A lot has happened this past year, and if you've followed @keychain account posts, you know that we have continued building, improving, and expanding Hive Keychain across our mobile apps, browser extensions, and supporting infrastructure.

Let's start with some numbers to put Hive Keychain in perspective:

For a detailed breakdown of how resources have been used, please refer to our transparency report: 👉 @keychain/hive-keychain-dhf-and-transparency-update" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Transparency Report

The current proposal is coming to an end, but there is still much we want to achieve to continue strengthening Hive’s ecosystem — which is why we are submitting this new proposal.

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Hive Keychain DHF

This new proposal will start immediately after the current one ends, with no overlap between the two.

Our vision remains unchanged and continues to focus on three main goals:

Development: Maintaining, improving, and expanding our extensions, mobile apps, and infrastructure based on user needs and ecosystem demand.

Cooperation: Working with dApps and services both inside and outside of our Hive ecosystem.

Bridging Hive: Expanding Hive’s reach through multichain integrations, starting with EVM (now in internal testing phase).

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I. Development

Developing and maintaining Hive Keychain products remains our core objective.

The following sections highlight both what has been achieved and what we aim to improve next across this full stack.

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1/ Keychain Extension

Our extension remains at the forefront of development and continues to be the first platform to introduce new features.

Some highlights from this year:

• Introduced Keyless Mode for travelers, nomads or single use of a borrowed device
• Started the integration of several on/off ramp, swap and bridge providers for Hive and non-Hive cryptos
• Expanded anonymous request capabilities
• Introduced new requests and detailed history for operations such as savings and escrow transactions
• Added more information on the confirmation pages for better verification
• Improved RPC handling
• Improved the Hive Multisig integration
• Added Shortcuts to change account and navigate through the extension instantly
• Started internal testing of the EVM integration. More on this below (see 3/)
• Prepared a key change and account recovery tool
• Continuous UX and performance improvements
• Implemented all new features introduced by the Hard Fork: extended multisig window, multiple recurrent transfers to the same user, new Voting Mana calculation

We also have a few features that have already been developed but will be shipped with EVM as they are used on both ecosystems:

• A proper contact list
• A standardized warning system
• Customizable push notifications

Next steps:

• Improve EVM UX based on our several rounds of testing. After the current internal round of testing, we will go through a closed Alpha, then an open Beta. More on this in section III/
• Keep enhancing our notifications system by making it more beginner-friendly
• Continue implementing community-requested features
• Add support for Hive-x402 for Hive native payments (@ecency/hive-joins-the-internet-native" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Read more)
• Introduce our Gamification system (on both extension and mobile), to encourage user retention on Hive, by giving incentives to try different dApps. This is still in the ideation stage, but here are some ideas we have in mind:
  • Show users'stats with a leaderboard for each parameter.
  • Reward them for healthy, productive, or socially valuable actions with an XP system.
  • Display badges, levels, and progress bars inside Keychain.
  • Trigger optional shareables for social media or Hive posts.
  • Create campaigns with other dApps to promote all Hive dApps beyond our Ecosystem page.
• Maintain compatibility with future Hive Hardforks
• Introduce new Partnerships and chain integrations
• Add Lite Account support when available
• Add a more streamlined Ticker Action page
• Add support for more hardware wallets
• Introduce an interactive Onboarding Guide for new users
• Users / Devs support
• More in the III/ Multichain section

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2/ Keychain Mobile

Mobile continues to be one of our main focuses. It is now very close to full parity with the extension in terms of features, except, of course, for the coming EVM integration. On top of that, our in-App browser is now packed with new features which make your everyday mobile Hive experience even better!

Some highlights from this year:

• Improved browser navigation through gestures
• Enhanced favorites & history Management (introduced reordering and deletion through gestures)
• Added the Dynamic Hive Engine RPC to avoid intrusive "Change RPC" popups
• Download Media and Find in Page browser features
• Ability to "Open", "Open in another tab", "Copy link", or "Share" a link after a long press in the browser
• Security updates and account management improvements
• Swap integrations and feature parity with extension
• Big refactor of the login now allows direct biometrics login rather than necessitating both the PIN and biometrics
• Browser navigation state is now preserved across restarts
• Added a way to change the login PIN code
• Performance and UX refinements
• Expanded anonymous request capabilities
• Introduced new requests and detailed history for operations such as savings and escrow transactions
• Added more information on the confirmation pages for better verification
• Implemented all new features introduced by the Hard Fork: extended multisig window, multiple recurrent transfers to the same user, and new Voting Mana calculation
• New languages added

Next steps:

