AA and Passkeys – so hot right now

Account abstraction and passkey authentication are two especially hot topics in the crypto discourse this year, with both generating excitement that maybe, finally, great UX in crypto has arrived.

With passkeys, users authenticate with their hardware devices. If the device supports biometrics, then the user can effectively “sign in” with fingerprints or facial recognition alone. With account abstraction in the mix too, developers can sponsor gas on behalf of their users to simplify the onboarding experience even further.

So, what kind of experience is possible with these new advancements? We’re glad you asked :)

Turnkey x ZeroDev AA Passkey wallets

Today ZeroDev is releasing a new type of AA wallet enabled by Turnkey that leverages passkeys to authenticate to AA wallets. This unlocks a powerful user experience:  users can spin up a self-custody AA wallet with biometrics such as Apple’s Face ID or Touch ID, removing the need to safekeep seed phrases.

You can check out this combined functionality through ZeroDev’s simple demo here, or via the demo built by our shared partner Goldfinch here.

Turnkey infrastructure under the hood

ZeroDev trusted Turnkey to provide the secure key management infrastructure powering their AA passkey wallet because of Turnkey’s flexibility, performance, and commitment to security. Turnkey has built a new model for private key management that utilizes secure enclaves — highly constrained compute environments that can cryptographically attest to the code running inside. Private key material can only be decrypted within a secure enclave, and signature requests are only processed according to customer-defined policies.

This novel security architecture means raw private keys themselves are never exposed to Turnkey, your software, or your team. Your users remain the owner of their private keys at all times. With this setup, Turnkey allows you to create Web2-style experiences, while still ensuring your users are in control of their private keys. Read more about our security architecture here.

Get started today!

Starting today, you can easily replicate this Turnkey x ZeroDev stack in your own product. Get started directly with ZeroDev here for help leveraging account abstraction (AA), or explore your own custom implementation of Turnkey. Looking for a good place to start? Check out our passkey wallet demo and open source code.

Next up on the hot topic list: PWAs. Follow along for updates!