Your keys, and who can open your vault

You hold the keys. We do not.

Everything you seal in a AssetDNA vault is encrypted on your own device before it reaches us. The key that opens it is derived from your passphrase and a Secret Key that only your device and your printed recovery kit have ever held. We store sealed bytes. We cannot read them, we cannot open your vault for you, and we cannot open it for anyone else: not a court order, not a colleague, not a buyer of this business.

This is the point of the design. A safe that the operator can open is a safe the operator can be made to open.

What that means if a key is lost

With no guardians set, your printed recovery kit and your passphrase are the whole of recovery. Lose both and nobody can recover the vault, including us. There is no reset link, no support ticket and no exception.

Keep the kit where you keep a passport or a will: printed, confirmed once from the paper, and known to one other person you trust. Re-type it on the Recovery page after you print it; until a kit is confirmed, treat the vault as unrecoverable.

Guardians: sharing the risk without sharing the secret

You can split the key between your kit and people you name, so that no single piece opens anything. With two guardians, for example, you alone cannot recover from the kit, but you plus one guardian, or two guardians together, can. Each guardian holds one share, sealed to their own identity; a share on its own reveals nothing.

A recovery asks your guardians, waits for a window that is yours to cancel, and tells you at every step. A guardian cannot read your vault and cannot start a recovery that you are not told about.

What we can and cannot do for you

We can: keep the sealed bytes safe and backed up, show you a proof that a record existed unchanged on a date, hand you an export that opens offline at /vault/decrypt, and act as the operator of the service.

We cannot: read, recover, reset or reveal anything sealed in your vault. Any service that offers to do so for a AssetDNA vault is not ours, and we recommend you do not trust it.

Your responsibilities

You are responsible for your passphrase, your recovery kit, the people you name as guardians, and what you choose to seal. Because we cannot see what is stored, we cannot check it, filter it or correct it. The vault terms at the door and the terms of use set out the rest.