This same concept also applies to large decentralized networks, where anyone can join and leave, and where DPoS consensus is weighted by the amount of tokens every individual has staked. For someone to take point and lead this consensus building task requires an enormous amount of effort.

For Vaulta over the last few years, that is one of the roles the Vaulta Foundation filled. It handled this challenge by dedicating the significant amount of time and effort required to build and reach consensus. This was mostly done with direct human interaction - very similar to how you’d plan that family dinner…

I believe there are simple systems that can be built to assist in this process. Now it’s time to try and reach consensus on whether these simple systems are useful and worthwhile.

The Sentiment System

I have spent the last couple days between meetings on a prototype smart contract and user interface that I believe might help.

It’s very simple.

• You can express your support or opposition to any topic posted in the system.

• Your position’s weight is based on how many tokens you have staked.

• You store the votes on-chain with your RAM. You can un-cast your vote to reclaim it.

Given sufficient participation, the result is a real time snapshot of the overall sentiment towards a specific topic or idea. This is similar to a multi-sig proposal, but using a topic or idea rather than a proposed transaction. It also offers an opportunity for anyone to join in.

Read on for an overview of the system and its goals - or check it out here and use it to let us know whether or not you think this system is useful.

Topics / Ideas

This system revolves around topics or ideas. The Topics page contains all active topics - sorted by the total weight involved. Each individual topic consists of a human readable identifier and a text description.

In the example below, the “sentiment” topic is about the sentiment system itself and is an attempt to determine if it’s useful.

Do you think this system is useful? Well, you have an outlet to express your position.

Support vs Opposition

Anyone can now express their support or opposition to the topic or idea being shared.

These are minimalistic blockchain actions that anyone can perform today simply by clicking one of the buttons. Do you want to see this system used more? Then support it. Do you think this is a waste of time to even think about? Go ahead and oppose it.

Each time a position is taken by a user, the smart contract will use a portion of their RAM balance to record the data. This RAM is then released when either the topic is deleted or when the user manually removes their vote.

Sentiment Statistics

The sentiment system then aggregates the positions of all participants and displays high level statistics, providing insights in to how the participants view a particular topic or idea.

And since this is a blockchain, nothing is hidden and a complete list of participants is available to see each individual persons position.

Express your support or opposition to this idea

Before we spend any more time on this though - it would be useful to know what you think about it. So we launched it as a part of Unicove and are using it now to determine the general sentiment towards this system itself.

https://unicove.com/en/vaulta/topic/sentiment

Sign in with your preferred wallet and express yourself.

This is DPoS from the bottom up, as opposed to the typical top-down we’ve always had.

Notes

A few extra bits of information if you’ve made it this far:

• This system was rapidly built and so many features don’t exist yet. It’ll evolve as usage needs arise from its users.

• If you want a topic posted, I’m the one that can do it currently. Just ask. I’ll post it so long as it’s reasonable. Give me a description of the topic which is short and accurate.

• The success and future of this system will depend on engagement with it. If there’s no interest, we won’t pursue it and we’re out a couple days work.

• This rapid release of this project was only possible because of the groundwork that existed from both Wharf and Unicove.

If you are a participant on a multisig account today and you need to be able to propose or approve transactions, hopefully this helps. Otherwise if you’re not a multisig participant but are curious on this functionality, read on!

Advanced Mode

If you’re using the multisig functionality of the blockchain - I’d currently consider you to be an advanced user. This isn’t the kind of thing the average user will use (yet?), so all of this functionality is hidden behind the Advanced Mode setting.

Go into Settings and toggle Enable Advanced Mode.

This unlocked a ton of advanced functionality on the site, including some things you need:

• The ability to see the permissions of an account.

• The ability to see the proposals created by an account.

• The ability to see the authorities an account is a part of.

• The ability to log in and propose transactions as a multisig account.

Creating Proposals

In order to create proposals for a multisig account, you first need to:

1. Be logged in as an account that can perform actions alone (not a multisig account)

2. Be logged in as an account that’s part of a multisig permission on another account

If both are true, then you’ll be able to use the features described below.

I’m not going to get into how to set up a multisig account or its permissions in this post. It’s assumed the multisig account is already setup and your account is included as a participant. If there’s interest, a future article could be written that covers this.

The account you’re logged in as now will be the proposer of any multisig proposals you create. This account will also cover RAM costs for proposal storage.

