Dead man’s switch: what it is and how it works

The most important role of SmartIndex admin is to take care of the portfolio funds. In a trusted setup, if something happens to the admin, the funds will be locked forever, SIDX will lost its value and investors their money.

Dead man's switch mechanism in SmartIndex to solve this issue

SmartIndex has a simple but effective mechanism to solve this issue. An scheduled mail set to be send the first day of every month contains the private key of the managed portfolio wallet along with instructions to airdrop the funds to token holders. The admin has to take care to change the scheduled date 5 days before the deadline. If the email is sent, all the funds in the managed portfolio wallet will be converted to BCH before the airdrop.

Trade-off

The main trade-off of this system is the leakage of the private key. Measures to solve it are:

A reminder is set 5 days before the deadline.

The mail content is encrypted with the recipient's public PGP key.

The mail is stored in a server unrelated to this web or any other cryptocurrency project.

Eventually, when SmartIndex gains the community trust, the recipient will be a well-known member of the community.