Censorship Resistance: Why It’s Critical and How We’re Tackling It
At Capsule, we’re dedicated to providing the easiest cross-app wallet experience for your end users without compromising the core principles of crypto.
Embedded wallets have been around for a while and are great at reducing friction in the end user experience. They eliminate common pain points like seed phrase management, downloading additional software, and signing pop-ups for transactions. While these features enhance convenience, they often come at the cost of losing some of the unique attributes that make crypto special – like censorship resistance.
Standalone wallets, whether through browser extensions or standalone apps, are indeed more challenging to use than embedded wallets, but they offer the significant advantage of allowing users to self-custody their funds via censorship-resistant private key management.
Although this approach is more complex to build, it provides a richer and more engaging experience for users. Users can bring their self-custodied wallets to various apps, preserving their transaction history and enjoying improved interactions and reputation across apps. The ability to transact without any interference, limitation, or influence from other parties has fueled the vibrant crypto ecosystem we see today.
However, for users completely new to crypto, navigating this autonomy can be a challenge. The space needs tools that are not only accessible to newcomers, but also retain the essential qualities of crypto, such as consent and interoperable ownership.
You’ve likely heard a lot about our commitment to interoperability, but our dedication to censorship resistance is just as important.
How we think about Censorship Resistance
Censorship resistance is core to the integrity of data and transactions, and empowers individuals to operate in systems freely, without fear of interference.
We've thought carefully and intentionally about the security of our system as it applies to embedded wallets. Capsule is fully censorship resistant by design. Capsule can never unilaterally sign transactions on behalf of users, and users can exit Capsule’s system whenever they choose, without the involvement of either Capsule or the partner app integrating us.
As part of this commitment, Capsule makes available a fully-offline, open source utility that can always be used, either via CLI or made available in hosted form by a third party. This feature ensures that decentralized systems remain open, transparent, and resilient.
If you’re looking for an embedded wallet and these principles are important to you too, please get in touch!