Wallet security is one of the most critical topics in web3. Even experienced users can fall for sophisticated phishing attempts and other scams, which put a lot of money and valuable NFTs at risk. However, as the industry has grown, more security solutions have become available and easy for even non-technical users to implement in an attempt to protect their vaulted NFTs.
Below, we’ll show you how to use Delegate.Cash, one of the leading web3 security solutions for NFT holders, collectors, and traders.
What Is Delegate.Cash?
Delegate.Cash is a security solution that allows web3 users to minimize risk and protect valuable assets from bad links and malicious actors.
Instead of signing transactions with web3 wallets that contain valuable NFTs or cryptocurrencies, Delegate.Cash allows users to set up a proxy wallet or "power-of-attorney" to act on behalf of another.
For example, a Bored Ape Yacht Club holder may wish to take advantage of a claim or allowlist for holding the Bored Ape. But signing a transaction with the wallet that has the ape in it can be risky.
With Delegate.Cash, users can sign the transaction or claim from a different wallet, one without any specific contents or valuable items.
Is Delegate.Cash Safe?
Delegate.Cash has been trusted by some of the most notable brands in web3, including Yuga Labs, Art Blocks, PREMINT, OpenSea, and more.
At present time the protocol boasts more than $500 million in protected assets across 8,000 wallets.
How To Use Delegate.Cash
Getting set up on Delegate.Cash only requires a few steps and the site provides a simple onboarding process. Below, we’ll walk through the steps required to delegate a wallet to act on behalf of a vaulted wallet.
1. Connect Your Vault
While it’s not required that your vaulted wallet is a hardware wallet like a Ledger or Trezor, most web3 users utilize one for their vaulted NFT assets. The first step in utilizing Delegate.Cash is to connect this wallet - the one you wish to delegate with - to Delegate.Cash.
2. Choose a Delegate
After you’ve connected your wallet to Delegate.Cash, you can choose a delegate wallet. A best practice is to utilize a wallet that does not contain anything of non-trivial value. If you don’t want to lose it, make sure it’s not in the delegated wallet!
Once you’ve chosen the wallet you wish to act on behalf of your vault, simply add the Ethereum public address and submit the delegation.
This step does require a transaction to complete the delegation process. However, once it is complete, your wallet will be officially delegated.
If you've already delegated, you can also view your recent delegations by selecting the button underneath "submit delegation."
3. Use Your Delegated Wallet, Instead of Your Vault
After you’ve officially delegated your vaulted wallet, you can put away your Ledger and start to use the delegated wallet to claim airdrops and sign transactions. This ensures that your vaulted assets stay safe, while you still take advantage of the opportunities they provide you.
**Note: While Delegate.Cash’s registry is becoming utilized more frequently, not all projects or platforms will recognize the delegate.
For example, the recent Doodles Dooplication process enables delegated wallets. Therefore, users can safely store their Doodle NFT on a vault wallet, but still undergo the Dooplication process with considerably less risk by using a delegated wallet.
If you’ve followed steps one and two, all you need to do is log in to the Doodles’ app with your delegated wallet.
In this example, even though my Doodle and Dooplicator NFTs are in my vault wallet, I can still undergo the Dooplication process with a hot wallet that doesn’t contain valuable NFTs. In this scenario, if I were to accidentally sign a malicious transaction or engage a bad link - my vaulted NFTs stay safe and only the contents of my delegated wallet are at risk.
Other Ways to Use Delegate.Cash
While delegating a single wallet is the most popular Delegate.Cash use case, there are two more delegation options at your disposal.
Delegate a Single NFT
If you didn’t want to delegate an entire vault, but instead a single NFT, you can easily do so via Delegate.Cash.
Instead of selecting the “wallet” option, choose “NFT.”
Here you’ll be able to choose the delegated wallet and the NFT you wish to delegate.
To do so you’ll need the NFT’s contract address and the token ID. Both of these can be found easily in the details section of the OpenSea asset page.
After you’ve submitted the delegation, you’ll be able to act on behalf of that NFT from the wallet of your choosing.
Delegate a Smart Contract
Beyond NFTs, you can also delegate other smart contracts to another wallet. This is most useful for ERC-20 tokens. For example, if you have ApeCoin ($APE) on your vaulted wallet that you’d wish to stake, you can do so without putting your vault at risk by delegating the ApeCoin contract to another wallet.
To delegate a smart contract, simply paste in the smart contract you wish to delegate to another wallet and submit the delegation.
Liquid Delegate
The latest innovation from Delegate.Cash is liquid delegation, which offers the ability to trade rights like token claims and allowlist access as an NFT.
For example, if Meebits were eligible for a $MEEBS token claim (made up), a Meebits holder could wrap their rights as an NFT and trade it on the Delegate.Cash Liquid Delegate market.
A non-Meebits holder that wanted access to the token claim could buy the utility rights to the Meebit on the liquid delegate market and claim the $MEEBS token without owning a Meebit.
Delegate.Cash allows users to delegate utility and buy it. Below we’ll walk through the steps to both!
How to Delegate Rights
If you have an NFT that you wish to delegate access to for a select period of time, you can do so at delegate.cash/liquid.
After connecting your wallet, you can choose an NFT you’d wish to delegate and approve its use for liquid delegation. Then you’ll choose how long you wish to delegate the utility rights.
In the example above, a Meebits holder may wish to only delegate rights to their Meebit through the $MEEBS claim date, after which they’ll regain all utility rights of the Meebit.
Once you’ve selected the appropriate time frame, you’ll transfer the NFT to the liquid delegation protocol and place it for sale on the market.
How to Buy Liquid Delegation Rights
If you’d like to buy access to utility instead of sell it, you can do so on the Delegate.Cash’s Liquid marketplace.
Conditions of the delegation are listed within the NFT details page, which allows a buyer to purchase outright or make a bid on the utility rights.
Delegate.Cash for Technical Users
While Delegate.Cash has provided a simple interface and onboarding process for non-technical users, web3 developers can access technical documentation and an easy implementation kit on the site.
