The Problem with Off-Chain Key Storage
Most wallet infrastructure today stores keys off-chain, inside proprietary enclaves or distributed across MPC networks. This means:- Provider dependency: Wallets depend on a specific provider’s infrastructure to function.
- Latency overhead: Key reconstruction adds latency to every signature.
- Painful migration: Moving to a new provider means exporting keys and creating new wallet addresses.
A Different Approach
Smart contract wallets take a different approach. The wallet is a program deployed on a public blockchain — it does not live in anyone’s private infrastructure. The signer is completely separate and can be anything: a passkey on a user’s phone, an AWS KMS key in your cloud, or a recovery credential. The key stays whole. No splitting, no reconstruction, no added latency.- Security is not a promise — it is code you can read.
- Recovery is not a key-share coordination problem — it is an onchain signer rotation.
- Migration is not an export — it is a signer swap.

