Do Steem Blockchain Provides Trustless, Non-custodial Wallets?

in LeoFinance4 years ago (edited)

Two months back, prior to Hive hardfork, this question never crossed my mind. I always found my Steem funds to be Safu in my blockchain wallet than at any other place.

What is meant by a Non-custodial wallet?

When I hold private keys for my wallet, I was under the impression that I am in full control of my wallet and so it can be called non-custodial wallet. But oh boy, it's not always the case!

If you trust someone with your keys for the recovery of your wallet (like when you lose your private keys accidentally); then it's not a Non-custodial wallet.

Many people on Steem never changed their default recovery account viz. @steem. (Even @blocktrades have @steem as its recovery account on both Hive & Steem chains). This means, you ultimately trust @steem for the security of your wallet.

After the Hive hard fork, we started getting news of rampant freezing of random wallets on these blockchains. But when yesterday, @netuoso revealed a possible list of wallets to be frozen in tomorrow's hardfork, I was shocked to say the least. I mean, really? Can all these wallets be frozen at a go:

Screenshot_20200518222516.jpg

Screenshot_20200518222521.jpg

If you see the list it would be hard to find the basis for hand picking such a huge list of accounts.

This brings back the fundamental question of account ownership.
Are we really the owners of our own accounts on Steem?
Or do we have a false impression of ownership of our funds in our Steem wallet?

I used to understand about the risks of keeping my funds on centralised Exchanges but Proof of Keys campaign had instilled some security in my mind with its not your keys, not your coin punchline.

I thought when I hold my keys, I have nothing to worry about security of my funds. Umm... I think I was wrong!

It seems that security is always relative.

Is Sequoir secure?

Today Sequoir Exchange listed HIVE. Sequoir is very different from other centralized Exchanges like Binance, Bittrex & Huobi, in that, we hold the keys to our fund. Holding our own keys means we are not giving the custody of our funds to Sequoir. This is a great idea. But the ultimate security boils down to how secure is your Hive wallet that stores your fund.

Did you change your recovery account from @steem to something better? ...like your own alt a/c?
Many people on Hive still have @steem as their recovery a/c. So in the current circumstances, we need to reassess our wallet's security.

Security assessment is an ongoing task. There is nothing like absolute security anywhere.

You got any ideas?

Sort:  

Congratulations @xyzashu! You have completed the following achievement on the Hive blockchain and have been rewarded with new badge(s) :

You got more than 3250 replies. Your next target is to reach 3500 replies.

You can view your badges on your board and compare to others on the Ranking
If you no longer want to receive notifications, reply to this comment with the word STOP

Do not miss the last post from @hivebuzz:

The Hive Gamification Proposal
Support the HiveBuzz project. Vote for our proposal!

Did you change your recovery account form @steem to something better? ...like your own alt a/c?
Many people on Hive still have @steem as their recovery a/c. So in the current circumstances, we need to reassess our wallet's security.

Thanks for bringing this up... I have done this to my account(s), but it is important to repeat it because of the others that didn't do that... It's a crucial thing to have this sorted out, because these days, STEEM isn't really a trustable blockchain as it is controlled by 1 entity...



Made in Canva

@thisisawesome Moderator


This is Awesome Content, and it will be manually curated with an upvote of 65% from @thisisawesome (will be done today), and it will also be included in our Awesome Daily Curation report in category Awesome CTP Curation for more visibility.

The goal of this project is to "highlight Awesome Content, and growing the Hive ecosystem and the CTPtalk tribe by rewarding it".


Source

Thank you for finding this content curation worthy. :)

i dont know how to change recovery a/c, if you can create a post on that will be appreciated.
Thank you @xyzashu for this informational post.

Ah, I hope you have changed it by now.

However, I've received some more requests to create a post on this subject. So I'll try to create a short post on it in a while.

Cheers!