Hello everyone,
I had an idea for a project called the Sentinel or Heimdall after the Norse God Sentry who guarded the bridge to Asgard and died during Ragnarok - still in the process of choosing the name. The project would be a crypto wealth and wallet security firm focusing on the Polkadot ecosystem and offering services for Bitcoin, Monero, Zcash and Ether and an ERC-20 stablecoin for use cases where too. - Not ERC-20 tokens but for ether itself - which would be used by individuals - with plans to possibly expand to institutions too in the future.
The project would leverage existing hardware and digital wallet solutions as well as physical high security storage facilities and solutions as well as existing cybersecurity solutions to enhance security solutions for people to access their funds without interference of organised crime breaking into their homes. The number of such incidents keeps rising with Canada being one target country that is standing out lately as per DeCrypt.
The project would also prominently feature multi-signature solutions to help its users to defend their wealth and individual soveiregnity and the right to basic global finance by any means necessary be it simply through technological means, through the combination of different technologies and building custom made solutions, legal arbitrage, working with other organisations for human rights to raise awareness in case a government oversteps its boundaries and through legal battles throughout different jurisdictions to allow users to defend their digital rights and financial soveregnity. As mentioned above the firm would focus on Substrate projects, ideally on currencies that are decentralised and can not be frozen and will expand into ETH, BTC, XMR and ZCH. I can also include Substrate projects that are centralised and whose currencies can be frozen but that would be explicitly stated to the party when they would be choosing to store their wealth in those coins as it is a security risk.
A number of such potential use cases and examples potentially could be:
Scenario 1:
A person in the EU wants to protect their crypto wealth from anyone. They contact Sentinel to see what solutions we could build for them. One such solution could look like this:
Create a manual multi-signature wallet of 4 / 7 signatures 2.
2 Signatures are with the owner, 2 with the Sentinel founder and 1 with a sentinel employee - all 3 people in different jurisdictions to maximise legal arbitrage - the rest would be in a high security facility in one or two other jurisdictions which only the owner of the funds would be able to access - or their trusted family in case the owner is deceased. This could be ensured by the already existing solution of Keystone's Tablet which can be locked through a hole and the owner of the funds having the keys to the tablet being the only one able to access them - or duplicating it for family members in case the person is deceased - as well as being the only person to access the high security storage facility. An additional layer of protection could be operating the high security storage facility in different jurisdictions such as Switzerland which is renowned for its privacy laws or even Russia which is not the most friendly country currently towards the EU and would be less likely to cooperate even if the eu would ask for the keys, or a mix of the two or other jurisdictions would be possible.
The owner foregoes much in terms of flexibility in exchange for very high security. That would be a vault which he almost never uses except to store and send his wealth until his last days.
Only decentralised coins would be stored to make sure no centralised Stablecoin or otherwise can freeze the users funds - unless the user explicitly after being made aware wants to store centralised coins instead.
Scenario 2:
Person A in Iran wants to store his wealth in crypto - the Iranian government has been known to confiscate crypto if found at homes of everyday citizens.
He or She reaches out to Sentinel's offices in a country that has nor sanctioned Iran and asks for a cross-border and jurisdictional multisignature solution which can be used to protect the wealth of the Iranian citizen from his government even if the government finds out about the cryptocurrency the citizen holds.
In such a case, Sentinel could move the funds of the Iranian citizen to a similar multi-signature set-up where the citizen holds the keys to the wallet still but the government of Iran would not know that and hence the funds would still be safe. Another solution could be to use legal arbitrage and move the funds to wallets of other jurisdictions that may not be as friendly to the Iranian government to avoid cooperation between the Iranian government and the governments that have not sanctioned the country since "humanitarian purposes and assistance" is allowed to Iranian citizens as long as it does not benefit the Iranian government.
Scenario 3: An LGBT+ person or any other persecuted person in a country wants to escape and wants to set-up a system that allows them to safeguard their life-savings. They - or someone they know from another jurisdiction and helps them escape reaches out to Sentinel. Sentinel set-ups a multi-signature wallet across different jurisdictions to protect the person's livelihood while they escape and once they have escaped gives them full control of their funds. If they sadly do not manage to escape or get - in the worse case scenario - killed in the process - Sentinel gives the money to the person or people closest to the deceased person.
