human.tech by Holonym today launched Wallet as a Protocol (WaaP), a new wallet architecture that promises to upend the way people hold and use digital identity, assets and access across the internet. Rather than another browser plugin or centralized service, WaaP is presented as a protocol-level wallet: vendorless, seed-phrase free, and designed to eliminate the single points of failure that have plagued Web3 wallets to date.
Holonym says the current wallet landscape forces difficult tradeoffs. Many onboarding solutions lean on Wallet as a Service (WaaS) models that run on centralized servers, charge dApps for users, and ultimately give app operators broad control over users’ funds. That model, the company argues, produces fragile security that is vulnerable to attacks on iframes, browsers, apps and the WaaS providers themselves.
It also encourages “walled garden” behavior, different keys or wallets per app, which fragments accounts and defeats the seamless, cross-site experience users expect from modern fintech like PayPal or Apple Pay. The result, Holonym says, is an industry built on insecure and expensive infrastructure with poor UX, vendor lock-in and unsustainable business models.
Can WaaP Fix Web3’s Wallet Problem?
WaaP tries to address the problems by reframing the wallet as a protocol and changing how custody is handled. At its core is a two-party computation (2PC) architecture that splits custody between the user and the client, designed to protect against both theft and loss. The protocol supports familiar, consumer-friendly logins, Google, phone or email, while eliminating seed phrases and allowing recovery through social, biometric or 2FA fallbacks.
Crucially, Holonym highlights built-in protections against blind signing, on-chain policy enforcement for things like transaction limits and allowlists, and a “Gas Tank” feature that can sponsor user gas across supported chains. For developers, the pitch is straightforward: a free, vendorless infrastructure that can be integrated in minutes, enabling shared standards and new revenue paths from gas and swaps instead of monthly fees paid to middlemen.
For users, WaaP promises one persistent wallet and identity across dApps, games and DAOs so people can show up to services with the same credentials and access without juggling passwords or scattered seed phrases. Holonym says migration is already underway. More than two million users are reportedly moving to WaaP-powered services through partners such as Ika, and new deployments are being rolled out for trading platforms and humanitarian initiatives across Africa and beyond.
human.tech is Holonym’s open framework for human-aligned digital infrastructure, providing privacy-preserving identity, wallet and governance tools to users worldwide. With the launch of WaaP, the company is asking the industry to rethink wallets not as products sold or rented by companies, but as shared protocols that prioritize security, portability and real ownership for users. Whether developers and users embrace the change remains to be seen, but WaaP frames itself as a direct attempt to remove the costly intermediaries and fragile architecture that have slowed mainstream adoption of Web3.
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