Zerohash AUTH Explained: How Address-Free Crypto Transfers Work

Zerohash, the onchain infrastructure provider that sits behind crypto trading, custody, and payments for fintechs, launched a product on October 19 that removes the two steps people most often get wrong when moving digital assets: copying a wallet address and choosing a blockchain. The product is called AUTH, it was unveiled at the Money 20/20 USA conference in Las Vegas, and it turns a transfer into a choice between two accounts a user already controls rather than a string of characters that has to be copied correctly. The company says AUTH already reaches more than 600 connections and roughly 250 million users, according to Zerohash’s launch announcement.

Where Transfers Break: Addresses, Chains, and Test Transactions

Onchain rails settle fast, but the interface around them still asks people to act like technicians. A user moving funds from an exchange to a self-custody wallet has to find the destination address, copy it, paste it, pick the right network, and often send a small test transaction first to confirm nothing is lost. Every one of those steps is a place where a mistake sends funds somewhere unrecoverable.

Rainbow CEO Alex LaPrade described the routine in the launch release: “Sending funds from an exchange or brokerage to a non-custodial wallet such as Rainbow has historically required double and triple checking the wallet address as well as first sending a test transaction.” He added that AUTH “solves this problem by allowing users to securely link their wallet to other platforms and move funds in just a few steps, helping remove one of the biggest points of friction to help more users get their funds onchain.”

The friction is not theoretical. Address-based transfers are where copy-paste errors, clipboard hijacking, and wrong-network deposits concentrate, and they are a durable reason retail users keep funds on custodial exchanges instead of moving them into wallets they hold the keys to. AUTH attacks that specific failure mode by removing the address from the flow entirely.

How AUTH Works: Select, Authenticate, Transfer

AUTH is an account-linking layer. Instead of a public key, a transfer is addressed to a verified account the user has already linked. The company breaks the flow into four steps: the user selects a custodial or self-custodial account to link, authenticates with login credentials and multi-factor authentication, authorizes the transfer, and the assets move onchain. Once an account is linked, AUTH handles authentication and settlement automatically, with no wallet address and no chain selection in front of the user.

Two things are worth being precise about, because they are where the product’s trust model lives. First, AUTH is not a new blockchain and it is not a bridge that wraps assets. It is a layer that maps a user’s identity across platforms, then lets each platform’s normal rails execute the transfer. Second, the settlement and the linking are legally separated: the release states that AUTH is secured by Connect Ltd., a Bermuda corporation and an affiliate of Zerohash, and that users agree to Connect’s terms and conditions when they use it. The linking layer and the money mover are not the same entity, a structure the company says keeps control with each partner platform.

Each participating platform sets its own risk parameters. The release frames this as “control”: partners configure which transfer types, which onchain assets, and which accounts are enabled, so a brokerage and a self-custody wallet can expose different surfaces through the same network. That configurability is the reason the launch reads as infrastructure rather than a consumer app — Zerohash is selling the layer to platforms, and users meet AUTH inside apps they already use.

What the 600+ Connections Actually Include

The headline number is “600+ connections,” and the named platforms in the release are Robinhood, Gemini, Coinbase (Exchange and Wallet), MetaMask, and Phantom. Zerohash’s developer documentation breaks the total down further: 639 wallet connections and four exchange or brokerage accounts. The gap between “600+” and the two named categories matters because it shows the network is overwhelmingly self-custody wallets on one side and a small number of large, regulated venues on the other.

Kraken is the notable caveat. The company describes the exchange as expected to join following its beta integration, which means it is not yet a live connection despite appearing in early coverage. The distinction between a signed partnership and a live integration is the kind of detail that determines whether a transfer actually works today, and it is worth keeping separate from the marketing count.

Does Linking an Account Mean Giving Up Custody?

The natural question for anyone who holds their own keys is whether linking a wallet to AUTH hands control to a third party. The answer from the release is that it does not move the keys. AUTH replaces the addressing step, not the custody step. A user linking a non-custodial wallet still holds the private keys; AUTH only replaces the copied address with a verified account relationship, so the platform knows where the funds are going without the user typing a public key. That is the same distinction covered in BlockchainReporter’s breakdown of custodial versus non-custodial wallets.

Exodus CEO JP Richardson made the point from the self-custody side: “Self-custody means people stay in control of their assets, including where those assets go. Exodus supports the mission of AUTH by zerohash to abstract complexity for end users by improving usability and trust in onchain transfers, so they keep that control while connecting to the broader financial system.”

The caveat sits in the fine print. AUTH itself is secured by Connect Ltd., the Bermuda affiliate, and using the linking layer means agreeing to Connect’s terms. The release also notes that Zerohash accounts are not subject to FDIC or SIPC protections, and that Zerohash is not registered with the SEC or FINRA. None of that changes custody of a linked wallet’s keys, but it does mean the authentication layer is a regulated commercial arrangement, not neutral plumbing.

A Mastercard-Scale Operator and a Pending Trust Charter

Zerohash has put Ryan Beaudry in charge of AUTH. He was previously Executive Vice President of Global Product & Operations for Open Finance at Mastercard, where the release says he scaled open finance across nearly 100 million connected accounts and more than 10,000 applications, powering 15 billion API calls a year. That is the benchmark AUTH is being asked to hit.

Put those numbers together and the scale becomes concrete: roughly 10,000 connected accounts per application, and about 150 API calls per connected account each year. AUTH’s launch figure of about 250 million users across 190-plus countries is a larger claimed reach than the Mastercard open-finance network Beaudry ran, and it arrives before the product has proven the transfer volume behind it.

Zerohash operates regulated entities in 51 U.S. jurisdictions and is licensed as a money transmitter and for virtual currency business activity by the New York State Department of Financial Services, though the release notes its products may not be available in every jurisdiction, including New York. The company is separately pursuing a federal trust charter; it refiled a narrower application in August after the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency returned an earlier version. That context, and the earlier funding effort, is covered in BlockchainReporter’s report on Zerohash’s funding round after Mastercard dropped its investment plans.

Crypto.com’s Iskandar Vanblarcum framed what the launch is trying to normalize: “We’ve built Crypto.com on a foundation of security and regulatory compliance, and moving assets between platforms should meet that same standard. AUTH by zerohash lets our users connect their Crypto.com account to other platforms and transfer funds through verified, linked accounts instead of wallet addresses, making crypto simpler and more connected for everyone.”

For stablecoin payouts specifically, Airtm CEO Rubén Galindo Steckel described why the destination side matters as much as the origination: “We believe payments should move natively on-chain—it’s simply a better way to move money. But origination is only half the story. For stablecoin payments to truly work, origination and destination need to be tightly connected.”

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