Origin
Oviato grew directly from Project Eden, a weekend hackathon where I proved that passkey-native crypto wallets could work without passwords or seed phrases. That prototype demonstrated the core technical insight; Oviato is the company built to productise it.
The Pivot
I co-founded Oviato and led the transition from an ordinal and inscription studio to a passkey-native wallet-as-a-service infrastructure provider. Where Eden was a proof-of-concept, Oviato packages it as production APIs and SDKs for third-party wallet builders.
- Designed cryptographic framework and passkey/WebAuthN architecture
- Built prototypes demonstrating WebAuthN viability for consumer-grade, non-custodial UX
- Articulated complex infrastructure concepts to non-technical investors
- Contributed to investor materials and technical due diligence process
Outcome
The technical work and pivot narrative directly secured DraperVC investment, followed by Boost VC, Bitcoin Frontier Fund, CoinGecko Ventures, and Etherscan.
Where It Is Now
Oviato has evolved beyond the initial wallet infrastructure into a full identity and payments platform:
- Ovi ID — chain-agnostic identity layer across Bitcoin, EVM, and Solana. One identity, every chain, no key duplication or bridging
- Agentic payments — x402 (HTTP 402 Payment Required) and ERC-3009 for pay-per-request USDC transactions. Users and AI agents on the same rail, gasless on Base with ~1.5s settlement
- @oviato/connect SDK — drop-in ConnectButton component for third-party wallet integration
- DN-Key reuse — Ovi ID uses DN-Key (my 2016 protocol) for DNS-based organisational verification, combined with passkey-based user verification. Made Nostr NIP-05 compatible
The gap between 2016's "publish a public key via DNS TXT record" and 2025's "one identity across every chain with passkey auth and agentic payments" is massive, but the trust model is identical. Domain proves org. Device proves user. No intermediary.