KeyChain - A Chrome Extension to Manage your Steem Keys in a Safe and Easy Way

There are many websites and apps built on Steem and all require you to enter your private keys to use them. Most use steemconnect, which makes them quite safe, but still you must enter the keys every time, and the disadvantage here is not as much comfort as it is security.

It turns out that the vast majority of users don't use the different private keys to keep their accounts safe, but instead they use the master password for everything. Although probably there are many others who handle the different private keys and do everything possible to keep their accounts secure, not everyone likes to deal with this or they just don't know about it.

The user experience is one of the main barriers to the adoption of cryptocurrencies, and that's why I believe the average user shouldn't be forced to understand and manage the different keys to use their accounts safely.

The websites, applications and services themselves should make security a priority, without leaving aside the users who prefer to manage things on their own, but keeping it easy to the average user.

And here is where Keychain comes as a solution:

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Keychain is a Chrome extension created by @yabapmatt and developed in collaboration with @aggroed, @stoodkev and @nateaguila that automatically signs and broadcasts the transactions without having to enter keys manually, it means that the extension "enters" the keys without you having to copy and paste anything on the website. For those who are familiar with Ethereum, it is very similar to the Metamask browser extension.

I say "enters" because in fact the keys are never entered into the website, since the transactions are signed and broadcasted from the extension itself.

In this video of @yabapmatt you can see a demonstration of how the extension works:

At 0:57 seconds you can see him loggin into the Steem Monsters website.

Keychain can be used in any site that supports the extension. This project was officially launched just three weeks ago, so for now only SteemMonster and PeakMonsters support it. As far as I know at least two projects are working on adding support for the extension: SteemPeak and MinnowBooster. But hopefully soon we will see many Steem sites supporting the extension and, as @yabapmatt said, the days of putting keys into websites will be over.

Giving a look at the extension:

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Account set up	Log in	Wallet

To set up your account you just have to enter your Steem username and your active key or master password, in case of entering the master password the private keys will be generated automatically, otherwise you can add them manually.

As you can see in the third image, the extension is also a fully functional wallet with a very user friendly interface, from which you can see your balance, transaction history, voting mana, resource credits, in addition to transferring STEEM and SBD.

Soon you will be able to power up and power down, manage delegations, vote for witnesses and claim pending rewards.

Settings	Managing accounts	Importing private keys

As you can see, multiple accounts can be managed from the extension. To add/remove private keys/accounts you just have to go to Account Management, select the key you want to add (active, posting, memo) and enter it.

The master password is not stored by the extension so it can not be added, but it can be used for the initial set up to import all the private keys automatically.

Wallet

Wallet	Transfers	History

Website Integration Features

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• Send a handshake to make sure the extension is installed and running
• Decrypt a message encrypted by a Steem account private key (commonly used for "logging in")
• Post a comment (top level or reply) including a "comment_options" transaction for beneficiaries
• Broadcast a vote
• Broadcast a custom JSON operation
• Send a transfer
• Broadcast a delegation operation

In order for any of these actions to be executed, the user must first confirm the transactions requested by the site, this can be customized to turn off confirmations for certain operations/sites.

Keychain is currently available only for Google Chrome but other browsers will be added soon.

To install the extension simply go to this link and click 'Add to Chrome'. The download process takes only a few seconds like most web extensions, and the configuration process is quite simple.

Images: KeyChain, Captures