Session key
A short-lived key granted narrow, expiring permission to act for an account — so an agent can transact without ever holding the account's main key.
A session key is the practical answer to giving an agent spending power without giving it everything. The account authorises a separate key to perform a bounded set of actions — specific contracts, specific methods, a spending cap, an expiry — and the agent signs with that key only. Revoking it does not touch the account.
Smart-account standards implement this through validation modules; ERC-7715 standardises the request an application makes for such a permission, so the grant is a protocol interaction rather than a wallet-specific feature.
A session key bounds damage; it does not prevent it. Everything inside the granted scope is still permitted, and a key that can swap can still swap badly.
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Sato Hub. "Session key (glossary)." Sato Hub, updated 2026-10-28, accessed 2026-10-28. https://satohub.ai/glossary/session-keyData last refreshed 2026-10-28; this page is rebuilt daily. Citations carry the date so a reader can tell which snapshot a claim came from. Catalog data is licensed CC-BY-4.0.