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Security Goals

Stephen Tse edited this page Jun 23, 2021 · 2 revisions

Security Goals

ONE Wallet is designed with these goals in mind for security:

Social (people)

  • Resilient. Funds are recoverable through time locks and multiple safety nets. No single point of failure such as thefts, cracks, loss, censorship or coersions is catastrophic.
  • Sufficient. All steps are well defined without delegating to hardware devices or seed phrases in safety boxes. Users do not need any passwords or rely on biometrics.
  • Anonymous. An account is a fresh cryptographic hash, not tied to existing systems or real-world identity. Derived paths support multiple public keys to protect privacy.

Smart (code)

  • Composable. One-time or low-entropy passwords are useful for small funds. Multiple authentications can independently boost protection thresholds against brute-force.
  • On-chain. A decentralized network with high stakes and fast finality validates all transactions. Its platform has sustainable incentives and open governance to evolve.
  • Programmable. Operations can call third-party contracts, store history of states, or upgrade its code. Complex applications may use oracles of time, locations and events.

Hard (math)

  • Self-Sovereign. No third parties, government documents, designated guardians, backup servers or hardware enclaves are necessary. Users have full custody and self control.
  • Air-Gapped. Key-loggers and man-in-the-middle attacks are minimized. The full parameters of transactions are easy to verify and approve without cables or cameras.
  • Verified. Trusted are only open source and hardened cryptography. Formal verification, through logical frameworks, assures end-to-end security beyond tests and audits.

Tradeoffs

There may be conflicts, tradeoffs or impracticality of the goals above. Here's our rule of thumb:

  1. Toward validating our innovation with 10k users (each with $100 assets), focus on these three goals: sufficient, resilient and composable.
  2. Toward adopting our product with 1m users (each with $1k assets), differentiate with these three goals: on-chain, self-sovereign and air-gapped.

Reference