• Bring full EVM support to mobile. We made a clear separation between our EVM UI/UX and the utilities that can be shared between the extension and the mobile Apps. This will cut our development time drastically, although it will remain a huge endeavour.
• Continue improving browser usability
• Expand feature parity with extension
• Optimize performance and stability
• Introduce the gamification system
• Introduce an interactive Onboarding Guide for new users
• Add light accounts when they come out
• Enable NFC capabilities and integrate the Debit Card (we are currently waiting for the @hivedebit team to provide us their SDK)
• Introduce portfolio and ticker widgets for iOS
• Enable import of accounts through a .kc file, as is already possible on the extension side
• Implement OTA (over the air) updates on mobile so we can deliver faster updates directly in-App)
• Add support for Hive-x402 (see in 1/)
• Submit an appeal to Apple after they forced us to remove the 'Conversion' core chain feature from the App

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3/ Keychain Swaps

Keychain Swap continues to play a central role in connecting tokens across Hive and beyond. This year, we improved safety and reliability (better price handling, failure cases, and routing) while integrating providers such as StealthEX and Changelly to open direct paths between Hive assets and the wider crypto ecosystem.

The next evolution is the introduction of a full aggregator experience inside Keychain. The first version will combine Portfolio, Buy, Sell, Swap, and Bridge into a single interface, powered by multiple providers (6 to start). This will allow users to seamlessly move between Hive, L2 tokens, and external chains while always getting the best route based on price and reliability.

Beyond UX, this is a key part of our business model: by aggregating liquidity and routing across providers, Keychain can begin generating sustainable revenue, helping reduce long-term dependency on DHF funding while continuing to deliver core infrastructure to the ecosystem.

We already started working on the Aggregator, and here is a sneak peek for you:

Next steps:

• Expand routing across multiple swap providers, aggregators, and bridges to provide the fastest and cheapest routes
• Integrate EVM-compatible assets
• Launch the full Aggregator
• Improve rates, reliability, and execution efficiency across providers
• Improve and expand our Swap Widget capabilities to match our in-app Swap.

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4/ SDK & Playground

Developer tooling remains a priority for easy access to all devs to our ecosystem and Hive. Making it easy to integrate Hive Keychain into any dapps is the fastest way to deploy any project on Hive, and for that, we:

• Revamped the Playground (Gitbook-style interface)
• Expanded request support for savings and all escrow transactions (transfer, accept, reject, dispute)
• Improved documentation and testing tools

Next steps:

• Continue improving developer onboarding processes
• Expand SDK capabilities with EVM requests
• Support new request types and integrations (including EVM)
• Update our landing page with all the information about EVM integration and new partnerships
• Create a Keychain AI Skill to make it even easier to integrate Keychain

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5/ Infrastructure & Backend

Our backend infrastructure has evolved significantly, especially with the introduction of multichain (EVM) support.

A key component of this is the development of a light node system, a heavy backend layer that continuously monitors addresses across supported chains. This is necessary in order to provide advanced features that are not readily available on public RPCs, while mitigating the costs of using third-party providers.

Supporting this level of functionality requires a robust and scalable infrastructure, with significant DevOps work to maintain uptime and performance while adding multiple third-party integrations to enrich data and capabilities

This backend layer powers critical features such as:

• Full transaction history across all chains
• Token and NFT discovery and metadata enrichment
• Smart contract interaction analysis
• Gas fee oracles and transaction gas estimation
• Cross-chain asset visibility

As Keychain evolves into a multichain wallet, this infrastructure becomes a core pillar of the product, ensuring a seamless and reliable experience for users across all supported ecosystems. 

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6/ And much more

Over the past year, we have continued delivering features across all components of our stack, including several core projects that power our ecosystem. Beyond the extension, mobile apps, swaps, and SDK, our work also spans:

• Keychain Store: the easiest way for merchant payments + global map, powering 77 businesses (mostly in Venezuela) to accept HBD payments in their store 
• Hive Multisig: is now maintained by the Keychain team to provide multisig and 2FA on Hive here
• Landing Page: hive-keychain.com with a new look, more languages, and better SEO performance
• Keychain Commons: shared utilities across projects
• Tools: Hive QR Code generator, recovery tool, our dashboard and more

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II. Cooperation

1/ On Hive

We continue working closely with projects across the Hive ecosystem:

• Supporting dApps with Keychain integration
• Adding new dApps to our Hive ecosystem screens, for easy dApp discovery on both extension and mobile
• Collaborating on onboarding and UX improvements
• Contributing to ecosystem-wide features (multisig, 2fa)
• Creating social campaigns with different dApps using our social channels

Future cooperations:

• implementing the Hive Debit Card as soon as their SDK is ready
• adding Hive-built swaps and bridges when production-ready (Magi swaps, wrapped HIVE, etc.)

