Leonard Tan & Yong Zhen Yu: The Decentralized Key Management and Login System for Web3

Torus is an open-source and universal key management system for the Web3 ecosystem. It's simple, secure and non-custodial, and suitable for anyone to manage their keys. Torus runs a Distributed Key Generation protocol built on Shamir's Secret Sharing.

Supporting over a hundred thousand authentications a month on popular applications like AAVE, KyberSwap, Augur, GoodDollar, and MyCryptoHeroes, Torus empowers decentralised applications with seamless user onboarding flows while maintaining recoverability and high standards of security for key management.

The Torus Wallet is the second layer to the system and allows one-click login and authentication on partners including Gmail, Facebook, or passwordless logins on Web3 applications. It is however reinforced behind the scenes by a clever distributed architecture. Notably, clever cryptography makes it possible for users to send crypto to social accounts that don't yet have crypto wallet. For example, one could send crypto to a Twitter username, which could be claimed once the recipient creates an account.
The team also recently released a custom version of two-factor authentication (2FA), tKey.

We were joined by Founders of Torus, Yong Zhen Yu and Leonard Tan, who gave us fascinating insight into why and how Torus was built, the recent products released, and what their aims are for the future.

Topics covered in this episode:

Zhen and Leonard's backgrounds and how they got into cryptoHow and why Torus was formedThe path Torus has followed over the past yearUnwrapping the base layer, the Torus NetworkHow Shamir's Secret Sharing works and why Torus chose to build on itThe Torus Wallet and a step by step of how it worksTorus and account portabilityUse cases and applications built on TorusThe second layer of security, tKeyTheir plans for introducing Touch IDHow Torus educate their users on how to stay secureThe long term goal for Torus and how users are protected in the future

Episode links:

Torus websiteTorus StatusA beginner’s guide to Shamir’s Secret SharingDeveloper documentationTorus on TelegramTorus Charity Twitter CampaignWhat Distributed Key Generation IsKey Assignments, Resolution and RetrievalHow to Share a Secret in ProductiontKey - An open standard for threshold key management - HackMDTorus on TwitterZhen on TwitterLeonard on Twitter

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/B003