New protocol research for high-risk environments: Emergenseed

Cypher Stack is pleased to introduce Emergenseed, new and ongoing research into safe storage of funds for high-risk environments.

While reviewing protocols like Border Wallets that are intended to protect funds while transiting high-risk areas, we were interested in improved ways to keep wallet mnemonics safe and available in case of discovery or confiscation by an adversary.

The result of this investigation is Emergenseed. It makes a different set of tradeoffs that keeps funds safe in transit, is not susceptible to confiscation, and plays nicely with human memory. The design combines user experience and cryptography to help users produce and memorize a mnemonic that is resistant to brute force in transit.

This design has weaknesses that don't make it suitable for general long-term fund storage, and advances in hardware- and software-based attacks mean that Emergenseed is best when used with privacy-respecting asset protocols.

Emergenseed is ongoing and likely controversial research, and should not yet be used in production. We hope it helps to inspire more detailed discussion of threat models and user-focused designs for safe fund management, and look forward to review and comment.

https://github.com/cypherstack/emergenseed/releases/tag/initial