Best MPC Wallet SDK for Developers

Building a crypto wallet used to mean generating a private key, storing it somewhere, and hoping nothing goes wrong. That model has cost the industry billions. Centralized key storage creates a single point of failure. Seed phrases shift the security burden to end users who lose them. Hardware wallets add friction that kills onboarding.

MPC wallet SDKs solve this by distributing key material across multiple parties so the full private key never exists in one place. When a transaction needs to be signed, the parties collaboratively produce a valid signature without ever reconstructing the complete key. The user experience stays simple. The security model eliminates the single point of failure.

For developers evaluating MPC wallet SDKs, the decision comes down to performance, security architecture, audit depth, chain support, and integration complexity. This page covers the leading options.

What to Look for in an MPC Wallet SDK

Before comparing specific SDKs, the evaluation criteria matter.

Cryptographic Protocol

The MPC protocol determines the security properties of the entire system. The major protocol families for threshold ECDSA are GG18, GG20, CGGMP21, and DKLs23. Each has different tradeoffs in security, performance, and implementation complexity.

GG18 and GG20 are the earliest production protocols. They use Paillier-based cryptography and have been widely deployed. However, Paillier-based protocols have suffered critical vulnerabilities. The BitForge disclosure affected 15+ wallet providers using these protocols. The TSSHOCK vulnerability affected additional implementations.

CGGMP21 improved on earlier Paillier-based protocols but shares the same cryptographic foundation.

DKLs23 takes a fundamentally different approach, using oblivious transfer instead of Paillier cryptography. Trail of Bits, after auditing implementations across protocol families, concluded that OT-based systems are "generally less error-prone than Paillier-based systems." DKLs23 is published at IEEE S&P 2024.

Security Audits

An MPC implementation is a cryptographic system. Cryptographic systems require independent security audits. The questions to ask: How many independent audits has the SDK received? Which firms conducted them? Were the findings published? Were the issues resolved?

A single audit is a starting point. Multiple audits across different firms provide stronger assurance. Published audit reports demonstrate transparency.

Performance

Signature generation latency matters for user experience and transaction throughput. Consumer wallet applications need sub-second signing. Institutional applications processing high volumes need low-latency signing at scale. The SDK's performance under load determines its suitability. Benchmarks alone are insufficient.

Chain Support

The SDK should support the chains your application needs. ECDSA support covers Bitcoin, Ethereum, and most EVM-compatible chains. EdDSA support covers Solana, Polkadot, and other chains using Ed25519. Schnorr support covers Bitcoin Taproot. Multi-chain SDKs reduce integration complexity for applications spanning multiple blockchains.

Developer Experience

Documentation quality, API design, code examples, and support responsiveness all affect integration speed. An SDK with strong cryptographic properties but poor documentation will take longer to integrate and is more likely to be implemented incorrectly.

Leading MPC Wallet SDKs

Silent Shard by Silence Laboratories

Silent Shard is built on the DKLs23 protocol, co-invented by Silence Laboratories' VP of Cryptography, Yashvanth Kondi. It is one of the first production implementations of DKLs23.

Performance. Sub-20 millisecond signature generation. This is the fastest production MPC-TSS implementation publicly benchmarked.

Security. Eight independent security audits across four firms: Trail of Bits, Cure53, HashCloak, and Secfault Security. Trail of Bits conducted a 5-week engagement auditing the DKLs23 library, identifying 15 issues including 2 high-severity findings. All issues were promptly resolved. Trail of Bits commended the team for "highly effective and collaborative work."

Protocol. DKLs23 uses oblivious transfer instead of Paillier cryptography, eliminating the attack class that produced the BitForge and TSSHOCK vulnerabilities in earlier protocol families.

Open source. Core cryptographic libraries are published on GitHub under a permissive license. Repositories include silent-shard-dkls23-ll, dkls23, multi-party-schnorr, and ecdsa-tss-js.

