Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum, recently said in a cryptocurrency community chat that he liked multi-signature solutions more than Shamir backup because common users of Shamir backup are likelier to make mistakes.
People discussed security concerns with cold wallets more after Buterin’s statements. Peter Watts, founder of the NFT marketplace Reservoir, told people not to use hardware wallets because they could lose seed phrases and have to move assets quickly, which could be required when something unexpected happens, like the COVID-19 pandemic.
Ethereum’s Buterin Advocates Multisig Security
Buterin’s action changed the subject to supporting multisig setups to protect personal funds. He didn’t completely dismiss the idea of cold wallets, but he did stress the importance of spreading out security measures. He stressed the importance of using multisig configurations, in which transactions need to be approved by more than one key. This makes crypto security methods stronger.
In particular, Buterin pushed for using a “M-of-N” configuration, in which the user holds some keys and trusted groups hold others. This way, even the people who hold keys can remain anonymous.
Tobby Kitty, an Ethereum investor, responded to Buterin’s idea of Shamir backup, a way to split cryptographic keys or passwords into multiple pieces. Even though Buterin agreed that Shamir has some good points, he also warned of some problems that could happen, saying that it’s “way easier to screw up” than multisig. He talked about how difficult it is to handle and store different parts of the secret and how bad it would be if any part got lost or misplaced.