While logged in as your proposer account, visiting the My Account page will now have a section called Authority. This page finds all of the multisig accounts that you’re a part of.

Each individual multisig account your account has permission to will be listed. From here you’ll be able to click the Login as … buttons to log in as that multisig account.

The entire application now treats you as if you were logged in as that multisig account.

If you attempt to perform a transaction, the user experience will be identical to that of a normal user - however, every transaction will result in a multisig proposal being created by your proposer account. Your normal wallet you use with the proposer will ask you to approve the creation of the multisig proposal.

Once signed, the normal success screen contains extra info about the new proposal.

It provides a direct link to view the proposal as well as some brief instructions. The proposal is now also visible under the Proposals section of the proposers account.

This proposal can now be signed by the parties that are part of the multisig account and then executed after the threshold has been reached.

Future multisig capabilities

This feature on Unicove is one of those things we built because we (the technical people) needed it. We didn’t put a lot of emphasis on marketing these features because of that.

The multisig system is capable of serving the everyday user, but will require investing more time into the user experience to make it easier and less error-prone. To truly make the experience easy enough for the everyday user we will need things like:

• Add a “Getting Started” path to configure a new multisig account and configure it with the appropriate participants and weights.

• Add a section to help find proposals that are requesting your approval. This is a bit tricky both due to the available APIs and potentially malicious proposals.

We know this system still requires a lot more work to refine into a feature that anyone can use. If you’ve got ideas, maybe it’s something we haven’t considered yet so I’d love to hear them. Any and all feedback welcome - including about the random things I write about 😉

We quickly realized Unicove alone couldn’t meaningfully improve the situation. Neither could Wharf (the SDKs) or any existing wallet (including our own). So immediately we began planning and development of the solution we’d need to create. Around 10 months later we’re now nearing release.

First though for context, a little bit about why we never released this on Unicove.

What we tried on Unicove

We took every wallet that existed in the Antelope ecosystem and tried to put them all together in a step-by-step experience. It guided the user towards a choice that best fit their needs. It did some device detection to guess what kind of wallet they’d need (mobile vs desktop) and asked a few questions about security (like do you have a Ledger?).

Pretty quickly the user would be presented with a recommended wallet and any viable alternatives. The user could select one and would then be presented with the instructions on what they needed to do next to get started with that particular wallet.

This is where the user experience started breaking down. These instructions were long, time consuming, and often too complicated. It differed from product to product. The easiest of wallets still wasn’t that “great” and would probably take a user 5-10 minutes from start to finish. The more difficult and complex wallets (like Ledger or Anchor Desktop) took even longer with their ceremonious account creation processes.

The best experience we could create with these tools wasn’t good enough and didn’t “solve” onboarding. That onboarding process needed to be faster, more simple, and have a familiar feel. But it needed to come from a wallet-like product that didn’t exist.

We needed something new

Initial development of this new product began before Unicove 2.0 was released in 2024. Inspiration came from the wider blockchain industry as well as the proposal for the Web Authenticator project in the 2021 Wallet+ Blue Paper. Development continued in 2025 with development stopping/starting due to other obligations like the EOS/Vaulta rebrand.

Today we’re at the point where I’m going to start talking about it more regularly to try and find testers and people to provide feedback.

So what is this new product? It’s platform to sign up for a Vaulta Account. It can be used in apps that support Sign in with Vaulta. It could also in the future allow other features like Pay with Vaulta or Checkout with Vaulta. All very similar to the experiences offered in the Web 2.0 world using Sign in with Apple or Sign in with Google.

Technically: It’s a no-download, non-custodial, web-based wallet interface for Vaulta accounts. Anyone can integrate it into their app (thanks for Wharf). It offers multiple account creation options and transaction signing. It offers varying levels of account security with a choice between a social login using MetaKeep, using a devices native security chips with Passkeys, or external hardware wallet like a Ledger device.

If you’ve heard me talking about the Web Authenticator this year, it’s all been in reference to this new product. We’re still working on the name of the product, but for now it’s simply called Vaulta Account. Simple and descriptive. Do you want to get started on Vaulta, use that app, or play that game? You just need to sign up for a Vaulta Account.

Jungle first, then Vaulta

We’re starting to test publicly on Jungle, which is a standalone test network that mirrors the functionality of Vaulta. We have published the beta of this new product on Jungle v4 for public testing while we prepare for the final Vaulta release.

This beta isn’t the final product, many of its page designs are not yet implemented. It is mostly functional though and shows off how this product will work.