Chain support. ECDSA (Bitcoin, Ethereum, EVM chains), EdDSA, and Schnorr (Bitcoin Taproot).

Deployment options. Cloud, on-premises, HSM integration (Thales Luna, PKCS#11), Intel SGX via Gramine, and AWS Nitro Enclaves. Configurable {t, n} quorum structures.

Post-quantum readiness. Silent Shard includes the first production implementation of MPC on ML-DSA, the NIST-standardized post-quantum digital signature algorithm. No other MPC wallet SDK offers a production quantum-safe path.

Production customers. BitGo, MetaMask, ZenGo, EigenLayer, Biconomy. Over $10 billion in assets secured and 10 million accounts.

Web3Auth (tKey/MPC)

Web3Auth provides a modular MPC SDK focused on social login and seamless onboarding. Its tKey infrastructure distributes key shares across the user's device, a social login provider, and Web3Auth's network. The primary strength is developer experience for consumer-facing applications. Web3Auth supports social recovery, allowing users to recover wallet access through their social login credentials.

Web3Auth is open-source-friendly and supports multiple chains. It is strongest for applications where user onboarding simplicity is the top priority.

Turnkey

Turnkey offers a REST API for MPC-based key management with strong programmability. Key operations run inside secure enclaves. The API supports granular policy controls and flexible signing workflows. Turnkey is popular with product teams that want clean API abstractions over the MPC complexity.

Turnkey is strongest for teams that want a managed backend for key operations with API-level control over policies and signing workflows.

Dfns

Dfns provides a Wallet-as-a-Service platform with an API-first approach. It holds SOC 2 Type II certification. Dfns abstracts the MPC complexity behind a developer-friendly API and targets fintech companies building regulated financial products.

Dfns is strongest for fintech developers who need compliance-ready wallet infrastructure with minimal cryptographic expertise required.

Privy

Privy offers embedded wallet infrastructure with social login and auth abstraction. It focuses on the consumer app developer experience, providing pre-built UI components and a simple integration flow. Privy handles key management behind the scenes while giving developers control over the user experience.

Privy is strongest for consumer-facing applications where speed of integration and seamless UX are the primary requirements.

Dynamic

Dynamic provides multi-chain embedded wallets with programmable integrations. It supports social login, email login, and wallet connectors. Dynamic focuses on low-level key management combined with high-level onboarding abstractions.

Dynamic is strongest for applications that need flexible wallet creation flows across multiple chains.

Build vs. Buy: When to Use an MPC SDK

Building MPC in-house is possible but expensive. The DKLs23 protocol paper alone requires deep expertise in oblivious transfer, multiplicative-to-additive share conversion, and threshold ECDSA security proofs. A production-grade implementation requires 12 to 18 months of dedicated cryptographic engineering. Ongoing audit costs, protocol updates, and vulnerability management add continuous overhead.

An MPC SDK compresses that timeline to weeks. The cryptographic heavy lifting is done. The security audits are completed. The protocol edge cases are handled.

Use an SDK when: The team does not have dedicated cryptographic engineers. Time-to-market matters. The budget for independent security audits is limited. The application needs standard threshold signing on established chains.

Consider building in-house when: The institution has deep cryptographic expertise on staff. Unique protocol requirements cannot be met by existing SDKs. Regulatory constraints prohibit third-party code in the signing path. The institution is a G-SIB or tier-1 custodian with the resources to maintain a custom MPC implementation indefinitely.

Hybrid approach: Use an SDK for the core MPC protocol and build a custom policy layer, key management workflow, and integration layer on top. This is the most common pattern for large institutions. It preserves the security assurance of a battle-tested protocol while allowing institutional customization.

Comparison Summary

The protocol choice is the most consequential technical decision. OT-based protocols (DKLs23) eliminate the attack class that has produced the most severe vulnerabilities in Paillier-based implementations. Audit depth is the second most important factor. Performance, chain support, and developer experience matter, but they are secondary to the security foundation.