Blockchain wallets and closed markets

For the past several weeks Tonkeeper and AppStore review team has been involved in a dispute around the definition of NFTs, the feature that we added to Tonkeeper three months ago. According to Apple, NFTs are digital products: if NFTs are sold on other platforms and made available in Tonkeeper, they must also be offered through the In-App Purchases (IAP) system (see guidelines 3.1.1 and 3.1.3b). For example, if we were selling our own NFT tokens, the guidelines would require us to offer users an option to pay for them via IAP payment system.

The essence of the dispute

Tonkeeper is a neutral tool in an open system, where users can themselves create and exchange any tokens and digital products on any terms. Any wallet (not just Tonkeeper) is not capable of offering NFT through the built-in payment system because these tokens do not belong to the wallet.

We do not believe that the Tonkeeper and similar wallets in TON and on other blockchains violate rule 3.1.1. The wallet is only a tool for storing and transferring digital assets and the presence of one or another NFT on the balance does not activate any functions of the wallet itself. The functionality of various NFTs, (for example, TON DNS names) is available generally throughout the network and is equally accessible for storage and transfer from any compatible wallet.

Dispute arises from an outdated business model

Unfortunately, the AppStore guidelines are written from the point of view of classic centralized markets, where the user does not have autonomy (aligned with Apple’s own business model). In this model, each application is an interface to someone's proprietary service, and everything that belongs to the user is controlled by the owners of that service. From Apple's point of view, if NFTs appeared in the wallet, then the wallet operators provided them or sold them to the user.

In the blockchain ecosystems we have an opportunity to dramatically minimize dependence on intermediaries and guarantee autonomy of the users. Individuals are using cryptographic keys and a decentralized blockchain to directly control and exchange their assets. The role of a wallet in such a model is akin to a vault and a calculator: the wallet stores cryptographic keys and, at the user's request, calculates signatures that authorize transactions on the network.

There are two effects to this model:

• The same key can be stored in multiple wallet applications, therefore no wallet can be considered as a service that exclusively controls user’s access to their digital assets.
• Assets can show up in the wallet without any action on the user’s part: just because the user can give his crypto address to anyone and get anything on it. There is no bank behind the wallet that needs to credit it explicitly. The wallet simply reflects all the assets that are available to the user on the blockchain.

Tonkeeper strategy

Our mission at Tonkeeper is to create and maintain an easily scalable infrastructure for all community members, without offering unique competitive advantages to individual projects. Such approach allows us to cooperate with any active participants of the ecosystem without affecting free competition. As a result, the quality of digital services in TON, the convenience of reusing infrastructure solutions and the speed of development of the entire ecosystem are growing.

Tonkeeper's policy towards users and partners is focused on consistent compliance with the principles of independence — which we strive to tell the community about and bring our values to everyone.

Further actions

The dispute with Apple is still ongoing.

We hope that Apple will modernize the rules regarding NFT, considering the features of wallets in decentralized networks. The situation was similar in 2013-2014 when Apple first began randomly banning some cryptocurrency wallets only to review their policies and implement reasonable guidelines by WWDC’2014, which was a very welcome upgrade.

For our part, we have worked out several paths to resolve this situation that let us be compliant with the current rules and also maintain our key features: convenience, security and transaction speed keep.