Storing and keeping your bitcoin (BTC) safe is not always easy. Bryan Bishop, a bitcoin developer, wants to build a solution on top of bitcoin: a bitcoin vault.

Bishop: “People are not very good at securing their private keys. We can write better software and make bitcoin safer, that’s a victory.”

A nice idea: making bitcoin safer to use. But that’s harder than it sounds at first sight. Bishop’s ideas should eventually lead to a safe way to correct user security errors.

It’s different than, for example, a hardware wallet or a paper wallet, because this solution is on-chain.This means on the network itself,

The difference with previous proposals for a bitcoin vault is the fact that it does not require a fork. You can find the prototype on GitHub.

Bitcoin safe

This initiative must prevent any loss of money. Almost everyone who (early) started with bitcoin has a ‘nice’ story about bitcoin being lost. Millions of BTC have been ‘lost’ and the causes vary: from a computer on a garbage dump to private keys in a fishing pole.

A normal wallet offers simple options: you get a private key that you have to keep well. The responsibility for security lies entirely on your shoulders, the private keys must be kept as a secret. If someone gets his hands on them, there will be no way back.

Plan B

The safes Bishop has in mind have a plan B. Should your data leak or be stolen then there is a possibility to recover the failure.

With this solution you can split your bitcoin into different parts and only one part can be sent, so only a small part of your BTC can be sent. You can specify how much time there may be between bitcoin transactions.

Watchtower

The proposal also contains the idea for a ‘watchtower’, a watchtower that in fact keeps an eye on the vault. When a part of the BTC that is in a safe is sent, the owner can be notified.

The user can then signal a transaction and send BTC to other addresses. This is just a concept and you can’t use it yet, but more ways to keep your bitcoin safe are always good. Especially if they are optional like this idea.