Hey everyone, Nuked here! As a tech enthusiast, I’m sure you’ve heard of ZenKey, the app that AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, and Sprint (gone, but not forgotten) launched to make logging into services without a password easier. Well, it looks like that dream is slowly fading away.

Originally announced as “Project Verify” in 2018, ZenKey was meant to be a single sign-on system that used data from your SIM card and location to verify your identity. It was meant to be more secure than traditional passwords, but unfortunately it doesn’t seem like ZenKey got very far. The website for it is down, AT&T stopped supporting it last year, and the “ZenKey powered by Verizon” app is no longer available in app stores.

It’s not particularly surprising that the joint venture between the carriers crumbled; LightReading called it when the service was announced in 2019 with the headline “Meet ZenKey: Telcos’ Doomed Single Sign-On Service.” The Verge’s Dieter Bohn called ZenKey “the right idea from the wrong companies” when he wrote about the Cross-Carrier Messaging Initiative.

The problem is that its success depends on third-party developers — if they don’t use it, why would people bother installing it? And why would developers add ZenKey to their sites when there are other options from Google, Apple, Amazon, and Meta? It’s a shame because a service like ZenKey could make passwords a thing of the past.

But for now, we’re stuck with the patchwork of successful single sign-on options, password managers, and scattered sticky notes we know we shouldn’t use but do anyhow. Let’s hope that passkeys — a FIDO-powered passwordless authentication system backed by Apple, Google, Microsoft — will be the one to make passwords a thing of the past.