What if we could backup our money using the same technology that powers Pokémon Go ?
I want to share an idea I have had for wallets that I cannot work on right now. My hope is that people will tear the idea apart, give me great feedback on the drawbacks, and then tell me if it can be done.
So far, everyone I have shared this idea with likes the concept but feels uneasy with the current implementation. Here is the thinking behind Treasure Chest at a high level:
🤳 Everyone in the world knows about how Pokémon Go works. You use your phone to find things.
📍 What if you could use the same kind of technology to back up your wallet to a specific place.
⌚️ You could also set it to only unlock at a certain time of day that you would need to remember.
🌅 Perhaps you would place the treasure chest at sunset on your favourite beach in the world.
🗝 To unlock the chest you would need the public key (or ENS), location & time of day.
⚠️ This would be an additional option on top of other recovery mechanisms like iCloud.
What came to mind is zero knowledge proof + proof of location with a P2P hardware wearable that generates random public key anytime you want to open the chest.
I've been thinking about 'proof-of-location' for a while too. Unsure, but I think more users running their own hardware nodes might help enable this via pinging, or 'proof-of-proximity'.
If this is a regular app, server security would be the biggest issue. Once the 3 pieces of info is leaked, anyone can go unlock your treasure chest with fake GPS.
But if that can be overcome, sounds like a nice backup plan.. if there are a few additional security layers.
Two sides to this coin....being able to virtually place a pin on a map at a given time as your key (you would probably need this to prevent being physically unable to get to a location at a given time using current Geolocation data as a key. The time/place combination could remove any risk of brute force (especially if the time frame was less frequent - weekly, monthly or even annually) and the world is a pretty big place if its blocked up into 20m squares. This would be an ideal shared key without sharing it in my opinion, I imagine inheritance of wallets without knowledge of the keys will become a major issue as the age of owners increase and it would be much safer having an executor having knowledge of a public key and a birthday and a clue that only the intended recipient would know the answer to identify the location. Like for instance, the location we first met face to face Richard (presuming of course it was as memorable for you as me :) Scatter my ashes and collect your inheritance....you just have to guess when :)
as an extra security sounds like a good idea. There are already projects that could make it work , (besides using long coordinates' for remembering), such as what3words.
You can change the location of your phone and trick it to a fake one. Plus, what if you store it at a location in which in the future, something gets built on it?
I like it, it's useful as a safe as well, if you're a very active P2P user and you get hacked/robbed you can limit what the attacker can do based on their location.
Also treasure hunts, if the precision is high enough in the app you could have multiple treasure chest inside convention centers and no need to fill the place with QR codes, it simply shows a notification to claim the treasure (maybe a POAP or NFT)
I'm not a dev, but it would be awesome if this could be combined with a VPN... changing the VPN server --> changing location in the world allowing you to have multiple safes not related to your physical location whatsoever (there is a huge risk tho, your "world traveling" depends on a private service/server)
I love it Ric. The stories of people escaping horrible places and taking their crypto with them by memory of key only has always stuck with me. My grandma migrated from Russia to the US when she was a young girl with the instructions only to make it to a certain place. Imagine this use case: If the person she was supposed to meet was not there and never showed, at least resources would be. I see it as the Promised Land.
What came to mind is zero knowledge proof + proof of location with a P2P hardware wearable that generates random public key anytime you want to open the chest.
I've been thinking about 'proof-of-location' for a while too. Unsure, but I think more users running their own hardware nodes might help enable this via pinging, or 'proof-of-proximity'.
If this is a regular app, server security would be the biggest issue. Once the 3 pieces of info is leaked, anyone can go unlock your treasure chest with fake GPS.
But if that can be overcome, sounds like a nice backup plan.. if there are a few additional security layers.
Ric- Surf Ranch March? I've got some AAPL clients
Sorry for the comment bomb
Two sides to this coin....being able to virtually place a pin on a map at a given time as your key (you would probably need this to prevent being physically unable to get to a location at a given time using current Geolocation data as a key. The time/place combination could remove any risk of brute force (especially if the time frame was less frequent - weekly, monthly or even annually) and the world is a pretty big place if its blocked up into 20m squares. This would be an ideal shared key without sharing it in my opinion, I imagine inheritance of wallets without knowledge of the keys will become a major issue as the age of owners increase and it would be much safer having an executor having knowledge of a public key and a birthday and a clue that only the intended recipient would know the answer to identify the location. Like for instance, the location we first met face to face Richard (presuming of course it was as memorable for you as me :) Scatter my ashes and collect your inheritance....you just have to guess when :)
I love this idea... I feel like this could also make for a much better traditional security question/answer check too.
as an extra security sounds like a good idea. There are already projects that could make it work , (besides using long coordinates' for remembering), such as what3words.
It seems funny! Some things that come to mind:
You can change the location of your phone and trick it to a fake one. Plus, what if you store it at a location in which in the future, something gets built on it?
that would be a problem—same as pokémon :)
I like it, it's useful as a safe as well, if you're a very active P2P user and you get hacked/robbed you can limit what the attacker can do based on their location.
Also treasure hunts, if the precision is high enough in the app you could have multiple treasure chest inside convention centers and no need to fill the place with QR codes, it simply shows a notification to claim the treasure (maybe a POAP or NFT)
I'm not a dev, but it would be awesome if this could be combined with a VPN... changing the VPN server --> changing location in the world allowing you to have multiple safes not related to your physical location whatsoever (there is a huge risk tho, your "world traveling" depends on a private service/server)
yeah there’s so many ways to hack it. BUT the combo of public key + time = harder to brute force
I love it Ric. The stories of people escaping horrible places and taking their crypto with them by memory of key only has always stuck with me. My grandma migrated from Russia to the US when she was a young girl with the instructions only to make it to a certain place. Imagine this use case: If the person she was supposed to meet was not there and never showed, at least resources would be. I see it as the Promised Land.
beautiful story and exactly what i had in mind when it comes to important places