Why Dapper is a smart contract wallet
Convenience and usability are important, but they should never compromise decentralization
To use the blockchain, you need a digital wallet that holds your cryptocurrency and lets you interact with the decentralized applications, or dapps, that live on the blockchain.
So far, these wallets have come in two types:
- Fully decentralized, but complicated: These wallets give you full control in that no one but you can access your crypto, but they offer no support. Lose your keys, and your cryptocurrency is locked away forever.
- Centralized and convenient, but insecure: Built around a traditional, centralized user experience — meaning that the company offering the service holds your cryptocurrency but makes it easy to access and use it — these wallets are simple, but give ultimate control of your digital assets over to a company, which makes them vulnerable.
In option one, you are solely responsible for your assets, with no support. In option two, you’re entrusting that responsibility to someone else, and services like Mt. Gox and Quadriga have demonstrated the risks there. Both approaches work alright, but with major concessions and potential dangers.
That’s why we created Dapper.
The Dapper difference
We believe in blockchain. It’s already changing the world, and we want everyone to benefit from that. But for blockchain to reach mass adoption, it has to work for everyday people, not just tech-savvy early adopters.
So we made Dapper for everyday people.
Dapper offers the best of both worlds when it comes to usability and security. It combines the benefits of decentralization — the control over one’s own data and assets, the reduction of bureaucracy, middlemen, and overhead fees, and more — with convenience and a safety net.
Dapper’s secret is simple: it’s powered by a smart contract.
Blockchains guarantee trust
A smart contract is a piece of code added to the blockchain that’s programmed to complete a specific action. Once added to the blockchain, a smart contract’s code becomes public and cannot be modified or removed. This assures users that the rules are transparent and will never change.
The Dapper smart contract enables security features like account recoverability and fraud protection. It also makes possible conveniences like smart fee management and multi-device support (coming soon). It does all this without ever taking control away from the user.
It can do this because Dapper’s smart contract allows it to act as a co-signer on your transactions. So Dapper can monitor for unusual behaviour — sending large sums to strange addresses, activity in an unusual region, a request to empty an account — and check in before confirming. And, using a tool we call the Rescue Kit, Dapper can recover access to your account if you lose your keys or devices.
The best part is that a smart contract can do all this without ever having access to your cryptocurrency. It can prevent money from leaving your account, but never spend or move that money without you.
Smart contracts remove the need for trust
Asking if you can trust a smart contract the same way we trust banks and institutions is the wrong question. It doesn’t get at just how secure a smart contract actually is. In reality, you don’t need to trust a smart contract, because a smart contract can’t act nefariously in the way human-run institutions can.
Today we entrust these organizations with our data and assets and then cross our fingers and hope they don’t act shadily. With smart contracts, it’s not a matter of “don’t be evil,” it’s one of “can’t be evil.” A smart contract on the blockchain is transparent and immutable. Everybody can see precisely how it works, and nobody can alter it.
Dapper is a smart contract wallet because it’s decentralization that’s designed for humans: usable, secure, and without compromise.
If you haven’t already, you can request early access to Dapper and experience what makes it so smart for yourself.
