“Validate signature error” appeared in your wallet? It indicates that your wallet is part of a multi-signature wallet and requires double signing to proceed with an outgoing transaction.
we have seen many posts like this in Cryptocurrency Pakistan Facebook Group where such errors are shared, while mostly are results of scam wallets. Let’s talk about the background of these errors and why they come.
What is a multi-signature wallet?
A multi-signature wallet is one type of crypto wallet which requires two or multiple transaction signs to make a crypto transaction. When you create an outgoing transaction from your wallet, it requires your permission ( signature). In the wallets like Trust wallet, you are signing a transaction when you click on the “confirm” button during the process of sending/swapping/approving transactions. It’s a single signature wallet because you only need one secret phrase/ private key to sign a transaction.
It is different on a multi-signature wallet. A multi-signature enabled address could require two or more signatures based on the number of Private keys (PKs) the user has associated with the public address.
A multi-signature wallet can consist of 3-5 wallets and set a rule of at least 2-5 transactions signing to send crypto from the address. Few wallets support multi-signature transactions and wallet creation.
Somme of the Pros of having MultiSig Wallet – Multi-signature enabled wallet improves the security of your wallet. Imagine you have a multi-signature wallet, and somehow, a hacker got one of your wallet’s private keys associated with the wallet. The Hacker won’t be able to steal your funds despite having the private key because more than one signature will be required to steal the funds. While some businesses also use these setups where approval of multiple people is required to initiate a transaction.
One of the biggest Cons or drawback of having such a setup is that, Multi-signature wallets aren’t convenient for daily spending and need more understanding than general crypto knowledge to set up a wallet. Besides, you must keep more than one private key/seed phrase safe to access your crypto.
Validate Signature Error
You may see a error similar too “Transfer failed – Validate signature error: [signature] is signed by [wallet address] but it is not contained of permission.” which means the wallet belongs to a multisig and if you found it online like in so many ongoing scams where scammers are spreading multi-sig enabled wallets all over social media to scam people. They share only one private key of a multi-sig wallet with some crypto while keeping the other private keys. So nobody can transfer the funds. Their main intention is to take cryptos that people deposit to pay transaction fees. Unaware of this scam, many users fail for it and lose money.
Be careful of such Scams and if someone shares you a wallet saying I have some funds which you can help in withdrawing and you can have half of it , then most probably it’s a multisig wallet and it’s a common scam.