Your keys.
Your face.
An open-source, self-custodial wallet for ETH and ERC-20s. Sign with a passkey — no seed phrase, no hardware key, and no company that can lock you out.
ETH Ethereum Don't trust us — verify. Every line is on GitHub, every wallet is on-chain, every claim is checkable.
A wallet that does less — on purpose.
No NFT gallery. No built-in swaps. No DeFi dashboard. Nothing engineered to pull you toward the next thing to click.
Vela holds ETH and ERC-20s. When you want to use a dApp, you connect to the one you choose through WalletPair.
That's the whole product.
Because every extra feature inside a wallet is more code to trust and more UI standing between you and your money. Vela stays small on purpose: fewer paths to attack, fewer moving parts to audit, and fewer chances to make a bad click.
Why we built Vela
We didn't set out to build another wallet. We started with a question we could never answer cleanly:
Where are you supposed to keep twelve words?
Put them in Notes and you're one stolen phone away from trouble. Write them on paper, and now you're thinking about fire, water, moving apartments, roommates, trash bags, and whether future-you will remember where "the safe place" was. The honest answer, for a lot of people, is a screenshot in the camera roll. Everyone knows it's wrong. They do it anyway — because the "right" answer is too hard to live with.
Then passkeys changed what a wallet could feel like. We used Base Account every day, and signing with Face ID felt obvious in a way seed phrases never did — less like handling hazardous material, more like using the rest of the internet. But the more we used it, the more we hit edges we couldn't ignore: a recovery key generated in a browser that you just had to trust, no custom networks, no way to host it ourselves. And the quiet problem was the biggest one — if the service disappeared, the wallet disappeared with it.
So we built the version we wanted to depend on.
Vela is a passkey wallet you can fully own. Your passkey stays where your device already protects it — iCloud Keychain or Google Password Manager. When you sign a transaction, Vela sends a challenge to your device; your device signs it and sends back just the signature. Vela never sees the key itself. Most wallets still have a dangerous moment, even if it's brief: words on a screen, a seed phrase in memory, a recovery key sitting in a browser tab. Vela is designed so that moment never exists. We can't access your keys. Not "we promise not to" — we architecturally can't.
We made Vela open source so you can check that for yourself, and self-hostable so your wallet never depends on our company staying online. And we built on unmodified Safe contracts because the boring, battle-tested path is the right one when people's money is involved — the same contracts already securing billions on-chain.
There's still a trade-off. With Vela, your Apple or Google account matters, because that's where your passkey lives. Lose that account, or delete the passkey, and there's no seed phrase, no support reset, no back door. But every self-custodial wallet asks you to choose which risk you'd rather live with. A seed phrase can be copied, screenshotted, phished, or typed into the wrong site at 1 a.m. A passkey is different: there are no words to reveal, no secret to paste, and no fake site that can trick you into handing it over. Your device signs for the real domain, or it does not sign.
That's why we built Vela — a wallet with no seed phrase to hide, no recovery key to trust, and no company you have to hope will stay around forever.
How Vela compares
The differences that matter once you actually own your keys.
| Vela | MetaMask | Rabby | Base Account | Clave | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Where your signing key lives | Apple / Google Password Manager | In the app | In the app | Apple / Google Password Manager | Apple / Google Password Manager |
| Key ever exposed to the app? | No | Yes | Yes | No | No |
| Fully open source (app + backend) | All of it | Partial | Partial | Contracts only | Contracts only |
| Self-host the bundler & our services | Yes | No | No | No | No |
| Your account is a standard, audited Safe | Safe v1.4.1 | EOA | EOA | Coinbase's own | Clave's own |
| Networks supported | Major EVM + custom | Any EVM | Any EVM | Base-first, few | Base / Arbitrum |
| Keeps working if the vendor disappears | Yes | Yes | Yes | At risk | At risk |
| No NFT / DeFi / swap bloat | Minimal | Lots | Lots | Lots | Lots |
| No seed phrase or recovery key | None | Seed phrase | Seed phrase | Recovery key | Email / social recovery |
You can self-host everything Vela builds. A few data sources (some chains' history, long-tail prices, threat scanning) come from third-party providers — swap in your own node or key.
How Vela works
What happens at each step.
Create a wallet
Authenticate with Face ID or fingerprint. Your device creates a passkey and derives a Safe smart account address from it — one address across all supported chains. No gas cost upfront. The contract deploys on-chain with your first transaction.
Sign a transaction
The app builds a transaction and sends a signing challenge to your device. Your device signs it with the passkey and sends back just the signature — Vela never sees the key. The signed transaction goes on-chain through an ERC-4337 bundler.
Sign in on a new device
Get a new phone, sign in with the same Apple or Google account. Your passkey syncs automatically through iCloud Keychain or Google Password Manager. Same address, same assets, same chains — no seed phrase to import, no recovery key to enter.
