VaultCoin Ecosystem can help you recover your Bitcoin, Altcoins and NFTs even when your private-keys are lost or stolen.
Investor Note: This is a 3 Trillion-dollar problem, as private keys are like passwords in crypto, and cryptocurrencies lack a ‘lost password’ or ‘dispute transaction’ option. Around 1M people hold and manage 1 to 10 Bitcoin (worth 100k to 1M USD) with >2 Million BTC (worth >200B USD) collectively held by just this cohort. Imagine losing a big chunk of your life’s savings when your private-key is lost or leaked to an adversary!
How can you recover my Bitcoin even when my private-keys are lost or stolen? Do you store a copy of my private-keys?
No, VaultCoin Ecosystem does not have any access to your private-keys!
VaultCoin does this using Hybrid Custody™ Vaults, that are locked with a private-key from you and a private-key from your chosen Sentinel (Hybrid Custody Service Provider).
Under normal circumstances, you can unlock your Hybrid Custody™ Vault and transfer your Bitcoin (Alts & NFTs) as you wish with just your private-key – similar to Self Custody.
But when your private-key is lost, your chosen Sentinel can still unlock your Hybrid Custody™ Vault with just his private-key using Zero-Knowledge Proofs and Smart Contracts. However, if the Sentinel tries to unlock your Hybrid Custody™ Vault using his private-key without your consent, you can always sign a recovery transaction with just your private-key and override such a malicious unlock transaction.
On the other hand, if your private-key is stolen and is used to unlock your Hybrid Custody™ Vault, you and your chosen Sentinel can co-sign a recovery transaction with your respective private-keys and override the malicious unlock transaction! You can also manage inheritance for your crypto in Hybrid Custody™ Vaults without any prior setup with your beneficiaries.
This is how VaultCoin makes Bitcoin and similar Altcoins unstealable, unlosable, and unconfiscatable!
Is this Smart Vaults™ and Hybrid Custody™ technology vetted and validated externally?
Dr. Ittay Eyal and his team at Technion University, Israel, have vetted and verified the protocol and POC implementation.
And here is an independent peer-reviewed research paper by crypto heavyweights – Dr. D Maram (Cornell University, USA), Mr. M Kelkar (Cornell University, USA), and Dr I Eyal (Technion University, Israel) proving that Smart Vaults is the most secure technology currently available to protect Bitcoin and similar cryptocurrencies! It is also accepted to ACM CCS 2024.
PS: The ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS) is the flagship annual conference of the Special Interest Group on Security, Audit and Control (SIGSAC) of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). The conference brings together information security researchers, practitioners, developers, and users from all over the world to explore cutting-edge ideas and results.
How does it all work for end users?
Our users can manage their Bitcoin and crypto using the Guardian Hardware Wallet and companion apps just like they do now with Ledger, Trezor, and other Hardware Wallets. The only difference is that Guardian Wallet offers users an option to store their Bitcoin, etc. in a Hybrid Custody™ Vault in addition to their simple private-key linked wallet.
Note: Both the wallet and vault use private-keys stored inside Guardian Hardware Wallet. So the wallet is as secure as any other Hardware Wallet based solution offered by Ledger, etc. and the vault offers additional benefits as discussed above. Moreover, Guardian Hardware Wallet is state of the art, mobile first, extremely usefriendly and ultra-affordable at just 20 USD. It can easily qualify as the best hardware wallet in the world as of date.
Can users use their existing Hardware Wallets to create Hybrid Custody™ Vaults?
The process for creating and managing Hybrid Custody™ Vaults is significantly different from that for managing regular transactions and it is not practical to push for such extensive changes from existing Hardware Wallet vendors like Ledger and Trezor.
Hence, our users cannot use third-party Hardware Wallets to create and manage Hybrid Custody™ Vaults.
How is VaultCoin’s Hybrid Custody better?
No other solution, except Hybrid Custody™ Vaults, can help you recover your crypto even when all of your private-keys are lost or stolen.
Hardware Wallet vendors such as Ledger, Trezor, etc. only offer hardware and software to manage private-keys and transactions but do not offer any services that can help you recover your Bitcoin and crypto when your private-keys are lost or stolen.
Assisted custody services like Casa use Multi-Sig/MPC vaults that require multiple private-keys to unlock and spend from them. Consequently these services ask you to manage multiple private keys while they manage one private key on your behalf. This allows you to coordinate and co-sign a transaction with them if you lose one of your private keys. But they can’t help if your private-keys are stolen!
To begin with, nobody wants to manage multiple private keys, with device vendor and backup storage diversity, when managing a single private key is already a chore for us.
The bigger problem with these setups is that you become the single point of failure for your crypto when you manage all your private-keys i.e. your crypto could be lost forever if something happens to you or people can steal your private-keys from you and steal your crypto.
On the other hand, you dilute control of your crypto when you delegate some of your private-keys to friends and family who might later prevent you from spending your Bitcoin and crypto as you see fit. These trustee setups also encourage insider fraud, a far bigger threat than remote hacks and attacks. As the old adage goes – Never mix friends and family with money.