Scenario 4: The Average person living anywhere be it emerging or developed country with a hardware wallet would benefit from having a multisig set up stored at their parents, best friend, sister or brother in case someone would break in into their house and stole the 1 or 2 single signature wallet they have for extra security.
The above are just a few potential use cases that came to my mind that I would like to tackle with Sentinel if the community would like to help me fund this idea into reality.
I have in the past asked a grant for Unit Network's Unit Masters which has a parachain on Kusama and the learning programme is still running on the first installment of the grant we asked.
Although I left the team, everyone is entirely positive about me and would have no problems giving references if required.
In the beginning, I would ask for advice where to set up the business, it would be in a country that respects banking privacy and secrecy laws such as
Switzerland
Liechtenstein
Luxembourg
Panama
Costa Rica
UAE
Hong Kong
Singapore
Malta
In the beginning I would work with jurisdictions that have no problems in terms of sanctions such as most of Latin and North America, Europe, African and Middle Eastern countries such as Lebanon and Turkey that suffer currently from hyperinflation. As revenue would be generated I would be able to afford to research laws and expand into countries that have no sanctions towards countries sanctioned by the west and set up a branch there. to help people in sanctioned countries too.
As time passes by, I would look to decentralise the business. Right now I am looking into the possibilities of using smart contracts to pair people who would want to create a peer-to-peer multi-sig cross-border smart contract but the challenge for the moment is to make sure that the user can access the funds even if they lose one key. A potential long term solution I am currently exploring is to pair people to companies who offer high security physical storage facilities and who would have already a custom made solution for these people where sentinel goes in the future out of the picture and the parties such as the individual and companies know how to act such as using cross border multisig wallets and storing parts of them in their high security facilities.
Unfortunately, the technology and understanding of people of blockchain, wallet and cryptocurrency technology is not yet in any way advanced in order for them top grasp the complexities presented and thus through Sentinel I would also want to build in the long term the solution mentioned above on Polkadot and make it as seamless as possible but in order to do that, I would need help from the community.
I have already received feedback from one of the members of the community and it was the following:
**Minimising trust and making the process decentralised: **In the beginning sentinel will be centralised and using either manual or automatic multisignature combinations with different existing wallet and other cybersecurity and physical security technologies to help the people mentioned above. In time, as the understanding of the general public matures technologically, the aim is to introduce an automated, decentralised, peer-to-peer and seamless process or more like peer-to-business-to-business process where a person can connect to a number of different businesses in different countries to set-up the multisignature set-up (perhaps through sharding or another method) and ensure decentralisation, cross-border and seggregation of duties security. The above potential solution is one theoretical I am currently exploring and others are possible to come up too.
How will the project succeed in helping people fleeing persecution from governments if governments push me to give away the additional keys?: In the beginning in order to generate revenue I would start helping people and organisations in less controversial countries - I would not in any way work with criminals for example - but with minorities and people fleeing persecution. The solutions to the above can be the below:
The person does not reveal that they work with Sentinel and thus the government does not know the person is associated with us Certain best practices could be for example: hiding the keys they control in a physical book that mentions the seed phrase in its pages. For example, the 12 or 24 words within the book being marked or highlighed and numbered amongst other marked and highlighted text to make sure the government or anyone else would not understand that the keys are in a specific book and it would just look like a simple everyday book that has been read by the owner of the funds.
People in such countries would be able to create multi-signature wallets with the help of sentinel but the wallets and their keys would be with siblings who lived in another country that is not within the grasp of the government the person is being persecuted or bullied by.
Make sure that the jurisdictions Sentinel operates in have high bank secrecy laws that they respect and would not bow down to pressure from foreign governments
The possibility of destroying the keys before the foreign government gets ahold of them and the extra keys that would be stored in high security storage facilities would only be accessible by the owner of the funds.
If a government does somehow get hold of the keys despite all of the securities provided by sentinel then:
if it is a regulation or legislation problem, Sentinel could move countries
if not, then improve security. No security solution is 100% bulletproof no matter how much a company works on security. A company or individual can make something MORE secure but never so secure that it would never be penetrated.