Technical details
| Wallet | Safe v1.4.1 |
| Authentication | WebAuthn / P-256 |
| Account type | ERC-4337 (Smart Account) |
| Signer module | SafeWebAuthnSharedSigner |
| Networks | 12 EVM chains (+ custom) |
| Source code | GitHub |
Ethereum
BNB Chain
Polygon
Arbitrum
Optimism
Base
Avalanche
Gnosis
Unichain
Monad
World Chain
TempoCustom networks need more than EVM compatibility — the chain must have the RIP-7212 P256 precompile and Vela's Safe + ERC-4337 contracts deployed. Vela checks this when you add one, and the Chain Setup tool can deploy them on chains that don't — including your own local testnet.
Free and open. Pay only if you want to.
You're paying for convenience, not access. Everything is open source and self-hostable — nothing locks you in.
Web wallet
Full-featured web wallet — free, open source, self-hostable. No install, no seed phrase — just authenticate and go.
Mobile app
The mobile app is a paid download, priced by region — it's how a small, independent team funds building Vela in the open. It's open source too, so you can always build it from source and install it on your own phone for free.
Bundler gas fee
Transactions go through an ERC-4337 bundler. You pay network gas plus a small service fee. You can skip the fee entirely by running a compatible self-hosted bundler.
Funded by the people who use it. Don't want to pay? Use the web wallet free, self-host the services, run your own bundler — and owe us nothing.
FAQ
What you'd want to know before putting real money in.
What chains does Vela support?
Ethereum, BNB Chain, Polygon, Arbitrum, Optimism, Base, Avalanche, and Gnosis — plus any custom EVM network you add yourself. Same wallet address across all chains.
How is Vela different from Coinbase Smart Wallet or other passkey wallets?
Most passkey wallets are closed-source and run on infrastructure you can't control. If the company pivots or shuts down, you're stuck. Vela is fully open source and self-hostable — the app, the bundler, and all backend services. You can add custom networks, run your own bundler to skip fees, and keep using your wallet even if getvela.app disappears. No recovery keys generated in a browser. No vendor lock-in.
Can I use Vela with dApps?
Yes. Pair your phone with the WalletPair extension and sign transactions on desktop dApps using your phone's passkey.
Do I pay more gas than a regular wallet?
Yes. Smart account transactions have extra overhead from on-chain signature verification and the ERC-4337 EntryPoint. Expect roughly 1.5–3x the gas of a standard wallet transfer, depending on the chain. That's the cost of passkey signing, no seed phrase, and one address across all chains.
What if I lose my phone?
Your passkey is backed up through iCloud Keychain (iOS) or Google Password Manager (Android) — as long as that sync is turned on. With it on, get a new phone, sign in with the same Apple/Google account, and your wallet is right there. If you've turned that sync off, your passkey stays on your old phone only, and losing the device means losing access.
What if I accidentally delete my passkey?
It's gone — and so is access to your wallet. There's no recovery mechanism. This is irreversible. If you ever clean up your password manager, know what each passkey is for before you remove it.
What if my Apple or Google account is compromised?
Anyone who can access your Apple/Google account and use your passkey could access your wallet. Enable two-factor authentication and use a strong, unique password — your Apple/Google account is part of your wallet security.
Can I add a second passkey as backup?
Not right now. Each wallet is bound to a single passkey — a design choice in the current signer module. Your backup is the built-in sync: iCloud Keychain or Google Password Manager replicates the passkey across all your trusted devices automatically.
What happens if Vela shuts down?
Your wallet is a Safe smart contract on-chain — it doesn't depend on Vela's servers. The app and all backend services (chain data, passkey index, bundler) are open source, so you can deploy your own Vela interface and run your own services. Because your passkey signer is Vela-specific and bound to the getvela.app domain, you keep signing through Vela's own open-source code — your self-hosted instance plus the recovery extension — not a generic Safe app.
What if the getvela.app domain goes offline?
Your funds stay on-chain regardless. Since passkeys are tied to a domain, Vela provides an open-source recovery extension that lets you use your existing passkey from another domain or localhost.
Has the code been audited?
The Safe contracts and Safe WebAuthn signer module that Vela uses have been audited. Vela's own app code hasn't been independently audited yet — all source code is public for review.
Ready to try it?
The web wallet is live and free. No install, no seed phrase — just authenticate and go.
Create a wallet-
Open source
Every line is on GitHub. Verify, don't trust.
-
Self-hostable
Run your own bundler and services.
-
Battle-tested
Your account is an audited, unmodified Safe v1.4.1.
-
No seed phrase
Sign with a passkey. Nothing to write down.
Follow @realvelawallet and we'll post the moment iOS & Android go live.