on crypto is that it is difficult to understand and that the UI/UX is neither intuitive nor user-friendly. We believe this is the single biggest barrier in user adoption of Web3 right now. We would like to see the community doing more to address this problem.

Q9. What do you see as the main challenge for the future of DeFi?

UI/UX will play a huge role in deciding how quickly we will be able to onboard the next billion into the possibilities of Web3. Right now, managing private keys is a nightmare for the user and we have seen billions of dollars being lost due to forgotten seed phrases. How quickly the UI/UX will evolve will determine the user adoption of DeFi in a big way.

Q10. Where do you see DeFi and BNB Chain in five years?

Web3Auth’s endeavor essentially is to make DeFi mainstream by providing seamless onboarding. The BNB Chain has played a huge role in making  DeFi as mainstream as it is today. We see the BNB Chain play a crucial role in the mass adoption of DeFi. We want to position ourselves as the safest, simplest, and de-facto auth/onboarding solution for anybody building any decentralized application or a wallet.

Q11. Is there any upcoming event?

We have some exciting feature updates and integrations lined up. Also, we are working towards making our SDKs available to as many developers as possible which will in turn help us reach out to more users in the ecosystem.

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