Connected vs Authenticated

Recommended: JavaScript SDK for React Native

While this SDK is still supported, we recommend using newer JavaScript SDK, which is optimized for React Native, but also comes with a host of other benefits.

Definitions

When using Dynamic for external wallet connections, one of the first things you’ll need to decide is whether you want to have users sign to prove ownership of their wallets or if you just want them to connect their wallets.

As we talk about these two options, you’ll regularly see that we either discuss a visitor or an authenticated user in our documents and dashboard. In short, here are there definitions:

• Visitor is a user that connects their wallet to your dApp but has not yet signed to prove ownership of that wallet.

  • You can identify a visitor by the fact that the session has one or more wallets connected, but without any user defined.

• Authenticated User is a user that connects their wallet and has signed to prove ownership.

  • You can identify an authenticated user since the user object will be defined.

React Native

import { dynamicClient } from '<path to client file>';

const HomePage = () => {
  const user = dynamicClient.auth.authenticatedUser;

  if (user) {
    return (
      <div>
        ...
      </div>
    );
  }

  return <LoginView />;
};

An analogy to the rescue

The difference can be explained with a simple analogy to confirming your phone number in a sign up flow.

If you enter a phone number as part of a website registration flow, the website doesn’t actually know if you own that phone number. You can just as easily enter someone else’s phone number and register on their behalf.

Hence, websites text you to confirm that you have access to your phone, making sure you are who you say you are. You have to enter a code and prove you have access to your phone number.

The same holds true for wallets. Connecting is similar to entering a phone number. Signing is similar to entering the confirmation code you received on that number.

In the sign in case, the way to do it is by generating a cryptographic nonce for you to sign with your private key. That signature proves without a doubt that you are indeed the owner of your wallet.

The difference, in practice

At Dynamic, we’re building deep authentication and authorization features that include access lists, information capture, NFT gating, and a lot more. For some of these features, a signed user is required. The reason being, we need to know that this user has confirmed ownership of the wallet and we can therefore trust that this is not a spoofed account.

While we are aiming to limit the feature limitations between the Visitor and the Authenticated user, there are indeed some limitations and we hope the table below provides the appropriate context:

Feature	Connected Wallet	Signed User	Explanation
Multi-chain Authentication Flow	✅	✅
JWT Token		✅	JWT tokens are reserved for authenticated users who have proved ownership. visitors will get an API response with the wallet object
Users Table		✅	Until a wallet is signed to prove ownership, a user_id is not generated in our DB
Designs	✅	✅
Information Capture		✅	Until a wallet is signed to prove ownership, a user_id is not generated in our DB so information cannot be associated to a user
Access Lists		✅	Access lists will not work for connected-only accounts. Ensure only authenticated users can access your gated site or sections. See Access Control.
NFT Gating		✅	NFT gates will not work for connected-only accounts. Ensure only authenticated users can access your gated site or sections. See Access Control.
Chainalysis	✅	✅
Multi-wallet		✅	We currently require that a user be authenticated to be able to access multiwallet functionality
Analytics	✅	✅	We display both authenticated users and visitors and segment our analytics accordingly

Configure Connect Only vs Connect and Verify

Pass connectOnly: true to createClient to skip the signature step when users connect an external wallet:

React Native

import { createClient } from '@dynamic-labs/client';
import { ReactNativeExtension } from '@dynamic-labs/react-native-extension';

const dynamicClient = createClient({
  environmentId: 'your-environment-id',
  appOrigin: 'https://your-app.com',

  // Connect only — no signature on connect
  connectOnly: true,
}).extend(ReactNativeExtension({ appOrigin: 'https://your-app.com' }));

When connectOnly is omitted or false, the default “connect-and-sign” mode is used and users must sign a message to prove wallet ownership.

If you start with connect-only mode but later need the user to prove wallet ownership, you can trigger a sign request on demand. Headless support for on-demand authentication in the React Native client is coming soon.