What Is Onboarding?

Onboarding is the one-time setup that gives your wallet its encryption key for private on-chain data. A short COTI Network transaction retrieves that key (your AES key) for your wallet address so you can encrypt and decrypt private on-chain values.

Until the key is available in your wallet session, you can still use the network normally (public transfers, gas, non-private contracts). You cannot read or write private data — for example private balances, amounts, or other encrypted contract variables.

When a dApp needs access to private data, it will ask you to complete onboarding by approving that transaction in your wallet.

Developers: see Account Onboarding Procedure and Account Onboard.

Why do I need it?

Private values on COTI are stored encrypted. Encryption and decryption use a key that belongs only to your wallet account (EOA).

Your wallet needs that key to:

• encrypt inputs before private transactions

• decrypt outputs when you need to see private values

Without it, private features stay locked. The network already associates a unique AES key with your address; onboarding is how your wallet receives that key (first time) or recovers it again (new device, cleared storage, reinstall). Recovering always returns the same key for that address — it does not issue a new one.

What is the encryption key?

• One AES key per wallet address — not shared across accounts

• Used only for your private data on COTI

• Held by your wallet / dApp session (for MetaMask users, often inside the COTI Snap); you usually never need to copy it

• Delivered wrapped so only your wallet can open it — not left as plaintext for others to read on-chain

Treat your AES key like your wallet private key. Anyone who has it can decrypt your private on-chain data. Never share your AES key, seed phrase, or private key.

Technical detail: AES Keys.