The Problem: When Self-Custody Fail
The Problem: When Self-Custody Fails
Self-custody works well as long as the owner can act.
As long as you can:
access your wallets
sign transactions
coordinate with others
everything works.
The problem starts when you cannot act, temporarily or permanently.
In practice, this usually happens in three distinct ways.
1. Loss of access
You may:
lose devices or backups
forget, destroy, or misplace keys
be unable to reach your setup
In self-custody, there is no fallback.
If the owner cannot sign, nothing can happen.
Funds do not move. Execution depends entirely on whether someone else already has control.
2. Coordination failure
Many existing solutions assume that people will coordinate at the right moment.
In real life, coordination often fails:
someone is unavailable
someone hesitates
someone refuses to act
someone is legally or technically blocked
When execution requires people to cooperate in real time, execution can stall indefinitely.
These systems assume coordination will succeed exactly when execution is required.
Over long time horizons, this assumption often breaks.
3. Splitting or sharing mnemonics
Another common workaround is to:
split a seed phrase
share parts of a mnemonic
store fragments with different people
This is often presented as a safety measure, but in practice it transfers control away from the owner.
Once a mnemonic is split or shared:
control is no longer exclusive
access depends on other people
execution depends on their coordination
This is effectively a hidden multisig, but without clear rules, thresholds, or enforcement.
It introduces serious risks:
fragments can be lost or copied
people may act too early or too late
reconstruction may fail years later
intent cannot be verified or enforced
Instead of defining execution rules, this approach hands control to humans in advance and relies on long-term discipline and trust.
Over long time horizons, this model breaks easily.
Why existing solutions are not enough
When the owner cannot act, most existing approaches fail in predictable ways.
Multisig and MPC
Multisig and MPC require active coordination at execution time.
If one participant cannot or will not act, execution may never complete.
These systems work for shared control, but fail when coordination breaks.
Custodial and institutional solutions
Custodians solve execution by holding keys.
This introduces other risks:
loss of self-custody
discretionary control by third parties
jurisdictional exposure
dependence on the custodian’s continued operation
You gain execution, but lose sovereignty.
Legal inheritance and trusts
Legal structures define who should receive assets, but they do not execute blockchain transactions.
They rely on:
courts and trustees
paperwork and procedures
cross-border coordination
Even when legal intent is clear, on-chain execution can be delayed or blocked.
The core issue
All existing approaches fail for the same reason:
They depend on keys or human coordination at execution time.
Self-custody has no native mechanism for situations where the owner cannot act or coordination fails.
That is the problem CryptoLegacy is designed to solve.
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