When Not to Use Veil

Veil is designed for fast, biometric-first self-custody on Stellar Soroban. That trade-off — convenience over hardware isolation — makes it the wrong tool for certain threat models. Below are the cases where you should reach for a different approach instead.

1. Holding More Than You Can Afford to Lose

Use a hardware wallet instead (e.g. Ledger, Trezor, GridPlus).

A hardware wallet keeps private keys air-gapped — they never touch a general-purpose OS. For long-term storage of significant value (retirement savings, treasury reserves, grant endowments), the extra friction of plugging in a USB device is worth the isolation guarantee.

Signs you need this:

• You hold more than ~5 % of your net worth in crypto.
• You are managing funds on behalf of an organization or family.
• You plan to hold for years without frequent transfers.

2. Multi-Person Treasury or Organizational Funds

Veil is a single-user wallet — one passkey, one person. When spending requires the approval of multiple humans, you need multisig with distinct signers, not a biometric shortcut.

Use a multisig setup instead (e.g. Stellar native multisig, Safe).

A 2-of-3 or 3-of-5 multisig ensures no single person — and no single compromised device — can unilaterally move funds. Each signer can be a separate hardware wallet held by a separate individual in a separate location.

Signs you need this:

• Funds are controlled by a DAO, board, or committee.
• You need separation of duties (e.g. finance + legal + CEO must all approve).
• Regulatory or audit requirements demand multi-party authorization.

3. Custodial Compliance Requirements

Some regulated entities — exchanges, payment processors, custodial platforms — are legally required to hold keys on behalf of customers. Veil is fully self-custodial by design; there is no admin key, no backdoor, no way to freeze or recover funds from the protocol level.

Use a custodial or qualified-custodian flow instead (e.g. BitGo, Fireblocks, Coinbase Custody).

Custodians provide insurance, regulatory compliance (SOC 2, BitLicense), cold storage policies, and institutional-grade key management — none of which Veil offers or should offer.

Signs you need this:

• You are a licensed financial institution handling customer deposits.
• You need insurance coverage on held assets.
• You must comply with regulatory frameworks that mandate custodial controls.

4. High-Frequency or Programmatic Trading

Veil authorizes transactions via biometric prompt — a human must physically confirm each action. For market-making bots, arbitrage scripts, or high-frequency rebalancing, the latency and human-in-the-loop requirement is a dealbreaker.

Use a hot wallet with a programmatic signer instead (e.g. a server-side key pair managed by an HSM or a signing service).

These setups sacrifice biometric UX for throughput — exactly the right trade-off for machine-driven flows.

Signs you need this:

• You need sub-second transaction signing.
• Transactions are initiated by software, not humans.
• You are running bots or automated strategies on-chain.

5. Cross-Device or Platform-Portability Needs

Veil keys are bound to a single device’s secure enclave. If you need to sign transactions from a laptop, phone, and hardware security module interchangeably — or if you need key portability across different devices — passkey-based wallets are not the right abstraction.

Use a traditional key-based wallet or a key-management service instead.

These give you exportable (or sharded) keys that can be loaded onto any device, at the cost of more attack surface.

Summary

Veil is not trying to be everything. It is optimized for fast, self-custodied, human-initiated transactions — the everyday spending and dApp authorization that benefits most from biometric UX. For everything else, the tools above are purpose-built and battle-tested.