Why Silk is Different

For more detail on the comparison to wallets and WaaS, please see the previous page. For a simple, approximate comparison chart, please see this page.

Compared To Other Categories Of Wallets

Making such a chart is difficult as there are often exceptions when categorizing wallets in broad strokes. For example, even though mobile app wallets and smart contract wallets are placed under our High-moderate security definition, there are notable exceptions such as ZenGo or a well-configured SAFE that belong to our High security category. When there is too much variance in a category to give it an accurate label, as is often the case in smart contract wallets, we label them N/A for that cell.

Type	Security	Recovery	Cross-Browser	Cross-dApp	Onboard Time	Free
Silk	High	Zero/minimal setup, high security	Yes	Yes	<30s	Yes
WaaS	Low	Zero setup, low security	Via a central custodian	No	<30s	No
Hardware wallets	High	Ledger: Slow setup, high- security	Must connect hardware wallet	Yes	Days	Yes
Smart Contract Wallets	High-moderate	Social recovery: Moderate setup, high-moderate security	N/A	Yes	N/A	Yes
Standard mobile apps (e.g., Uniswap)	High-moderate	Moderate setup, low security	Must export+import seed	Yes	Minutes	Yes
Standard browser extensions (e.g., Metamask)	Low-moderate	Moderate setup, low security	Must export+import seed	Yes	Minutes	Yes

Security Levels

Find more information on Silk's Security Model here

Low: Wallet can be drained by compromising a single web account

Many wallets have a single source of failure stemming for a primary account used to secure access to the private key, such as an email address or linking with a standard enterprise account like Google or iCloud. More recently, phishing attacks on iCloud have been shown to drain Metamask seed phrases backed up to Apple Keychain.

Low-moderate: Wallet can be drained by malware on a desktop device

Malware attacks are exceedingly common and have become more difficult to detect and prevent with new attack vectors emerging daily. Wallets must include multiple redundant precautions against key leaks due to malware intercepting passwords, key strokes, and authentication requests to name a few.

High-moderate: Wallet can be drained by malware on a mobile device

Mobile devices are less vulnerable to malware attacks due to higher standards on installable software and hardware security enclaves compared to standard desktops. However, mobile devices have become increasingly targeted with many unknown exploits still to be revealed.

High: Wallet cannot be drained by malware

The tightest security includes redundant procedures and precautions to prevent a malware program running locally on the user's machine from obtaining unauthorized access to their private keys. Note Hardware wallets have been shown to be vulnerable to malware, for example by or on the device they are connected to. While it is difficult to guard against this attack vector, Silk implements multiple protections that may make it more secure (pending audit) than a hardware wallet for these sorts of vulnerabilities.