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In order to login, or sign their Actions, users need to sign “challenges” using their Credentials. A Credential is essentially a public/private cryptographic keypair. The private key is held by the user, while the public key is provided to Dfns to register the credential for the user. The first time you registered on Dfns dashboard, you created a Passkey credential (see how here). You can also register additional credentials later on (see how here). Different kinds of Credentials can be created, depending on your use case, and how you prefer to manage them:
  • Fido2 Credentials (aka “Passkeys” / “WebAuthn”) -> Uses WebAuthn standard to create/manage passkeys on your device (see more about that below). You can use passkeys if you need a client-side User signature (eg. in a web app / native app).
  • Key Credentials -> “manually” generate keypairs yourself, and store them however you see fit (see How to generate a keypair). You can use Key Credential if you need a Service Account sitting in your server to also be the signer for example.
Depending on the Identity you are using, the Credentials supported are such:
IdentityWebAuthn CredentialsKey Credentials
User
PAT (Personal Access Token)🛑
Service Account🛑

Passkeys

Passkeys is the common term used to describe the Fido2 standard called “WebAuthn”. It is a web authentication standard supported by most modern browsers, phones and devices, which leverages your devices key-management features (like touch ID on a mac, a phone authenticator, a yubikey, some password managers support creating and storing passkeys, etc). Those passkeys can then be used by the user to sign payloads when needed. Here’s some screenshots with some examples of WebAuthn prompts shown in your browser during Credential creation, or during Signing using those Credentials. Below is an example of the promps a user can see on a web app, when a challenge needs to be signed with the passkey: it’s asking the user for his biometrics (fingerprint) before using the passkey to sign.
You can read more about WebAuthn on webauthn.guide, and if you want you can test a WebAuthn demo on webauthn.io
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