Digital asset security firm Ngrave announced the launch of a recoverable, encrypted private key backup engraved on a steel plate for cryptocurrency hardware wallets.
According to the announcement on June 10, Ngrave Graphene is now available to the public after raising more than $159,000 from a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo.
Ngrave Graphene has a “cryptographic puzzle” design focused on resisting electric shock, rain, fire, heat up to 1,660 degrees Celsius (3,020º F).
The puzzle consists of two plates that contain the owner’s secret key with values on the plate arranged differently for each customer. Both plates are required to recover the key.
Ruben Merre, co-founder and CEO of Ngrave, told Cointelegraph that Graphene removes the “remaining pitfalls of status quo” backup solutions:
“For one, it removes the durability issue of paper wallets or even of electronic backups that can degrade or stop functioning over time. The Graphene is a durable solution made out of stainless steel, so it can withstand a house fire and other extreme circumstances. Also, it removes the ‘single-point-of-failure’ issue of existing metal wallets.”
Major features of the crypto private key backup
Merre stated that it all started with a question the company asked itself and whose answer is for the entire industry: “Which solution would we fully entrust with our very first, until our very last Bitcoin?”
“The Ngrave Zero is a physically tamper-proof hardware wallet with no online attack vectors. It features top security certification for firmware updates. We also realized that, for the device to be fully secure, we needed to include usability as a layer of security. If you can make mistakes when managing your crypto on your secure hardware wallet, you might even be able to lose them by doing something wrong. So, we made the device as intuitive and foolproof as possible.”
The crypto security firm will soon launch the ability for custodians designated by the keys’ owner to recover those keys, even after that owner has died.
Partnerships with chip manufacturing hubs and research groups
Ngrave Graphene uses cryptographic protocols like EAL7 and partnered with Imec, a research and development hub for nanoelectronics and chip manufacturing, and COSIC, a research group for applied industrial cryptography, to develop its security features.