- One Last Gift: A Decentralized Plan for Your Cryptocurrency Inheritance
- One Last Gift, Part 2: Summoning Shenron and Finding the Dragon Ball Guardians
Bob,
Before I explain further, let me first answer a few of your questions:
Is all this hassle really necessary?
If you’re complaining that I’m being too long-winded, I’m going to get mad…
I write it in as much depth as I feel is necessary. I see it as my responsibility to provide you with the most decentralized options on the spectrum. You can then assess for yourself how far you want to take it. It’s like if I, as a tech provider, offer a login system that allows for a 128-character password with uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols. Unless I make that level of security mandatory, you shouldn’t blame me for offering such a high-spec defense, right!?
Okay, you’re not complaining. I’ll let you off the hook. Last week, I listed five potential risks—collusion, security awareness, natural disasters, politics, and values—to give you a framework for consideration. As for the number of guardians, the technology supports up to sixteen. You can decide the appropriate level based on your own needs. The most important thing is that you can actually implement it; otherwise, any theoretical security is useless.
How do you prevent several guardians from colluding to reconstruct my private key?
Indeed, it’s not easy to find several guardians who are both trustworthy and don’t know each other. Here’s another method to add an extra layer of protection.
Last time, we assumed you set up a 2-of-3 “Dragon Ball” system, asking Carol, Dave, and Eve to be the guardians. You would clearly inform them of the conditions—such as your death, disappearance, or loss of freedom—under which they should contact Alice and provide their Dragon Ball.
What I didn’t get to say is that in addition to the two Dragon Balls, you can add a “spell,” like spell-123, known only to your wife, Alice. Only with two of the three Dragon Balls plus the spell-123 incantation can the Divine Dragon be summoned to access your assets like Bitcoin.
It’s worth noting that even without the spell, two Dragon Balls can still summon a Divine Dragon. However, this dragon is not the same as your dragon. It guards a different set of wallet addresses, which you can choose to completely ignore or use only for a small amount of funds.
To enable this “spell” (passphrase), connect your Safe 5 in Trezor Suite, select “+ Passphrase wallet” from the dropdown menu in the top-left corner, and set your Passphrase there.
Can I send Bitcoin to Alice and Frank separately?
Yes, this can also be achieved using the passphrase feature.
Following the above, you can add another spell, like spell-789, known only to little Frank. Two Dragon Balls plus spell-789 will summon Frank’s exclusive Divine Dragon.
Here’s a demonstration I made. You can see that any two of the three guardians (Carol, Dave, Eve) can summon the “Standard wallet” dragon. But you need to add the spell-123 known only to Alice to summon the “Alice dragon,” or the spell-789 known only to little Frank to summon the “Frank dragon.”
As for how much to deposit in each, that’s up to you. I won’t be nosy.
If you’re worried Frank is too young to properly keep or remember the spell, you can consider handling it through a traditional will. Giving a lawyer your private key or seed phrase directly is a huge problem, that goes without saying. But a sealed envelope containing the spell is much safer. Even if you encounter an unscrupulous lawyer, they can’t see or touch your assets with the spell alone.
Based on the same logic, you could also consider entrusting one of the Dragon Balls to a lawyer, or different Dragon Balls to different lawyers, or create other variations on this theme. While not the most decentralized approach, the key is to understand the underlying principles and find the right trade-off between resilience and feasibility that works best for you.
Now, back to what I originally wanted to say.
You might have already realized that this mechanism is not only useful for estate planning but also effectively solves the problem of losing all your assets just because you lost a single seed phrase. Therefore, it’s applicable to all users who self-custody their cryptocurrency. Even for beginners like Alice and little Frank, I recommend they learn to use Dragon Balls when creating their first wallet. You don’t have to get too advanced; starting with a 1-of-1 setup is sufficient. This allows you to later modify the setup to 2-of-3, 3-of-5, etc., without changing the wallet address or moving the assets. Conversely, if you start with the traditional 12, 18, or 24-word BIP-39 standard, switching to Dragon Balls later would require moving everything to a new wallet.
I published my letter to you in the DHK newsletter and added a poll to see how many Dragon Balls people would choose. Last week, a surprising 43% of readers chose “1-of-1: I have no friends, I’m a cursed lone wolf”! My readers are truly a unique bunch. In reality, although this mechanism is called “social recovery,” a single person can use it. For instance, you could hide seven Dragon Balls inside seven volumes of the Dragon Ball manga (the ultimate geek move), or store three Dragon Balls separately at home, in a bank safe deposit box, and with your lawyer. Just because you’re a lone hero doesn’t mean you have to use a 1-of-1 setup.
As mentioned earlier, SLIP-39 was proposed by SatoshiLabs, the manufacturer of Trezor wallets. However, the standard is not exclusive to Trezor. Dragon Balls generated with a Safe 3 or 5 can also be summoned in hot wallets like Rabby, Electrum, Sparrow, and Blue Wallet. Of course, I don’t recommend recovering a private key for your main assets on a hot wallet, but it’s technically possible. This means you don’t have to worry about vendor lock-in. Being locked into Trezor is a minor issue; Trezor going out of business one day would be a major one. As for other hardware wallets, Keystone says it also supports SLIP-39, but I haven’t tested it myself. It’s a shame that Ledger refuses to adopt SLIP-39, instead opting for their own closed-source, subscription-based, and centralized-guardian service, Ledger Recover. This is the main reason I no longer recommend Ledger.
Also, you’re still using Rabby, which I recommended, right? Although Rabby can’t generate Dragon Balls, you can first use a Safe 5 to generate a new wallet address protected by them, and then import it into Rabby. This way, even your frequently used hot wallet is protected by social recovery, so you don’t have to worry about losing control from a single lost phrase.
One more thing. The Dragon Balls generated by Trezor are typically 20 words long, corresponding to the strength of a 12-word seed phrase. The official Trezor website sells fireproof, waterproof, and tamper-proof “Steel Dragon Balls.” If writing them on paper doesn’t feel secure enough, consider buying these—at the very least, they max out the sense of ceremony. If you want to maintain the strength of a 24-word seed phrase, you can opt for 33-word Dragon Balls, but these can only be generated using the Trezorctl command-line interface, and there are no corresponding “Steel Dragon Balls” to store them.
There are many more details I could delve into, and I could go on forever, but I’ll stop here before you accuse me of being long-winded again. Honestly, I should be charging a fee for in-depth explanations of Dragon Balls and social recovery. Making money is secondary; what’s more important is ensuring the audience is genuinely eager to listen, don’t you think?
kin
2025.09.10
p.s. Here’s my selfie, you’re welcome. Can’t see me? I guess I’m just not dazzling enough. I’ve named this photo “Serenity in Mongkok Center.” Those who know, know.
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