The Namada Keychain (previously known as the Namada Extension) was first launched on the Chrome Web Store in December 2023 around the time the Anoma Foundation announced the Namada RPGF Drop. 

Ever since, the Namada Keychain has been installed and been used by more than 80,000 users in the Shielded Community. With this article, I’d like to introduce the Namada Keychain properly to the community and explore its high-level architecture, its features, and the crucial role it plays in the Shielded Ecosystem.

What is the Namada Keychain?

The Namada Keychain is a browser extension that serves as a signing oracle. The main features of the Keychain are:

• Generate Namada accounts (transparent and shielded)
  • From seed phrases directly
  • Through keys stored in a hardware wallet like the Ledger HW
• Import existing keys from a seed phrase
• View and manage more than one Namada account
• Enable signing for a specific Namada chain (you can use a custom chain-id)
• Connecting to multiple web applications in the Shielded Ecosystem
• Inspect transaction data submitted for signing
• Signing messages, transactions and other network operations on a Namada chain

The Namada Keychain has actively been used by the community to generate new Namada accounts for many applications, such as to claim the RPGF Drop, to sign up for the Shielded Expedition, to sign S Class Asteroid submissions in the Expedition, and it’s been integrated and tested throughout the development of upcoming applications like Namadillo, a user interface for the Shielded Ecosystem.

As more applications are built on Namada and in the Shielded Ecosystem, the Namada Keychain can remain a basic utility tool in the Shielded infrastructure for builders, who can focus on the innovative features of the application and seamlessly integrate with the Keychain; and for users who can create their Shielded Identities and interact seamlessly with the applications.

Your Namada Keychain, Your Data

The Namada Keychain:

• does not use any trackers or analytics
• does not collect keys, addresses, or any user data – the data remains in your machine
• does not send any clicks, page views, events or any other user interaction or activity to any central server

The Namada Keychain has been open source since inception, you can verify the code on GitHub. A release is published before submitting the extension packages to the Chrome Web Store or Firefox’s Add-on Developer Hub. For example, here are the latest version 0.3.2. builds for Chrome (live on the Web Store) and Firefox (awaiting review).

What’s Next with the Namada Keychain?

As we continue to test the Namada Keychain during the development of Namadillo, the developers at Heliax might come up with UX improvements, find bugs, or develop additional features, such as enabling custom derivation paths using the Ledger HW. Whenever a release is production ready, we’ll publish the code on GitHub and submit it to the browser extension stores – so make sure to keep your Namada Keychain up-to-date at all times!