look, i’m a dev. i build redundant systems for a living. load balancers, failovers, backups for the backups. we spend 40 hours a week making sure a stupid saas app has 99.9% uptime.
but last tuesday i was sitting in my apartment in mendoza and realized my own "uptime" is fragile as hell.
if i walk outside and get hit by a bus (the literal bus factor), my entire digital life is bricked. zero. gone.
i have cold storage. i have ssh keys to servers. i have 24-word seeds written on paper in a drawer. you know what happens if i die? my family finds a piece of paper with random words on it, assumes it’s trash, and throws away generational wealth. or worse, they hire a lawyer who doesn't know what a ledger is.
"not your keys, not your coins" is a cool slogan until you realize that when you die, "not your pulse, not your coins."
it terrified me. so i opened vim and fixed it.
i built deadhand.
it’s messy, it’s python, and it’s open source. it’s a dead man’s switch.
the logic is stupidly simple because simple things don't break:
it emails me every 30 days. "hey, you alive?"
i click a link. timer resets.
if i dont click... it waits.
if i still dont click (day 60, day 90)... it assumes i’m dead or incapacitated.
it executes the payload.
it sends the encrypted shards/keys/instructions to my beneficiary. no lawyers. no probate court. just code executing a contract.
i made it open source because you’d be an idiot to trust a closed-source app with this. you need to see the code to trust it. you can self-host it if you’re paranoid (like me).
i didn't build this to make a unicorn startup. i built it because i couldn't sleep.
if you hold crypto, or manage servers, or have secrets you want passed down... stop pretending you're immortal. fix your bus factor.
repo is here. star it, fork it, audit it. https://github.com/pyoneerC/deadhand
don't let your keys die with you.
-max
Top comments (1)
I like you.