Decentralized Cryptography (SSS)
The Vault Cryptostorage platform is based on a powerful cryptographic approach known as Shamir's Secret Sharing. Created by Adi Shamir, the co-inventor of the RSA algorithm, and one of the greatest contributors to the field of cryptography in the world. Shamir's Secret Sharing is where a secret is divided into parts or shards, giving each participant its own unique shard, where some of the shards are needed in order to reconstruct the secret.
The platform uses the Hierarchical Shamir's Secret Sharing (H3S) algorithm, to enable a subset of shards to reconstruct the secret and provide the ability to customize storage and security policies – for more information, see the Vault12 White Paper. This algorithm provides the following unique properties which make it desirable for protecting cryptocurrencies:
Full Privacy
Guardians and their devices have no visibility on any content of the owner's assets, nor will they see any changes during the lifetime of secured assets.
Storage Extensibility
Additional storage devices bring extra redundancy and reliability, and the MIST network can easily handle hundreds of devices.
Storage Policies
In the future, owners will be able to customize policies associated with where their sharded assets are stored.
Part 1: The Cryptography behind Vault12 with Terence Spies from Vault12 on Vimeo
Part 2: The Cryptography behind Vault12 with Terence Spies from Vault12 on Vimeo
Decentralized Storage (MIST)
Cryptocurrency secured by the Vault12 app is stored on a MIST Network made up of the personal mobile devices used by trusted people known as Guardians. To provide scalability and redundancy around the globe, it is combined with a secure asynchronous messaging network. Together they provide all the communications necessary to connect Owner and Guardian devices around the world.
The MIST Network and Secure Relay Network are designed with the following scalability properties:
Full privacy
Guardians and their devices have no visibility on any content of the owner's assets, nor should they see any changes during the lifetime of secured assets. This is a critical differentiator when comparing with multi-sig "co-ownership" of crypto assets.
Storage Extensibility
Additional storage devices bring extra redundancy and reliability, and the MIST network can easily handle hundreds of devices. This is a natural property of threshold secret sharing that enables the generation of hundreds of shards.
Storage Policies
In the future, owners will be able to customize policies associated with where their sharded assets are stored, e.g., how many devices, geo-location policies, and policies relating to active/inactive Guardian devices.