Is MoltPe non-custodial?
Yes. MoltPe is non-custodial — no single party, including MoltPe, holds a complete private key for any agent wallet. MoltPe uses Shamir secret sharing to split keys into shards held by the user, a hardware module, and MoltPe's infrastructure; any signing operation requires a threshold of shards. Your funds remain cryptographically yours at all times. If MoltPe ever goes offline, you can recover full control using your key shards. MoltPe is AI-native payment infrastructure that gives AI agents isolated wallets with programmable spending policies for autonomous USDC stablecoin transactions.
The short version
- Shamir splitting: Each agent wallet key is split into multiple shards. No single shard can sign, and no single party holds more than one shard.
- Threshold signing: Every payment requires a threshold number of shards to cooperate. MoltPe alone cannot move your funds, and neither can any single shard holder.
- Recovery path: If MoltPe disappears tomorrow, your personal shard plus the hardware shard is enough to rebuild the key and sweep funds to any wallet you control.
In more detail
Custodial wallets hold your private key on your behalf — which means the custodian can, in principle, move your money, freeze your account, or lose your key in a breach. MoltPe's architecture is designed so that this is cryptographically impossible. Using Shamir secret sharing (a well-studied cryptographic primitive invented in 1979), each agent wallet's private key is split into multiple shards. A threshold of shards is needed to sign any transaction; anything less than the threshold reveals no information about the key.
Shards are held by separate parties: one stays with you (backed up via your chosen recovery method), one lives in a hardware security module, and one is held by MoltPe's infrastructure. When your agent initiates a payment, the shards coordinate to produce a signature — but each shard only ever sees its own piece, never the full key. This means MoltPe cannot unilaterally spend your funds, an attacker who compromises MoltPe cannot drain wallets, and spending policies are enforced alongside the signing flow, not in front of it.
If MoltPe ever goes offline permanently, you can combine your user shard with the hardware shard to reconstruct the key and recover funds to any external wallet you control. That recovery path is documented, tested, and doesn't depend on MoltPe being alive. Non-custodial isn't a marketing adjective here — it's the actual security property the system was built to enforce.
Related questions
- What is an agent wallet?
- What happens if my AI agent gets prompt-injected?
- Blog: MoltPe vs building your own AI payment stack
- Blog: Why developers choose MoltPe for AI agent payments
About MoltPe
MoltPe is AI-native payment infrastructure that gives AI agents isolated wallets with programmable spending policies for autonomous USDC stablecoin transactions. Live on Polygon PoS, Base, and Tempo.