Show HN: Vessel – Your Passport for the Internet

• templewallet-extension

  37 184 9.6 TypeScript

  🔐💰Cryptocurrency wallet for Tezos blockchain as Web extension for your Browser.

  

This is a type of project that will not go over well with the HN community.

It looks like Vessel is a web browser extension that acts as a cryptocurrency wallet. The key words here are 'cryptocurrency', 'non-custodial' and 'web3'.

Meaning, this is a wallet that you can access from your browser that will keep your private keys local to your machine (the 'non-custodial' part) and allow you to send and receive cryptocurrency as well as allow you to log into websites that allow you to authenticate via a local non-custodial wallet interface/extension.

Some alternatives in this space are Temple [0], Kukai [1], Spire [2], to name a few.

To all those asking "what does this offer", ask yourselves how easy it would be to log into a service like Google mail, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Flickr, PayPal, Tumblr, etc. without an established phone number, bank account, or extra email address. With 'web3' the authentication takes place through the wallet (via the browser extension and presumably standarized-ish API).

Once a wallet is setup, the login process is a click of a button. From my own personal use, it's night and day compared with doing the login dance for the various 'blue-chip' companies I log into (GitHub, GMail, Twitter). Instead of a username/password dance, I can just click 'verify' and be logged in to a 'web3' website.

The wallets have, presumably, a primary purpose of keeping your money, so they act as a kind of 'real world wallet', where you're not expected to keep too much money in it but you can use this money for online transactions with little friction. The idea being, purchasing digital services is much easier because the friction is so low.

For me, the main point is friction. 'Web3' wallets like this provide an order of magnitude less friction to use online services. Whether you agree or disagree with cryptocurrency, think it's not needed or scammy, the 'strong-man' argument for wallets like Vessel and others is that it offers an order of magnitude less friction to authenticate and to use digital funds for digital services.

Now, in particular, Vessel doesn't look to be all that open (as in libre/free/open source) so I would be hesitant to install this and would rather use one of the more established wallets that is libre.

[0] https://templewallet.com/

[1] https://wallet.kukai.app/

[2] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/spire/gpfndedineag...

• SurveyJS

  surveyjs.io sponsored

  Open-Source JSON Form Builder to Create Dynamic Forms Right in Your App. With SurveyJS form UI libraries, you can build and style forms in a fully-integrated drag & drop form builder, render them in your JS app, and store form submission data in any backend, inc. PHP, ASP.NET Core, and Node.js.

  

Suggest a related project