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Gnosis Safe and ConsenSys Announce New Partnership

As individuals, we often use an externally owned address or EOA wallets to buy and sell crypto assets. Businesses and companies often rely on a combination of EOA and hardware wallets to keep their funds safe. This adds complexity and is still not better at security which is a cause for concern.

On the 7th of February, 2022, Gnosis Safe and ConsenSys announced a strategic partnership to address this concern for existing Web3.0 businesses and those interested in adopting Web3.0.

What are EOA wallets?

Externally owned wallets are the most common type of wallet available. These are easy to use and fast to set up but have one big flaw that makes them less secure and unsuitable for businesses.

This security concern is the inability of an individual to own their private key. These private keys are stored on a centralized server that becomes a single point of failure for EOA based accounts and exchanges with EOA wallets. 

Also, individuals can lose their seed phrases (representation of private keys) or be socially engineered into revealing their private keys to hackers. 

Needless to say, EOA wallets, although easy to set up and use, are not very safe. They also have limited features that do not make them a viable option for businesses and companies. 

What is Gnosis Safe?

Unlike EOA wallets, Gnosis Safe is a smart-contract wallet. A smart-contract wallet has many advantages over EOA and even hardware wallets. These are based on code that allows them to have a wide range of features and functionality that EOA cannot provide. 

The Gnosis Safe wallet is a multisig (short for multiple signers) wallet. A typical EOA wallet requires only one person to sign off transactions whereas a multisig wallet requires more than one user to sign these transactions making them more secure than EOA wallets. 

Gnosis Safe also has a framework of policy modules that sits on top of their wallet. This framework enables operational security needs like access control, setting a limit to transactions, budgeting, scheduling payments, amongst other things allowing companies to have much more granular control over their assets.

©2022 Gnosis

What does this mean for Web3.0?

With the rise of Web 3.0, many businesses want to move into this ecosystem. One key area of concern for them would be the security and management of their digital assets (coins, tokes, and NFT’s).

This seems to be the reason behind the partnership between Gnosis Safe and ConsenSys, a leading Ethereum software development and solutions company with big names like MetaMask, Infura, and Codefi under its belt. 

ConsenSys, as a trusted partner, will now work with companies and businesses to build customized solutions on top of Gnosis Safe’s multisig functionality.

According to John Ennis, Gnosis Safe Ecosystem Lead, “We see many organizations navigating the Web3 ecosystem, ranging from financial institutions, companies, and NGOs. They all require specific processes and controls to directly facilitate their organization’s unique access control and operational security requirements. This partnership with our long-term colleagues and friends, ConsenSys, is an important step to help these organizations gain the security and confidence they need to embrace digital assets in the age of Web3.”

“Our partnership with Gnosis Safe will help crypto funds safely and compliantly engage in DeFi—whether through MetaMask Institutional or through the development of customized features on top of Gnosis Safe,” says Julien Vincent, Global Head of Professional Services at ConsenSys.

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