Emergency Access for Bitcoin Wallets – a Thought Experiment

[₿itcoin]

This concept is not new, dude.  It is already addressed by dead-man's switches (Sarcophagus), multisig safes (Gnosis Safe), Shamir secret-sharing & social recovery wallets (Argent).  However you know each has drawbacks,  Shamir requires safe share custody, guardians increase the risk of social engineering & dead-man relayers can malfunction.  By default I do not support auto grant. you could go for design that includes hardware-wallet multisig (2-of-3) & long timelocks, along with Shamir backups or a decentralised relayer for emergency release.  you know such smart idea just build for abuse first, not convenience, lol..

[odolvlobo]

Hey all, I had a random idea and I’m curious if anyone’s tried something like this. Please, no “just use Coinbase” or “2-of-3 multisig” replies—those aren’t what I’m talking about.  

There are two solutions.
1. A centralized solution in which a custodian or executor controls the bitcoins and who 'trusted people' can appeal to.
2. A decentralized solution in which the Bitcoin protocol can be used.

#1 is something like Coinbase or Casa and #2 is multi-sig. Why do you reject the obvious solutions? Why do you look for something more complex or obscure?

If you want a different solution, please provide a use case in which those solutions are inadequate. Otherwise, the best answer is always going to be “just use Coinbase” or “2-of-3 multisig”.

Note that there are different ways to achieve multisig other than a Bitcoin multisig transaction. One is to use the Shamir's Secret Sharing method to share a private key among multiple people. It is effectively an external form of multisig.

[Quantum_Resolve7987V]

This concept is not new, dude.  It is already addressed by dead-man's switches (Sarcophagus), multisig safes (Gnosis Safe), Shamir secret-sharing & social recovery wallets (Argent).  However you know each has drawbacks,  Shamir requires safe share custody, guardians increase the risk of social engineering & dead-man relayers can malfunction.  By default I do not support auto grant. you could go for design that includes hardware-wallet multisig (2-of-3) & long timelocks, along with Shamir backups or a decentralised relayer for emergency release.  you know such smart idea just build for abuse first, not convenience, lol..

Honestly, I don’t see Sarcophogus working for Bitcoin at all. For one, it’s built on Ethereum — why would I want to tie my Bitcoin to a completely different network? Then there are the attestation fees, which add up if you try to use it long-term, and the whole resurrection-date thing is impossible to predict reliably. Plus, it depends on oracles or monitoring nodes, so if any of those fail, your emergency access fails too. Conceptually it’s interesting, but practically it just doesn’t solve the problem for Bitcoin.

[₿itcoin]

Honestly, I don’t see Sarcophogus working for Bitcoin at all. For one, it’s built on Ethereum — why would I want to tie my Bitcoin to a completely different network? Then there are the attestation fees, which add up if you try to use it long-term, and the whole resurrection-date thing is impossible to predict reliably. Plus, it depends on oracles or monitoring nodes, so if any of those fail, your emergency access fails too. Conceptually it’s interesting, but practically it just doesn’t solve the problem for Bitcoin.

you dont need to use Sarcophagus, mate. i quoted that to say that the concept is already in the market, nothing new at all.. for bitcoiner  the best play i would suggest building a native solution, such as hardware wallet like Trezor 2-of-3 multisig with Shamir based backups & long timelocks, is a better strategy for Bitcoin since it keeps it user controlled, on chain & self sovereign. try to avoid Ledger cause the new version has backdoor able to backup keys, though they denying such claim by saying bla bla..

[davis196]

Imagine a Bitcoin wallet with an Emergency Access feature, kind of like Proton’s system for email/files:

You pick a handful of trusted contacts (friends/family).
If something happens and you can’t access your wallet, they can request access.
There’s a wait period (a few days?)—during that time, you could approve or deny. If you do nothing, access is automatically granted.
Ideally, it would preserve maximum security, so your keys aren’t exposed unnecessarily, but the funds are accessible to your trusted people.
I know it sounds wild—maybe it requires some kind of clever cryptography or smart contract wizardry—but I wanted to put it out there and see if anyone has brainstormed anything similar.

This doesn't sound wild. It simply sounds stupid to me.
1.What kind of "emergency access" feature has a waiting period of a few days? Waiting for a few days to get the funds defeats the whole purpose of "emergency access" to the funds.
2.Do you realize how weak the security of such wallet would be, if several friends and family members have access to the funds inside the wallet? What if someone scams your friends and family? What if someone kidnaps you and asks them to release the funds?
3.Not exposing the private keys won't matter at all, since several people would have access to the funds.
4.Cold wallets don't have a centralized entity, which would decide which funds should be released for valid emergency purposes and which funds won't be released, because someone is lying and trying to scam the wallet owner.

[Quantum_Resolve7987V]

This doesn't sound wild. It simply sounds stupid to me.
1.What kind of "emergency access" feature has a waiting period of a few days? Waiting for a few days to get the funds defeats the whole purpose of "emergency access" to the funds.
2.Do you realize how weak the security of such wallet would be, if several friends and family members have access to the funds inside the wallet? What if someone scams your friends and family? What if someone kidnaps you and asks them to release the funds?
3.Not exposing the private keys won't matter at all, since several people would have access to the funds.
4.Cold wallets don't have a centralized entity, which would decide which funds should be released for valid emergency purposes and which funds won't be released, because someone is lying and trying to scam the wallet owner.

@davis196

So far, no one has offered a viable solution. I still believe a decentralized mechanism *must* exist—one that depends solely on the Bitcoin network itself, without relying on any custodians or third parties.