Conio X
December 16, 2020. We introduce you to Conio X.
Conio X is the experimental Bitcoin wallet built by Conio after the Multi-Signature Virtualization protocol described here in our blog and in our papers (published in MDPI Mathematics and here).
We have implemented such protocol, and here we want to show a demonstration of its capabilities.
Background history
As already explained in the previous articles, Conio relies on 3 parties, each of which stores a key.
- Customer (party 1). S/he stores key #1 on his/her smartphone
- Conio (party 2). It stores key #2 on its servers
- Recovery entity (party 3). It can be a bank OR a recovery device of the customer. It stores key #3 offline
2 keys out of 3 are needed to transact or recover funds. All these parties work together, and build a single-signature wallet where no private key is ever created. This is done through Threshold signatures, where one of the parties can stay offline.
Demonstration Video
The demonstration above comprises of 4 parts.
Demo — Part 1
We show how Conio X creates a Bitcoin wallet.
The very first question that is asked to the user is: “Where do you want to store Key #3?”. This is a very important question, since the customer can decide to either:
- store key #3 on his/her own recovery device
- or, rely on a partner of Conio (e.g., a bank) to store key #3
Depending on the choice made, the customer will have either full control of his/her own funds (key #1 and key #3, so two keys out of three) or distribute control to other entities.
In the initial part of the video demonstration, we show the case where the customer decides to rely on a partner of Conio to store key #3.
You can easily see that, no matter the multiple keys and parties involved, Conio X creates a single-signature wallet.
As part of the demonstration, we send some Bitcoin from a Conio X wallet to another Conio X wallet. You can check out the transaction (hash: 913cb71ac21fe525ea2ab12c143834090aa9b202fd5e303d343700c49abea513), for sake of convenience here, and see that has been done by two single-signature wallets.
Demo — Part 2
Here again we show how Conio X creates a Bitcoin wallet.
However, this time the customer decides NOT to rely on a partner of Conio (e.g., a bank) to store the recovery key #3. Instead, here the customer relies on his/her own device to store recovery key #3.
For sake of demonstration here, we used a Raspberry Pi; still, the solution is independent from the storage device being used.
In this scenario, the customer has full control of his/her wallet. In fact, here the customer has two keys out of three (key #1 and key #3), so there is zero risk of losing fund due to other parties disasters.
Again, no matter the multiple keys and parties involved, Conio X creates a single-signature wallet.
Demo — Part 3
Here we show a common recovery scenario. The customer has lost his/her smartphone (where key #1 was stored), or has changed smartphone and wants now to use Bitcoin there.
Luckily, the customer has also saved key #1 (in its mnemonic form) before hand. Here in the video we show how the customer can restore the wallet by him/herself, and easily recover funds.
Demo — Part 4
Here we show another recovery scenario. The customer initially created the wallet using his/her recovery device, so NOT relying on a partner of Conio.
The customer can recover funds by him/herself (having key #1 and key #3), even in the catastrophic scenario where Conio no longer exists as a company.
In the video we show how the customer recover funds by transferring them to a new wallet. You can check out the transaction (hash: 248170e6b6be2a576c330ccd320f6648ea2f5120fb65dde525822dae0eddfcb9), for sake of convenience here.
Conclusions
I hope you enjoyed our demonstration. If you have any questions, suggestions or comments on Conio X or its Multi-Signature Virtualization protocol, please feel free to reach out to us. At Conio we do strive to make cryptocurrencies easy and safe to use for everyone, and your help is absolutely very welcome.
