Create your wallet
Creating a wallet takes a minute or two. Open the web wallet at wallet.getvela.app — or the extension, desktop or phone app — and choose Create a wallet.
Steps
- Name your wallet. The name helps you recognise it, and it is written to a public registry with your keys — treat it as public, and don’t put anything private in it.
- Confirm what happens. You tick that your public keys and wallet name are written on-chain, that your private keys stay in your devices or security keys, and that you agree to the terms and privacy policy.
- Create your first key. Choose how: this device (Face ID, Touch ID, fingerprint, Windows Hello), a phone or tablet (scan a QR code and create it there, where the app offers it), or a USB security key. Your device creates the passkey and then signs once with it, so the app knows the key really works before going on.
- Add more keys, if you want. Up to seven in total, of any kind. Any one of them will be able to sign on its own. If your only key isn’t synced anywhere — a security key, or Windows Hello — the app asks for a second one, because a single unsynced key is one lost device away from a lost wallet.
- Create. The app computes your wallet’s address from the full set of keys and publishes the set to the public registry on Gnosis Chain. A one-key wallet opens as soon as the registry has accepted the record, and the record lands on-chain in the background; a wallet with several keys opens once its record is on-chain.
What your wallet is
Your wallet is a Safe smart account — a contract, not a plain account with one private key. Your keys are its owners, and any one of them can authorize a transaction. The account contract lists every contract involved.
The address is the same on every network, and it is counterfactual: it is computed before anything is deployed, so you can receive funds on any network right away. The contract deploys itself the first time you send from a network, and that first transaction’s fee includes the deployment. Creating the wallet costs you nothing.
What is public
Creating a wallet writes a permanent record to a public registry contract on Gnosis Chain, readable by anyone and impossible to edit or delete:
- each key’s public key (never the private key) and its credential ID;
- each key’s authenticator model (which password manager or security key made it) and flags saying whether you were verified and whether the key is synced;
- the wallet name and a label for each key;
- the wallet address and when it was created;
- the signed registration data itself.
Vela’s public-key index submits the record and pays its gas, so it sees the record first. Nothing in it can move your funds; it is what lets any one of your keys find the wallet again on a new device (recovery). The privacy policy has the complete list, and the registry page shows every record.