We often hear that the main barrier to crypto adoption is user experience. While that may be true, the crypto ecosystem also offers an incredible playground for testing new solutions. It’s a fully programmable world where collaboration and cross-pollination thrive beyond the silos of web2. Such innovations often come with major benefits like improved privacy, data ownership and interoperability — even in the most traditional areas like KYC.
Imagine if you could buy an asset or receive an airdrop without having to upload your passport for the millionth time. No endless onboarding loops. No anxiety about leaving sensitive information behind, worrying it might be hacked or sold. As for platforms, no more losing half your audience during onboarding and frustrating the other half.
That’s what Keyring solves. Most of us are used to giving away privacy and data ownership to save a few clicks and "login with" our Google or social media accounts. What if we could use a similar approach to prove we're legit KYC'd users? Proving we’ve already been verified by our bank, broker or centralised exchange. Yet this time, not at the expense of privacy and data ownership.
Another way to “know your customer”
For blockchain-based systems to go mainstream, we need solutions that prevent interactions with bad actors. That doesn’t mean we’re stuck with the cumbersome KYC processes we know today.
Financial institutions have spent decades refining their onboarding and fraud prevention systems. They still collectively invest over $200 billion each year. With AI providing increasingly sophisticated methods to outsmart existing KYC systems, even more investments are required to keep up. Institutions must also safeguard sensitive user data, and even the most secure systems are regularly breached.
So why don't we rely on these trusted checks rather than having every platform re-verify users, and store personal information at great risk?
Let’s be clear, this requirement won’t disappear overnight. Most regulators require financial service providers to verify and store user information, so they can be held accountable. But if we go back to the concept of “knowing your customer”, using the whole trail of existing reliable information makes a lot of sense. We’d supplement already-verified data from trusted institutions (like KYC passed) with other reputation-based information (like account longevity or transaction history).
While we are not there yet for regulated entities, Keyring Connect offers a solution for all use cases that don't require traditional collect-verify-hold user docs.
Why would these non-regulated use cases implement any form of KYC? Because it still fulfils the underlying purpose: risk mitigation. Today, many platforms skip verification entirely to avoid the heavy UX burden, missing out on the opportunity to tap into huge pools of already-verified users.
If we take the example of lending pools, you can’t scale a pool by manually verifying every participant. The operational hurdles and UX impact would be massive. However, say users can prove their status with Binance or Revolut in a few clicks, your pool has much better chances to attract institutional capital while maintaining a seamless user experience.
This is KYC reliance 2.0. Risk-focused instead of identification-focused. Fully automated. Relying on trustworthy data. The best part: it comes with minimal friction for users and protocols.
Introducing Keyring Connect: Instant zk-KYC
Keyring Connect lets users extract information from any website, with a proof of authenticity.
For instance, you can prove you’ve passed KYC with Revolut or sent a wire transfer. You can show your Coinbase balance or Experian credit score — or simply prove it’s above a certain number.
It’s like open banking but for all data and all websites, without having to build and maintain hundreds of API connections. Unlike scraping the web, data can be collected behind login walls. Users verify themselves once with a trusted platform and carry their credentials across ecosystems. All in just three clicks and under three minutes.
At its core, Connect relies on zkTLS technology, or more precisely MPC-TLS. Built on TLS (the internet’s security layer), it allows a neutral “notary” service to witness a browsing session and prove that the data extracted from the website is authentic. Importantly, zkTLS is built in such a way that only the required information is extracted, ensuring minimum data exposure. It's similar to a blacked-out report. When setting up a new website data source, Keyring uses its URL and JSON path to identify the fields to consider, based on what’s required for a given policy. Data is only shared with user intent.
Think of it as a cryptographically sealed screenshot of selected data points that cannot be tampered with or faked.
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Let’s take the example of Alice who wants to lend in a pool. For the pool’s smart contract to accept the transaction, she needs to prove she’s over 18 and doesn’t live in the UK.
- Data Extraction: Alice opens the Keyring web extension, selects Binance as her data source, and logs in. The extension securely gathers authorised cookies from the session, containing the minimum required data (here: date of birth and address). The Keyring notary authenticates the session, ensuring data integrity.
- Data Validation: Extracted data is automatically validated against the pool's Policy (set of rules defined by the Keyring customer). For Alice, this means verifying her age is above 18 and her address isn’t in the UK. No external vendor or manual workforce is required.
- On-Chain Credential Issuance: Once validated, Alice binds her wallet to the verified data, hiding that link with zero-knowledge. This ensures there is no honeypot of information mapping users’ identities to the wallets they use. She then creates an on-chain credential attesting she complies with the policy. Smart contracts dynamically query credentials to approve actions like deposits or trades, making real-world user data accessible on-chain without exposing sensitive details.
On the protocol side, we made integration extra simple and achievable in under 3 hours:
- Define your compliance Policy with Keyring, specifying the rules and data sources you accept.
- Include a link or button (via SDK) on your frontend for users to start the verification.
- Add a modifier to the desired smart contract functions to check the credentials cache before approval. Done.
Our approach is use-case first: we don’t want to distract builders from their core purpose. So we built modular tooling that can be used as a turnkey solution. All protocols can now mitigate risks without prohibitive costs, expand their product offering and attract compliance-conscious capital.
Where is it most useful?
Keyring Connect was built to unlock the potential of digital assets by enabling the secure sharing of sensitive data within crypto ecosystems. The first focus is compliance for DeFi.
We've mentioned permissioned pools in DeFi already. We believe this is the best tool to push institutions over the line and deploy at scale. By ensuring only KYC’d users from non-sanctioned countries can interact with pools, Keyring Connect mitigates risk while respecting the ecosystem’s privacy ethos. It helps break the barrier between retail and institutions in DeFi. As a side benefit, it helps prevent scams and improve hack recovery by providing identity trails and jurisdictions of reference. Idle Finance, Euler and Benqi are already on board, with more coming soon. See it in action on Idle.
Other applications include attestation layers for blockchain ecosystems, airdrops with geographic restrictions or sybil protection, non-custodial wallet compliance with MiCA travel rule, or enabling AI agents to KYC counterparts. Keyring Connect works everywhere private authenticated data is needed.
We’ll be doing deep dives on these use cases in future articles. Follow us to stay tuned (links at the end).
What next?
Keyring Connect isn’t just about better KYC — it’s about redefining identity verification for decentralised systems. Here’s why it stands out:
- Quick and painless
- Respects privacy
- More secure than sharing docs with every platform
- Reliable with zkTLS authenticity
- Universal: works with all websites and data points
- Fully automated with built-in data refresh
- Easy to integrate
With AI and decentralisation, the demand for scalable, secure identity solutions will grow. By eliminating the need for human intervention, Keyring Connect offers a level of scalability and efficiency that legacy solutions can’t match. We aim for it to become the best automation tool for identity, to build trust in the programmable economy.
We’re live on Ethereum, Base, Arbitrum, Optimism, Avalanche. Deploying on Midnight, Injective, ZKsync and Solana. Reach out to get started today info@keyring.network.
