Post
Topic
Board Service Discussion
Re: Vault of Satoshi Launches Full Proof of Solvency (Not Just an Audit)
by
Light
on 22/04/2014, 00:57:59 UTC
Of course it does.

1 cold wallet = Only takes one security incident, one private key stolen, all funds gone.
10 cold wallets = Needs 10 security incidents to lose everything, otherwise one breach only loses 10%.

Naturally the 10 cold wallets need to be stored separately and in different manners in order to be effective.

Same goes with the hot wallet.  One flaw in the app or servers and the entire thing could be drained.  Multiple hot wallets on separate servers with very different access methods will make it much more difficult for a hacker to take all of the hot balance.  More likely they'd go for the first one they could get and after that Vault would know and shut the rest down.

The thing is - if it truly is an air gapped cold storage system it is extremely difficult for someone to actual get hold of the private keys. Setting up 10 different cold storage systems is a lot of effort and wouldn't really achieve that much as if you had a flaw in one you'd have that same flaw in all of them.

The whole purpose of a hot wallet is not to have all your coins in there so that if it is stolen it isn't such a big deal. Trust me - having many different hot wallets which different access methods is not exactly easy to manage nor is it that cost effective. Honestly, they'd be better off getting lots of pen-testing done and keeping admin accounts away rather than trying to split up their wallets.