ST. MORITZ, Switzerland — May 9, 2024 — Ripple, the leading provider of enterprise blockchain and crypto solutions and XRPL Labs, the company that develops wallets and other software for the XRP ledger, have joined Swirlds Labs and the Algorand Foundation as the Founding Members of the DeRec Alliance, with two-year seats on the Technical Oversight Committee (TOC). Acoer, BankSocial, Blade Labs, The Building Blocks, Casper Association, Constellation Network, The Hashgraph Association, The HBAR Foundation, and Revive Labs have also joined as Alliance Members, to provide inputs on policies and oversight, and work together to develop a new interoperability recovery standard that will dramatically simplify the recovery and adoption of crypto and other assets.

As Web3 applications become mainstream, application providers want to make the user experience seamless, user-friendly, and simple enough to gain widespread adoption by millions worldwide. Today, the experience requires a highly sophisticated user, willing to take on the onerous task of securing their online secrets, such as digital assets, accounts, keys, and passwords. Decentralized recovery makes cold storage, self-custody, and other earlier forms of account recovery unnecessary for any kind of asset.

Invented by Dr. Leemon Baird, co-founder of Hedera, and initially launched by members of the Hedera and Algorand ecosystem in January of this year, the DeRec Alliance aims to bring together the Web3 ecosystem to offer an open-source, industry-standard methodology that makes digital asset recovery painless and secure across wallets.

Founding Members – leading oversight and governance

Founding members hold a two-year seat on the Technical Oversight Committee (TOC), provide input on Alliance governance structure, and offer input on core Alliance policies.

“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.”

“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 addresses one of the biggest challenges facing mainstream crypto adoption—secure and user-friendly management of private keys. By establishing clear standards for key recovery, this collaboration across the crypto industry empowers individuals to take control of their digital assets with confidence. Ripple is committed to supporting this effort and working alongside other leaders to create a more interoperable and accessible ecosystem. Together, we can revolutionize how users manage their private keys, representing a major step forward for user security and adoption – not just for XRP Ledger users, but for everyone in crypto.” – Markus Infanger, Senior Vice President of RippleX

“As we work towards mass retail adoption, it’s becoming increasingly clear that advanced yet user-friendly solutions for key recovery are essential. ⁤⁤The DeRec Alliance comes at a critical moment, 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.” ⁤⁤–Wietse Wind, Founder & CEO, XRPL Labs ⁤

Alliance Members – providing policy and overseeing input; building DeRec based solutions

Alliance members nominate for and vote in Technical Oversight Committee (TOC) elections and appoint two TOC seats with maintainers. They participate in quarterly Alliance member meetings and provide input on policy for TOC voting. And importantly, they also include a large number of organizations adopting the DeRec Alliance standards and best practices that make decentralized recovery simple and available to a wide number of end users.

“We’re excited to contribute to the growth and adoption of DeRec. DeRec has implications beyond just Web3 digital asset recovery, and we’re looking forward to exploring those in the work that we’re doing in our blockchain-enabled health data systems.” – Jim Nasr, CEO, Acoer

“DeRec is a brilliant way to jump one of the major hurdles of self-custody – recovery – and bring peace of mind to individuals and businesses on the fence about digital assets. We have partnered with Credit Unions to work as recovery helpers and deliver the first commercial DeRec solution called Secura, a core component of our wallet’s user experience and we are so excited to have worked with the DeRec Alliance to make it a reality.” – John Wingate, CEO, BankSocial

“Digital asset self-custody can revolutionize asset ownership and value exchange, but terrible user experience and the risk of permanent loss remains a challenge. By pioneering integration with the DeRec protocol and working closely with the Alliance, we aim to bring this innovation to the masses.” – Sami Mian, Co-Founder and CEO, Blade Labs

“As a vertical-agnostic venture builder with a portfolio of companies actively revolutionizing music, film, finance and more using the power of distributed ledger technologies and A.I., we are thrilled to have been part of the DeRec protocol effort from the very beginning and to continue bringing our collective vision for a more accessible and mainstream third web to millions in the next 24 months” — Gracie Page-Fozzati, Founding Partner, The Building Blocks

“We are excited to join this alliance, recognizing the opportunity for greater levels of interoperability across chains and significantly improved user experience that will enable mainstream adoption of token holding” – Ralf Kubli, Senior Director, Casper Association

“DeRec’s cross-chain and cross-collaborative foundation is a true expression of technology, mindshare, and leadership. This alliance is essential to not only bringing exponential adoption to web3 but also to institutions that require standards for secure key management alongside value creation.” – Ben Jorgensen, CEO, Constellation Network

“It is great to welcome aboard leading players in the decentralized ecosystem Ripple and XRP Labs, among many other leaders in the DLT and blockchain ecosystem. Working together and collaborating not only strengthens and grows decentralization but also attracts more users and project builders. The DeRec Alliance is very important whether for Hedera or others because it solves a problem that has been hindering the growth of digital assets and blockchain across the globe. Collaborations of this kind are proof that blockchain and DLT players cannot succeed in silos but rather by working hand in hand.” – Kamal Youssefi, President of The Hashgraph Association

“Improving the user experience and interoperability is required for mass adoption of digital assets and Web3 technologies more broadly. The innovative and democratized approach of DeRec is a huge step forward and we are excited to be a part of this evolution.” – Shayne Higdon, Co-Founder and CEO, The HBAR Foundation

“Recovery is the most pressing issue in today’s digital systems. The DeRec Alliance plays a critical role in securing digital infrastructure across both web2 and web3, and we are excited to help our customers easily adopt secure recovery technology and help drive forward future innovation.” – Dr. Andrew Stern, Founder and CEO, Revive Labs

The Protocol

The Decentralized Recovery (DeRec) open source protocol is a standard approach to secret management, based on secret sharing among a set of helpers (e.g. friends or businesses), who can assist the user to recover their secret when needed. Each helper’s share reveals no information about the original secret, and half the helpers can give the user their shares to reconstruct the secret, even when a user has lost their phone or other two-factor recovery device. The protocol includes automatic regular confirmations that helpers still have shares of secrets, and automatic re-sharing when secrets change or helpers join or leave. The user never reveals who the helpers are, nor even how many helpers there are, and even the helpers won’t know that.

Organizations interested in joining the DeRec Alliance, or in adopting technology that leverages the DeRec Alliance protocol can visit https://derecalliance.org/.