With Hybrid Custody™ Vaults, you only have one private-key to manage and you can recover your Bitcoin and crypto even when that private-key is lost or stolen! As simple as that!
VaultCoin can also handle inheritance for your crypto as per your instructions without any prior arrangements with your beneficiaries.
Tell me about the VaultCoin Ecosystem.
VaultCoin Ecosystem consists of…
Users using Hybrid Custody Vaults to protect their crypto,
The Sentinel Network with Sentinels providing Vault Setup and Recovery services to users,
Guardian Wallet Platform with Hardware Wallets, Companion Apps and cloud infrastructure to manage the Vaults efficienctly, and
$VLTC Token enabling on-chain guarantees and incentives for the aforementioned ecosystem participants.
What is Sentinel Network?
As you understand by now, Hybrid Custody Vaults are protected by a private-key from the user and a private-key from his chosen Sentinel.
Sentinel Network coordinates these Sentinels and ensures recovery of users’ crypto using on-chain mechanisms.
Whats the role of $VLTC token in all this?
$VLTC is the utility token powering the VaultCoin Ecosystem.
To begin with, Sentinels have to acquire $VLTC and stake the same on-chain to come onboard and provide Vault setup and recovery services to users. These stakes serve as guarantees to the users setting up vaults with any given sentinel and assure timely recovery services as and when needed. Moreover, whenever users create Hybrid Custody Vaults, a small amount is deducted from the coins/tokens locked in the Vault and converted to $VLTC through exchange partners asynchronously. The $VLTC thus received is then paid to the respective Sentinel and platform provider as compensation for the services provided.
All this ensures both accountability and sustainability in the ecosystem.
Is this sustainable for Sentinels?
Imagine a Sentinel managing a couple hundred Vaults with a TVL of 200 BTC – he will earn upto $40K USD pa in fees @0.20% of TVL. Ain’t that a good start!
What about staking for $VLTC holders?
Sentinels can create Staking Pools, allowing other $VLTC holders to stake their holdings alongside Sentinel’s own holdings to earn a piece of the fees paid to the respective Sentinel. These combined stakes serve as guarantees for users creating Hybrid Custody Vaults with the respective Sentinels. It should be noted here that any lapses by the Sentinel could affect the staked coins of staking pool participants too. However, Sentinel’s stake will be slashed first and pool participants’ stake will be slashed only when respective Sentinel’s stake is not sufficient to cover the penalties levied on the Sentinel.
Tell me about target market.
Target Addressable Market: 850M to 1.5B PA
By offering an end-to-end solution for crypto custody that combines the best of self-custody and the best of managed custody, we can capture… ⠀
The Hardware Wallet market, estimated at 350M USD [Ref] to 1B USD [Ref] annually in 2024 and growing @29% CAGR. Popular Hardware Wallet vendors like Ledger and Trezor are valued in billions for the same reason.
The emerging Assisted Custody market for small holders (1 to 10 Bitcoin) with >2 Million BTC(worth >200B USD) held by them. The Assisted Custody market alone has a revenue potential of >500M USD PA when we charge a conservative 0.25% of Total Value Locked as a fee per annum.
Moreover, this cohort is projected to hold more than a Trillion dollars in Bitcoin over the next decade.
The Managed Custody Market, with >450B USD in assets under management and growing at 24% CAGR, by offering a fortified version of Hybrid Custody that can easily scale to enterprise needs with Hardware Tokens, Escrow Vaults, etc. This is our end game.
Tokenomics in brief?
$VLTC will have a capped supply of 10 billion tokens and the vesting and unlock schedule is depicted in the graph below.
What drives the demand for $VLTC in the market?
Let us for a moment only look into the Bitcoin side of things and focus on just one cohort of Bitcoin holders – people with 1 – 10 BTC in self-custody. Even if we can capture this cohort, they collectively hold >2 Million BTC worth over 200 Billion USD.
To service this market, Sentinels have to stake around 1% of that i.e. 2 Billion USD worth $VLTC on chain. This creates unprecedented demand for $VLTC in the open markets.
Over and above that, the aforementioned cohort will pay around 0.25% of TVL in Hybrid Custody Vaults as fees per annum i.e. 500 Million USD worth $VLTC is needed annually. Need we say more? And we are still counting only Bitcoin and no other ALTS or stablecoins!
You can also manage inheritance for your crypto in Hybrid Custody™ Vaults without any prior setup with your beneficiaries.
Moreover, Guardian Hardware Wallet is state of the art, mobile first, extremely usefriendly and ultra-affordable at just 20 USD. It can easily qualify as the best hardware wallet in the world as of date.
Moreover, whenever users create Hybrid Custody Vaults, a small amount is deducted from the coins/tokens locked in the Vault and converted to $VLTC through exchange partners asynchronously. The $VLTC thus received is then paid to the respective Sentinel and platform provider as compensation for the services provided.