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Comment by treyd | Hacker News Reader

UX with hardware wallets (which you can get for like $60) is pretty decent these days and it eliminates a lot of stress in the workflows you typically use. There's still a huge room for improvement with seedphrase backup and "social recovery", but it's easier now than it's been in the past.

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How does the average person back these up in a secure, yet durable way that lasts decades and can easily be discovered by (and only by) their ultimate heirs?

Passphrase in a bank safe deposit box.

I think everyone will have different behavior sec for their funds, with the options now ranging from simply committing a 12 or 24 word seed phrase to memory and buying ETF shares.

There is shamir secret splitting, multisig, MPC, secure enclaves with biometerics, etc...

There will be apps like Fuse wallet: https://www.fusewallet.com/

There will be phones like Saga: https://solanamobile.com/hardware

I think how one handles their wallets will be much like how people make their espressos. Some will just stick k-cup in a machine and hit a button, others will become full-blown coffee enthusiasts that carefully measure their beans, de-static their grinds, and extract for the exact right amount of time.

> simply committing a 12 or 24 word seed phrase to memory

That's absolutely out of the question for almost any human being, especially given the timeframes involved.

> There will be phones like Saga [...] There will be apps like Fuse wallet: [...]

Again, we're talking about a timeframe of decades. How many of these will even still boot up after that amount of time? None of these seem safe to just throw in a bank safe deposit box.

> make their espressos. Some will just stick k-cup in a machine and hit a button

I'm really not a coffee connoisseur by any meaning of the word, but even I know that what comes out of a k-cup machine is brewed coffee, not espresso.

My point is there are thousands of ways to handle your wallets, I don't think there will be one average way.

The ETF is probably the equivalent of this "espresso style" k-cup https://www.keurig.com/Beverages/Dark-Roast/Espresso-Style-C...

> I'm really not a coffee connoisseur by any meaning of the word, but even I know that what comes out of a k-cup machine is brewed coffee, not espresso.

No, that's his passphrase

Same as anything else really: A sheet of paper and a safety deposit box.

You die, your heir or executor takes the appropriate paperwork to the bank, and then they get the contents of the box.

How many people even have a safety deposit box?

Many banks don't offer them anymore, and in some countries they have a disturbing tendency of getting robbed, with absolutely no recourse for the depositors (since contents are usually unverified and uninsured).

Then buy a large fire safe, bolt it to your floor inside a closet, and fill it with 10 lb barbell plates until it requires a forklift to move.

If your threat model includes someone inside your home with power tools and you can’t trust a bank… you might want to consider moving.

Given that people probably don't arrange their life around the ability to safeguard physical assets, I think you've just given several good arguments against self-custody:

Many people don't own a home. Not all of those that do want to expose themselves to the liability of storing valuables there. The safety situation between homes even within the US varies greatly, and even more so internationally. Banks with safety deposit boxes aren't ubiquitous.

If it works for you, great! I'm just saying that you might be in the minority here.

That's cool. What do I do when I move every few years because I'm a renter and can't afford to own a home in this economy?

You tell me.

That's what the "social recovery" ideas are for. It's a framework for doing key management across multiple trusted parties under controlled conditions in the hypothetical case your primary keys are inaccessible. You could have your executor hold a key, for example.

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