2/ Outside of Hive

We are actively expanding Hive’s reach beyond its current ecosystem:

• Partnerships with swap providers and aggregators
• Discussions with external crypto companies and L1 blockchains
• Pushing for HIVE / HBD listing whenever possible

Some providers we've contacted already support Hive, while others are evaluating integration. These efforts aim to make Hive more accessible and connected globally. We're also looking into digital and physical debit card providers to see if there are some possibilities for Hive integration.

You can find more details about this topic in our latest @keychain/hive-keychain-dhf-and-transparency-update" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">transparency report.

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III. Multichain

Multichain integration has become a major focus of our work over the past year and represents a significant investment of time and resources from the team. Although this code hasn't been deployed to production yet, it can be found in the feature/evm branch that is currently 697 commits ahead of the master branch. We strongly believe this major update will be a game-changer for Hive, as it will enable the ecosystem to connect directly with the broader crypto landscape rather than operate in isolation.

EVM integration is not just about adding new chains; it is about bringing liquidity, users, and interoperability to Hive, while making it easier for developers from outside ecosystems to interact with Hive using familiar standards.

We are currently in the internal testing phase of our EVM integration. This stage focuses on validating core flows, ensuring stability, and identifying edge cases before exposing the feature more broadly. Once we're satisfied with this, we will continue with a closed alpha testing phase with a few selected testers and finally, a wider open alpha, on which anyone will be able to participate.

We will actively look for testers willing to spend time using the product and providing meaningful feedback, as these testing phases will be critical to ensuring a solid transition to a multichain wallet.

Our first version aims to provide a full-fledged EVM wallet experience on 7 of the most popular EVM chains: Ethereum, Base, BSC, Optimism, Polygon, Avalanche, and Arbitrum, as well as their testnets.

To list a few of the many features we've implemented:

• Account creation and management across selected EVM chains
• Automatic token and NFT discovery
• RPC handling
• Full history
• Account value
• Token and NFT transfers
• Contact list
• Automatically switch to the chain the current dApp is using
• Login and Transaction signing for EVM dApps
• Gas fee calculation
• Spam token/NFT detection
• ENS detection
• EVM Swaps
• Smart contract analysis
• Security warnings during dApp requests

Next steps:

• Improve EVM UX and stability based on testing feedback
• Expand supported features
• Add chain coverage
• Bring EVM support to mobile
• Strengthen interoperability between Hive and EVM ecosystems
• Add onboarding funnels from EVM users to Hive

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IV. Additional Work

1/ Support

We continue to provide support through Discord and community channels, helping users and developers integrate and troubleshoot.

2/ Community Growth

We continue expanding Hive Keychain’s presence beyond Hive through social platforms (X, Linkedin) and partnerships.

3/ Infrastructure

We maintain and scale backend systems required to support our APIs, swaps, multisig, as well as our current multichain integration.

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V. Budget

For this new proposal, we are reducing our budget to 540 HBD/day, a 10% decrease from our past proposal, in order to lower a bit our impact on the DHF. Our medium-term goal is to reduce further our proposal's budget once we have a stable income from our swap aggregation services. This cut, along with a non-negligible increase in our infrastructure and API costs due to the multichain integration, will translate into a 24% cut of our development costs. This has been rendered possible by the rapid improvement of AI technology, which allows us to greatly increase our output while reducing the manpower involved. That being said, there are limits to this, especially for software as security-sensitive as a crypto wallet. After these changes, our monthly budget will look as follows.

• Development (2 full-time senior devs, 1 part-time): $ 11,400
• CM & Ecosystem growth: $ 850
• Tools (AI): $ 440
• Tools (others): $ 130
• Admin: ~ $ 1,000
• Infrastructure: ~ $ 900
• EVM third-party providers: ~ $ 480
• Misc: ~ $ 1,000
• Total: $ 16,200

For more information about these different items, read our @keychain/hive-keychain-dhf-and-transparency-update" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">transparency post.

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VI. Commitments

• Keep our extensions, mobile apps, and main projects open-source
• Continue regular updates and transparency posts
• Deliver features aligned with the proposal scope
• Strive to generate more revenue through our swap features, in order to reduce our reliance on the DHF. Publish revenue publicly.
• Include Hive in any way possible in all marketing efforts and collaborations with new partners.

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VII. Our Team

@stoodkev : Founder - Witness @cedricguillas : Lead Developer @manuphotos : Ecosystem Growth Lead - Witness @yabapmatt : Advisor - Witness

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VIII. Downloads & Contact

Find all apps, extensions, and resources here: 👉 Landing page

For support and discussions: 👉 Discord link

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Support Hive Keychain development by voting for this proposal (#373) on PeakD, or with HiveSigner.

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100% of the rewards of this post are going to the DHF