Ripple and XRPL Labs are the two new big names to join the Decentralized Recovery Alliance (DeRec) as founding members. The two join Swirlds Labs and Algorand Foundation, with two-year seats on the Technical Oversight Committee.
The alliance currently boasts well-known alliance members, including Acoer, BankSocial, Blade Labs, The Building Blocks, Casper Association, Constellation Network, The Hashgraph Association, The HBAR Foundation, and Revive Labs. These alliance members will give inputs on policy and provide oversight.
What’s Decentralized Recovery Alliance (DeRec)
The DeRec alliance was put together by Dr Leemon Baird, the co-founder of Hedera, and was launched in January 2024 as a joint effort between Algorand and Hedera. The movement seeks to revolutionize Web3 space through digital asset recovery by offering an open-source methodology.
DeRec’s industry-standard method makes the process of securing and recovering digital assets, passwords, accounts, and other secrets as straightforward as they are in the existing Web2 space.
DeRec Protocol explained
The DeRec protocol is essentially an open-source secret management protocol. The idea is to share tiny bits of secrets among a set of people – called helpers. These helpers will hold tiny bits of these secrets that can help the original user recover the secret whenever necessary.
Interestingly, each helper’s secret does not provide any sufficient information about the original secret. The original secret can only be constructed when half or more of the users share the tiny bits with the user.
Through an automatic mechanism to reshare the secrets whenever they change, users can always confirm that helpers have their tiny bits of secrets. All these happen anonymously within the protocol, with no real identity revealed.
DeRec’s Use Case – Industry Leaders’ takes
“I’m thrilled with the addition of these new members to the DeRec Alliance,” said John Woods, CTO of the Algorand Foundation. “As more and more influential projects join the Alliance, we reach the critical mass required for DeRec to yield its hugely positive impact on the industry.”
“The DeRec Alliance is a group of individuals and organizations committed to making the process of securing and recovering digital assets, accounts, passwords, and other secrets as simple as existing Web2 experiences,” said Dr. Baird. “We encourage every blockchain and every industry to work together to create the standards and the open source code needed to bring safety to the promise of Web3, without the complexity.”
“As we work towards mass retail adoption, it’s becoming increasingly clear that advanced yet user-friendly solutions for key recovery are essential[…]uniting experts to enhance interoperability and simplify the user experience without compromising security. I am proud that XRPL Labs is a founding member committed to pushing the boundaries of what’s possible together.” said Wietse Wind, Founder & CEO of XRPL Labs.
The Alliance leaders have strong opinions on the importance of the protocol, citing its potential to remove complexities and promote mass adoption of Web3.
