Here’s How to Protect Your Crypto and Seed Phrases From Natural Disasters

Transcript

hi everyone I'm here now with Ari Gore head of communications at Zeno wallet welcome Ari thank you it's great to be here so the fires in Los Angeles have been an utterly heartbreaking disaster and generally those kinds of things don't seem super related to crypto but uh I'm sure people have seen that there have been reports surfacing here and there that in addition to 12,000 homes being lost there also have been people who have lost their seed phrase that instance was maybe written on a piece of paper and AR you reached out to me with some thoughts about this you know when you see these reports what are your thoughts about how it is that the crypto industry can um serve people

better to keep their crypto safe yeah thanks Laura so I mean the fires in LA are devastating and my heart really goes out to everybody who've been impacted I I know people who lost their homes completely everything was destroyed and I would say my the response by the crypto ecosystem has been both heartwarming and frustrating um heart heartwarming in that you know shout out to the giving block they're helping raise hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars for people impacted it shows the the best of what we can do in crypto um but frustrating because a lot of the responses to people who have lost their Hardware wallets were burned right their seed phrases were destroyed it's been oh you need to create a more

complicated seed phrase based system you need to you know use safe multisig for example uh you need to separate your seed seed phrase into three parts separate them between different jurisdictions geographies look some people will do that but the average person's not doing that um your aunt your uncle brother sister our friends are not doing that and and what frustrates me is there are better ways to securely self- custody your assets right these these Technologies already exist right NPC wall it's multiparty comp utation or AA account abstraction wallets um and to me right we're so focused on building the future we are the tip of the spear in technology why

are we so uh conservative and dogmatic when it comes to seed phrases being the only way to self- custody it just it can't continue so um why don't we first talk about what tips you would have for everyday people so they can protect their crypto in the case of these types of natural disasters yeah I think so first of all um to everyone listening right now right you're hopefully in a safe and secure place and you can take a moment to reflect on your current crypto Holdings how are you currently custody your assets maybe some are on an exchange or two maybe some are in a seed phrase

wallet Hardware software um how does your system work now and uh what are the limits of that system think about worst case scenarios that could happen you know God forbid another fire or massive uh natural disaster um an event of life right at some point someone else is going to have to gain access to your assets um when we all move on so what system do you have set right now and will you be able to recover it as is or will your loved one be able to recover it in the future just because we're good it's self custody or at least we'd like to think we are it doesn't mean that the person who loves us and will get access to them in the

future that they are so think about the limits of that system and then I would suggest reconsidering how you self- custody and to diversify that process right consider using an NPC wallet consider using an account abstraction wallet um and and just explain what those explain what those are sure so in the last few years um there have been new ways to essentially sign on chain transactions and take control of your your private Keys um one of my favorite of course is an NPC wallet it stands for multi-party computation um and what it essentially does is it breaks the private key into more than one spot um think of it kind of like a multisig

wallet where it's more secured by default because there's no single point of failure there's no singular private key in one location think of it like a decentralized private key and so people can use a multi- uh a multisig wallet like a safe wallet where you set up three different ones and then um but that that tends to be more advanced another alternative for that is simply using an MPC wallet um and I do think that we're going to start to see these types of solutions take over over time or at least be included for self- custody um and it's just a matter of time um before people learn about them and start to use

them and so what types of Technologies would you prefer to see the industry focus on going forward to you know keeping these types of situations in mind yeah I'd like the I'd like us as an industry to kind of self-reflect a little bit and ask why are we being so dogmatic about seed phrases when we can build and are already building other solutions for secure self- custody um one of my kind of favorite and terrifying stats is in the last 10 years um now about a quarter trillion dollars worth of bitcoin has been lost or stolen because of seed phrase mismanagement I mean it's just unbelievable and that's

by the early adopters that's by folks who are supposed to be good it's self- custody so if they can't do it well how can we expect normal people to do it well um when our I wouldn't say our technically our competitors or other people in the space our centralized systems uh exchanges the ETFs we as um an ecosystem need to come up with better and more secure ways to ensure that it's easy to self custody and it's secure by default um and so to talk more about MPC wallets about AA wallets and to start building in those directions well Ari thank you so much for explaining what is really important information uh that people should know even if you know what

prompt it was something that um you know is just really heartbreaking to see it's my pleasure I hope that this never happens to anyone again and that in the future when a disaster does happen um we can rely on the crypto that we custody to help us get to the next phase of Our Lives instead of see it as another source of pain yes all right well thank you so much for explaining all this on Unchained it's my pleasure