Digital Pens or Digital Wallets?
“Why the concept of a Digital/Crypto Wallet can be misleading and cause confusion in the Web3 space”
Special thanks to Makoto (ENS) and David (Rain Protocol) for reviewing the script
by Timothy Coleman - 31/Mar/2023
Let’s imagine that everyone in the world can write, and that everyone in the world has a unique handwritten signature that cannot be forged by anyone else.
Let’s imagine that everyone can only write their signature with one special pen engraved with their name, and that everyone in the world has one of these pens.
Let’s imagine that whatever I sign with my pen, I personally authorise to happen. If I sign a contract to give away my house, it has my signature on it, and so it happens.
The reason you can see all your crypto/NFTs in your ‘wallet’, is because the software is looking at the Blockchain record of all the signatures everyone has ever made.
By monitoring these records, the ‘state of ownership’ of our Digital Assets are determined, further signatures for buys/sells update the records, and what wallets display.
The fact that they are called ‘wallets’, is because the first Blockchain use case was money. In reality, your ‘wallet’ is an interface for your private keys, in other words, your Digital Pen.
