Why Bitkey Ditched Seed Phrases | Clay Garrett SLP778

<p>Bitkey ditched seed phrases for a recovery-focused 2-of-3 design: an app key, hardware key, and Block server key that use phones, hardware, and cloud access to help people retain control of their funds.</p><p>Clay Garrett, Bitkey lead at Block, joins Stephan Livera to explain the design trade-offs: safety as security plus recoverability, cloud backup that needs your hardware to decrypt, and why Bitkey does not treat vendor lock-in as its ethos.</p><p>They dig into recovery paths, multi-vendor trade-offs, transfer-without-hardware limits, Recovery Contacts and inheritance, a working FROST prototype, what covenants could move on-chain, chain code delegation, and privacy-conscious Electrum options.</p><p>Timestamps:</p><p>00:00 — Intro</p><p>00:19 — Clay Garrett Joins — Bitkey at Block</p><p>00:56 — Bitkey V2 and the 2-of-3 Model</p><p>03:03 — Safety Means Access and Recoverability</p><p>04:11 — App+Hardware Spends Without Block</p><p>07:09 — Cloud Backup and Instant Phone Swap</p><p>09:27 — Lost Hardware and the 7-Day Delay</p><p>12:14 — Vendor Lock Is Temporary, Not Ethos</p><p>15:44 — Multi-Vendor After Coldcard</p><p>21:20 — Which Wallet Fits Your Threat Model?</p><p>26:49 — $5 Wrench and Transfer Without Hardware</p><p>30:04 — Recovery Contacts and Inheritance</p><p>36:06 — FROST Prototype Already in the Repo</p><p>38:04 — On-Chain Looks Like Single-Sig</p><p>39:34 — Covenants Could Move Policy On-Chain</p><p>42:09 — Chain Code Delegation — BIP 89</p><p>46:10 — Electrum, Mempool, and Custom Servers</p><p>52:08 — Industry After Coldcard Changed</p><p>55:21 — Wallet Plus Free-for-Life Co-Signing</p><p>Links: </p><ul><li><p>https://x.com/clay_garrett</p></li><li><p>https://bitkey.world/</p></li></ul><p>Stephan Livera links:</p><ul><li><p>Follow me on X:<a href="https://twitter.com/stephanlivera"> @stephanlivera</a></p></li><li><p><a href="https://plinkhq.com/i/1415720320">Subscribe to the podcast</a></p></li><li><p><a href="https://stephanlivera.substack.com/">Subscribe to Substack</a></p></li></ul>