Detailed Explanation of Sarcophagus: How Can Encrypted Users Automatically Dispose of Assets After Death Using Decentralized Protocols?

Author: Felix Machart @ Greenfield One

Translator: PANews Jup

After the Eastern Airlines plane crash, many in the crypto community have been discussing how to manage assets in the event of sudden circumstances. Unlike centralized exchanges where heirs can resolve issues by contacting customer service and providing proof, the inheritance of anonymous assets on the blockchain has become a pressing issue to consider. The Sarcophagus protocol within the Arweave ecosystem is a secure solution designed for this potential situation.

Here is a detailed introduction to the project:

A dead man's switch is a type of switch that automatically operates when the operator loses the ability to act, such as in the case of death, loss of consciousness, or leaving the control device. It originally originated in the heavy machinery field and has since been applied to virtual applications like computer software. For example, if a user remains inactive for an extended period, a notification may be sent to them, or their account may be automatically deactivated.

Therefore, creating a fail-safe solution based on the inability of participants to ensure their activity will become a fundamental component of the Web3 and decentralized finance stack.

We generally believe that blockchain and DAOs have the potential to create more resilient, trust-minimized institutions and serve as solid foundational pillars for society. Thus, Sarcophagus has constructed a decentralized dead man's switch and self-sovereign inheritance protocol as a logical module.

Anonymous accounts need a native way to preserve and inherit assets

The use of anonymous identities has become quite common in the metaverse, and this trend is expected to grow. People will want to use unique identities to participate in online activities that attract public attention, where they can freely and unconstrained express themselves while enjoying this experimental lifestyle.

In a decentralized metaverse, everyone can achieve a state of true freedom. A unique offline identity allows them to remain grounded, living a life free from external scrutiny, while being able to switch to another online identity when their interests or lifestyle change.

This anonymous identity can also be realized through avatars. They can be used to collect digital assets for work or entertainment, such as productive assets (including those in games), art, and fashion. To avoid situations where on-chain assets become irretrievable due to lost keys, death, or other accidents, they need an inheritance protocol that does not require a connection to real-world identities.

Enter Sarcophagus

Sarcophagus is suitable for a wide range of use cases related to individuals and DAOs. For the first time, users can not only possess information but also programmatically and non-custodially leak information after their death or loss of keys.

If a user stops signing encrypted messages (as a sign of life), these securely stored files or information will be automatically sent to the recipient.

As long as it relates to elements of "manual backup" and inheritance plans, there will be significant opportunities for use cases specifically targeting crypto-native scenarios. By storing a signed but unpublished transaction, any on-chain operation can be automatically executed after the user can no longer prove their activity (death).

By placing a signed but unpublished transaction into Sarcophagus, the assets in their portfolio can be inherited to a designated address, while the recipient can complete the inheritance by publishing that transaction (the publishing service will be implemented in version 2). This principle is also very useful for multi-signature setups in DAOs (especially off-chain signing schemes, such as BLS horcruxes), ensuring that given key holders can still perform their functions or transfer signing rights to backup participants.

Further cases include political activists wishing for their important information to be disclosed upon their disappearance (as a form of life insurance), as well as integration with autonomous backup services like Ardrive (for example, personal backup research content or Obsidian notes that can be unlocked in the event of key loss or death) or applications in the traditional will and trust industry (the responsibility of storing important data can be entrusted to autonomous solutions).

The protocol provides decentralized dead man's switch services by coordinating the following participants, laying the groundwork for more services:

Creator/Storage Provider

The creator encrypts a set of data and stores it on Arweave, allowing the recipient to access the data after the creator shows no signs of life (stops signing encrypted messages) at the "revival time" (e.g., 1 hour or 1 year later).

Recipient

The recipient has the right to retrieve data sent by the creator to their Ethereum wallet address. Even if the outer shell of the sarcophagus is decrypted by "archaeologists," only the recipient can decrypt the internal encryption layer of the sarcophagus.

"Archaeologists"

Determining whether a creator is in a state of incapacity requires the intervention of "archaeologists." If the creator/storage provider fails to sign the repackaged message, incentivized archaeologists can decrypt the outer layer of encryption. Archaeologists need to run nodes to observe whether the sarcophagus must be decrypted (and publish a bond in SARCO tokens; if they decrypt early or late, the bond will be reduced). Besides the reduction of fees, their publicly visible reputation based on past performance also serves as a constraint, as more reliable archaeologists will gain more opportunities (specific archaeologists are responsible for a particular sarcophagus through the Curse smart contract).

One of the most important upgrades in Sarcophagus v2 is allowing multiple archaeologists to be responsible for the same project to achieve redundancy, so future critical task use cases will rely on the highest-reputation archaeologists, who will also charge higher fees. Click here to read how to start becoming an archaeologist.

During the mummification phase, users will upload data, which will be encrypted using the recipient's public key along with the following information:

● Revival time (when the sarcophagus will be decrypted if the user fails to repack the information)

● Bounty (to incentivize archaeologists to decrypt a layer of encryption, paid only if decrypted at the correct time)

● Excavation fee (the fee paid to archaeologists for repacking or decrypting at the correct time)

For use cases with lower task importance, authentication methods used in Web 2.0, such as FaceID and OAuth, can also be introduced.

Governance

The main DAO of Sarcophagus is governed through Aragon tools, and to enhance flexibility, we also govern several subDAOs through Snapshot and Gnosis multisigs.

Although Sarcophagus is a DAO, we still have important leaders. Our main initiators have a good track record in building secure key management infrastructure for high-net-worth individuals and funds, and they are collaborating with experienced developers.