For the above idea I would ask 200 - 250k USD in total to be dispensed in 4 or 5 instalments of 50 - 60 - 65k.
The first instalment would help with:
Creating the website
Mapping the very first security solutions
Registering. the business in a fitting jurisdiction
Start offering the services
Explore and achieve partnerships with ideally all or most of the below organisations to increase Heimdall's brand recognition and help target users in the countries the organisations are active in:
Amnesty International
Human Rights Watch
Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)
Access Now
Privacy International
Reporters Without Borders
International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH)
American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)
Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT)
Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)
World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT)
Freedom House
Tactical Technology Collective
Citizen Lab
Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR)
Global Digital Rights Movement
Electronic Privacy
Information Center (EPIC)
Front Line Defenders
Access Info Europe
La Quadrature du Net
Digital Rights Foundation
Derechos Digitales
Karisma Foundation
Bits of Freedom
Privacy International
Electronic Frontier Norway
Fight for the Future
Internet Freedom Foundation
Center for Digital Democracy
Centre for Internet and Society (CIS)
Tor Project
Free Software Foundation (FSF)
Free Press
Global Voices
Accion International
BRAC (Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee)
Women's World Banking
Kiva
Oxfam
Freedom from Debt Coalition (Philippines)
Migrant Forum in Asia
Consumer Unity & Trust Society (CUTS International)
Open Society Foundations
Transparency International Global Witness World Resources Institute (WRI)
Minority Rights Group International
International Dalit
Solidarity Network
Indigenous Peoples' Rights
International Anti-Slavery
International Global Initiative to End All Corporal Punishment of Children
Centre for Civil Society (South Africa)
Asian Human Rights Commission
Women's Rights Advancement and Protection Alternative (Nigeria)
Human Rights Commission of Pakistan Fundar (Mexico)
International Center for Not-for-Profit Law Center for Reproductive Rights
Arab Network for Human Rights
Information Centre for Human Rights and Rehabilitation (Malawi)
Solidarity Center
International Commission of Jurists Burma Campaign
UK Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation (South Africa)
Global Rights
International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (OutRight Action International)
Urgent Action Fund for Women's Human Rights
Women's WorldWide Web (W4)
All Out Alternatives-Cameroun
Asian-Pacific Resource & Research Centre for Women (ARROW)
Human Rights Campaign Foundation
International Center for Transitional Justice International
LGBTI Association (ILGA)
LGBT Foundation
Media Legal Defence
Initiative Minority Rights Group
International National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR)
Out and Equal Workplace Advocates
PFLAG (Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays) Rainbow Foundation (Taiwan)
RFSL (The Swedish Federation for LGBTQ Rights)
Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights
Sonke Gender Justice Sisters in Islam (Malaysia)
Urgent Action Fund for Women's Human Rights
Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO)
Women's Aid Organization Women's Media Center Women's Rehabilitation Centre (WOREC)
Women's World Banking The Committee for the Protection of Journalists Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA)
Explore partnerships and collaborations for high security physical storages and cybersecurity solutions with organisations such as:
Kaspersky,
Iron Mountain,
Cyberlock,
Swiss Data Safe,
Mount10, Digistore
and more
Partner with existing hardware wallet solutions such as:
NGRAVE
Trezor
and others ( not Ledger due to their new key sharding update which opens people to additional security breaches)
Attend crypto events related to Polkadot, Bitcoin, Monero, ETH to network and explore partnerships and find potential users Come up with a sophisticated non-scammy marketing plan and execute it. By non-scammy I mean simple google ads that may be seen as scammy or anything else.
The service or products provided would not be public goods. and would be paid This is mainly because I would like to make the project self-sustaining rather than depend all the time on the community treasury for its running. The hope is that after the 200k - 250k starting capital the project would be self-sustaining.
Please, do give feedback where you see necessary. Thank you!
EVERYTHING WITHIN THE PROJECT WOULD BE DONE LEGALLY. IF SADLY SOME COUNTRIES WOULD NOT BE ABLE TO BE CATERED THEN SADLY SENTINEL WOULD NOT BE CATERING TO THEM BUT BEFORE THAT, SENTINEL WOULD EXPLORE ALL POSSIBLE WAYS TO LEGALLY PROTECT USERS IN ALL COUNTRIES.