If you’re interested in trying it out, we’d very much appreciate any feedback you have. Below are some of the ways you can test various features of the service.

Testing Account Creation

Don’t have a Jungle 4 account? Perfect, you can get started on jungle4.unicove.com by clicking the Connect Wallet button in the upper right of the screen. Then when prompted with a choice of wallet select the Web Authenticator (again, still working on names).

If you’ve never used the Jungle 4 test network on this device it will open a new window to get you started. If you were already connected on this device it would have presented you a list of accounts to sign in with on Unicove.

Being on a brand new device using this service, it’ll allow you to connect accounts you’ve already setup or create a brand new account.

Account creation is faster and more intuitive because everything’s happening in this single interactive process. There’s no written guide sending you off to another site or into an app store. You’re asked to make decisions until the account has been created.

The amount of time it takes from start to finish will vary based on the choices made during account creation.

1. If you decide to secure your account with your email address using MetaKeep and claim a free account using a social login, the whole process might take a minute.

2. If you decide to secure your account with a Ledger device and then pay for your own account using a withdrawal from an exchange, it’ll take a bit longer as you perform and wait for the exchange to process the transfer.

At the end of the process though regardless of the choices, you end up being signed in with your account to the app you originated from, in this case Unicove. At this point feel free to test signing out on Unicove and then signing back in again. This time it will recognize your existing accounts and simply connect you.

Testing Transactions

Now that you’re logged into Unicove, you can use it to test out the Jungle network and perform some transactions. There’s honestly not a whole lot to do since it’s just a test network, so I’ve written off a few things you could do just for the sake of testing.

First off, you’ll probably want some testnet tokens. You have two options for this:

1. Head on over to the Jungle 4 Testnet Faucet to claim some free tokens. All you need to do is visit the Jungle 4 Monitor page, click the “Faucet <native>” button, and enter your account name. It’ll sent some tokens to your account to test with.

2. On Unicove, sell some of the extra RAM that was given to your account. Click on the RAM section in the left sidebar, hit sell, and enter an amount (all of it if you want). That will exchange the RAM itself for testnet tokens to test with.

Now you’ll be able to transfer those tokens around, staking them, or any of the other basic system functions that Unicove offers for the testnet. Each of these actions will perform transactions and you’ll get a sense of how it feels to perform them.

Testing Multiple Accounts

If you’d like to try out multiple accounts, just click Connect Wallet and select the Web Authenticator again on Unicove. When the window appears, click the account name to open the account selector menu, which has a button at the bottom for a New Account.

For this testnet version, we currently allow multiple free accounts using a social login. So despite the message saying you can only claim one, you can claim as many as you’d like.

Tip: If you end up in a situation where an account was created but is missing, you can use the “Connect Account” option to quickly search for and find missing accounts.

Testing Multiple Devices

You can also use the same accounts on multiple devices with any of these options.

• Use your MetaKeep account on any device just by logging in with the email address.

• Use your Passkey account on any device the Passkey is on (via services like iCloud Key Chain, Google Password Manager, and commonly used password managers).

• Use your Ledger account on any device the Ledger can connect with (while using a compatible browser).

Testing Hub Functionality

This entire app is also designed to be accessed directly, without originating from an app like Unicove. It will be hosted on an easy to remember domain to act as an onboarding hub. It’ll allow anyone to easily answer one of the most commonly asked questions:

Question: How do I setup an account?

Answer: Visit signup.someplace.com

No more linking users to app stores or guides as the first touchpoint, but also not preventing them from going down those more complicated paths if they choose to do so.

The current (not so easy to remember) URL is one of our staging branches found here:

https://aaron-staging.web-authenticator-a83.pages.dev

Visiting the app directly allows some basic wallet management and the ability to launch Unicove (and automatically sign in, a new Wharf feature) for the current account.

More to come

There’s still plenty left to do. I could triple the size of this post if I were to outline all of the things we’d like to do, how developers could integrate, and what we’re experimenting with now - but I’ll save that potentially for another post.

What I will say though is that we’re not finished improving it. The same can be said about Unicove itself and how it onboards users, we plan on changing that to push users into this experience as the easiest way to get started.

What we need now though is just validation and feedback on this direction with this new product. What does work? What doesn’t work? What do you wish it could do that it doesn’t? If you’ve got the time, help us plot the course for this product with your feedback.

Feedback welcome in the Vaulta Developers Telegram channel.