Comment by almostkorean | Hacker News Reader

Comment by almostkorean | Hacker News Reader

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This is a huge UX issue for anyone that wants to self-custody. In the same spirit as the OP, people are working on solutions for this. Vitalik posted about it last year: https://vitalik.ca/general/2021/01/11/recovery.html. I don't know the technical details, but Coinbase is launching a wallet system where the private key is "split" between the user and Coinbase.

After explaining improvements to this specific issue, it still feels like way too much friction for the average person to deal with. I think there will be more improvements as time goes on but maybe that's just the cost of doing self-custody. In the end, I guess it's up to the individual to decide whether it's worth it or not.

But you're still putting your trust into a centralized organization (Coinbase). So we're back to square one.

I was talking about Coinbase MPC wallet, where they have part of your private key. I think that's pretty far from back to square one, is it not? You still own your private keys but are trusting a centralized organization to keep the other, so it would require both parties to be hacked for the wallet to be at risk.

>You still own your private keys but are trusting a centralized organization to keep the other, so it would require both parties to be hacked for the wallet to be at risk

Wouldn't it just require one to be hacked - where the risk is losing access to your wallet? Say an evil hacker destroys one of the halves of your private key, now the wallet is unavailable.

If the risk is - drain the account - then yes, both would need to be hacked in order to get access.

Hackers aren't usually in the business of locking people out of their money. There's no profit in that for the hacker.

However, I'm sure the MPC wallet prompts you to write down your half of the key on a piece of paper during wallet set-up. That way if your device fails (or you cross fate with a particularly chaotic hacker), you can import your key into a new wallet.

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