A Social Wallet Scheme with Robust Private Key Recovery

A social wallet is a type of digital wallet that stores contents such as crypto currencies with protection against the loss of private keys that guard access to the wallet. A significant barrier to the widespread use of digital wallets is the potential loss of the private key of a wallet and the consequent irrecoverable loss of wallet contents. The use of easy-to-remember private keys or easy-to-locate storing of private keys could result in the theft of private keys and wallet contents. A solution that allows the use of strong private keys along with a scheme to recover a lost private key is essential for the practical use of social wallets as a commodity service for non-specialist users. This paper presents the design, prototype implementation and security evaluation of a social wallet that incorporates biometric authentication and secret sharing techniques for its secure operation enabled through smart contracts.