In line with our commitment to community transparency and regular development communications, we are excited to share our monthly product progress report for March 2018.

Identity Wallet

SelfKey ID: In addition to the basic SelfKey ID, the SelfKey Identity Wallet now also supports additional ID attributes and documents such as a tax number, utility bills, addresses, bank statements, and more. All of this information is stored locally and under your control. It can be added, replaced, or removed at any time.

ERC-20 Tokens: Besides sending and receiving tokens, you can also add custom ERC-20 tokens to manage inside the wallet. Currently, you can do this by entering the token contract address and the wallet will automatically scan the blockchain to verify it exists before adding it to your dashboard.

Hardware Wallets: The Ledger Nano S wallet integration is done on the backend and we are still optimizing the frontend workflow. Once we finalize the Ledger integration we’ll move on to Trezor. Part of this process involves a small code refactor to support multiple “profiles” of wallets, similar to how you can have multiple Gmail accounts logged into a browser and easily switch between them. To support this functionality, we’ll also be adding the ability to nickname your public keys for easier address management.

Auto-Updates: We are also implementing an auto-update feature that will push notifications to the wallet when new updates and features are rolled out. This means you won’t have to download the wallet again to enjoy the latest features. Your identity attributes and documents are saved in a different directory than the core application files, so updating the wallet won’t affect them in any way.

UX Testing & UI Fixes: In March, we started a SelfKey community testing group to get real-world feedback on the alpha version of the SelfKey Identity Wallet. With over thousand members expressing interest, we’ve selected a group of 40–50 people for this initial group. Our product manager has over 20 calls scheduled every week to get to know the community better.

During these calls, a participant is able to click and use the SelfKey Identity Wallet via desktop remote control while providing real-time feedback in usability and and functionality across all aspects of the product. These insights are combined with notes from other test sessions that will guide the improvement of UI/UX within the application.

Certificate Signing on Mac OSX and Windows: Last month, we’ve also successfully registered with Apple and Microsoft in obtaining an enterprise developer ID. This took longer than we would have liked, ironically because of the difficulty in going through KYC as an organization. With official Developer IDs, we can now sign the SelfKey Identity Wallet with a certificate and unlock other features that can be built into the application. These certificates can also verify that builds of our applications have not been tampered with since they were signed.

Marketplace

Exchanges Marketplace: We’ve made important progresses integrating the SelfKey Identity Wallet and the Log in with SelfKey Button with several exchanges. By mutual agreement with our partners, we have decided to establish longer internal testing periods. After, we will make a controlled and phased distribution with community members, to make sure that the onboarding functionality works smoothly and that there are no setbacks that could harm these established partnerships and the ability to establish new ones.

Listings Auto-Refresh: In the SelfKey Marketplace, we’ve added a feature that will automatically refresh the latest listings without having to download new versions of the SelfKey Identity Wallet. This information on listings will also be cached and saved locally on your machine, so that in the event you’re having internet issues you can still view all the information you need.

Staking: The staking smart contract has been upgraded and deployed to support whole marketplace areas. We have also added the capability to change staking amount and period. We successfully tested the staking functionality on testnet to unlock the Exchange marketplace within the SelfKey Wallet and we have started to do so on mainnet.

We have also implemented significant changes in the Wallet Staking process for a better user experience. Being a concept in which most users are not familiar with, it is paramount to make the process intuitive and explanatory, minimizing any potential friction.

Login with SelfKey Button & Browser Extension

An exciting new project we’ve been working internally is a browser plugin and button that allows you to sign up/in to and go through KYC via your SelfKey ID.

Login with SelfKey (LWS) offers participating websites a decentralized mechanism to securely identify and authenticate users without exposing them to a single point of failure in the event of a data hack. Participating sites can optionally request identity claims from the user as part of their standard onboarding or KYC process, or require a holding of KEY tokens in order to unlock access to a service such as an Exchange or a Token Sale.

Users who choose Login with SelfKey enjoy unparalleled privacy and security when interacting with online service providers, cryptocurrency exchanges and retailers. Unlike traditional OAuth authentication services such as Facebook, Twitter or Google, who track a user’s activity across all of the websites they use, LWS relies on the user’s keys in their SelfKey Identity Wallet to sign an authentication challenge before logging in.

We have a working prototype that has functional integration with the SelfKey Identity Wallet, and working server side integration libraries for NodeJS that connects the Chrome browser extension. We are working on UI/UX development and building more robust error handling and persistence modules.

Conclusion

March has been another month of hard work and progress.

We finished the first build of the Identity Wallet Alpha and and got to share it with select members of our community to get information on feedback and improvements. First through a testing session with our product manager and later with a controlled distribution of the application to the members of our testing group.

We are also so excited about the synergy that can be created with the SelfKey Identity Wallet and the Log in with SelfKey Button & Browser Extension, which has high utility in today’s world.

Exchanges and Token Sales that have strict KYC verification process can present some barriers and friction when acquiring new customers. Log in with SelfKey eliminates these barriers, while granting identity owners an unparalleled privacy and security when interacting with Exchanges and Token Sales.

This new project has enormous potential and we have received excellent feedback from our community and partners.

As always, if you have questions or just want to chat about SelfKey with the core team, we invite you to be part of our Telegram community. To stay up to date on the latest news, join our announcement channel or subscribe to our mailing list.

We will be updating you again next month. Thank you very much for the continued support.