Israeli Startup Launches First Non-Custodial Wallet Without Private Keys

The world has seen both hot and cold storage but now one company is bringing “chill storage.” ZenGo, a Tel Aviv-based firm, is promising the first non-custodial wallet without private keys, points of failure, or passwords, all with a custodian-grade experience.

Following last years’ $4 million in seed funding from Samsung, Benson Oak, and Elron as well as three blockchain grants from Zcash, Tezos, and Zilliqa, ZenGo is going public with the mandate of simplicity and security.

The decentralized security protocols along with distributed key management means there is no single point of failure, “seed phrase or mnemonic non-sense,” or hackable or sim-jacking based password system.

“This is the first secure user controlled crypto wallet which can be adopted and used by anyone, removing the typical friction points you find in alternative solutions,” said Ouriel Ohayon, co-founder of the company. “Until now users had the choice between two poisons: be their own bank at the cost of complexity, human errors or hacks or trust a third party blindly (which they chose by default because it’s just easier but then lose total control).”

Frustrated with the “overwhelming and tedious” state of crypto wallets when first entering to the industry, Ohayon and his partners aimed to give ZenGo users total control over their funds, without the annoyance of traditional wallet.

Ohayon boasts his app's simplicity in setup, account restoration, and password-less access. Additionally, ZenGo has been audited by Kudelski and AppSec, offers biometric encryption, and can guarantee funds will not be impacted if either a user’s phone or server is hacked.

“Once we knew we could take the core principles of threshold cryptography and distributed computation and make it highly performant on the mobile, we knew we could build a step function improvement to whatever was existing,” said Ohayon.

Furthermore, unlike multi-sig technology, ZenGo is blockchain agnostic and can support any asset.

“After a few weeks of beta on iOS we already manage seven figures AUM in USD in our system,” he said. The platform is due to launch on Android in a few weeks, according to a representative.

ZenGo early adopters will have a lifetime of free access. Once established the company plans to charge a subscription fee to new customers and add services that will generate transaction fees.

“We believe wallets will become the default interface to interact with blockchain based services as long as they are usable,” said Ohayon.

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