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this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2024
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Why would you need a password if you already have a private key?
Also, one possible way to manage private keys is to split the key (and the risk/burden) using shamir's secret sharing and use that process for key recovery if you ever lose it. For example you split it among 6 people you trust and to recover the key, 4 of them need to give you a fragment of it.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shamir%27s_secret_sharing
Yea in theory you wouldn't need the password if you have the private key but here the key is only used for signing, maybe not for login. If it also needs to be backwards compatible. In any case, I don't think user-held private keys is viable.
Sharing with trusted parties... I dunno, I think again it's too technical and complicated to do it. And you'd need people on the platform you trust to already be there.
No, the key fragment is just a bit of text you can send to them by whatever secure side channel you want down to handing them a flash drive. Then when you need to recover the key you ask for it back
Normal non-technical people are never going to do this. It needs to be easy as clicking a button, otherwise it will never happen for them. Again, this is a neat technical solution but it completely forgets the human.