Reclaiming lost private keys! LAND/NAME/MANA/ITEM

[BET]

Proposal:

Reclaiming lost land/names/wearables/mana/etc from lost private keys.
As the userbase for decentraland grows we will encounter a lot of lost keys…

My suggestion is to allow any address that has interacted with your wallet before the time of purchase to be able to sign a tx to send items to a new address.

How it would work:

1. Say a friend/CEX has sent you some mana/eth before…
2. You can contact them, saying you lost your land and ask them to sign a tx with your new eth address…
3. 90 day grace period… Where if the user signs in then the tx is void… Also gives the DAO time to dispute any suspicious activity (Like kick token trying to do a heist)…
4. User pays the transfer fee to send the items from the old wallet to new…

Motivation: I really want to simplify the process of reclaiming lost game items, instead of minting mana and hiring a team of investigators… I think my suggestion will solve 95%+ of future problems…

Background:
Imagine that you lose your account right now…
Check your internal transactions on etherscan (before you received an ERC721) and ask yourself how much do you trust them… You might see a few CEXs that you have done KYC with… You might see your friends accounts…
Not often do you receive free crypto from someone you don’t trust…

Use cases:
I believe that my suggestion really does a decent job of solving most lost account problems with the maximum amount of privacy…
This proposal is basically an automated version of what a DAO investigator team would be doing…
Want more security? Then you can send all your items to yourself and have 2 backups!

Potential problems:

1. ‘I also lost access the keys that funded the account’ - Go to the DAO with an ETH address that funded that one…
2. CEXs might not play ball… Shame on them…
3. People selling their ERC721s OTC… Will require an additional amount of trust unless you don’t…

All suggestions welcome!

[yemel]

Hi Bet,

This is an interesting proposal, we have been discussing this topic around Ethen’s case and we only think about LAND and STATES. It makes sense to include names and wearables because these also are unique non-fungible tokens and it makes sense to have a way to recover them. I’m not sure if we should handle MANA the same way.

@BET

Not often do you receive free crypto from someone you don’t trust…

Airdrops are a common thing in the industry, check out on etherscan and you might find you have tokens you didn’t know about. Maybe we should restrict it to addresses you send crypto to.

Regardless of the methodology, we first need a way for the DAO to recover NFTs of an address. First, it will have to go through voting because it’s simpler and safer. Then we could speed up the process or provide an alternative path to recover your assets.

Another idea that has been commented on is to build an opt-in solution for users to declare what to do with their assets if they lost access to their funds or die. Think of it as a will. In most countries, you could write a will, build a Trust or a similar legal vehicle to hand over your assets after your death. If you fail to do that, you can always resort to a judge (in this case the DAO) to move your assets for you.

[HPrivakos]

About MANA, it’s impossible to recover even if we wanted to.
The MANA smartcontract is not upgradable and the owner address of the smartcontract has been burned, so no update ever on MANA smartcontract is possible.

@yemel

Another idea that has been commented on is to build an opt-in solution for users to declare what to do with their assets if they lost access to their funds or die. Think of it as a will.

I like that idea, so when you still have access to your address you sign a message saying “If I don’t move assets for a year, I authorized the DAO to move them to this address”.
But you can also do it as a form of multisig, so if you lose an address but still have access to the two or three others you still have access to your assets, so you don’t need the DAO in case you lose your assets

[BET]

Yes, mana is a bit more complicated…
I’m fully in favor of getting mana sent back to their rightful owners but it will come with some complications…
I will probably leave out MANA in this proposal and if the wears/land/names works then maybe we could see a MANA v2.

Most airdrops should get instantly flagged somehow

My thoughts was that the process would be similar to:
https://rewards.decentraland.org/
And could come with a little burn mechanism built in…

Some aspects of this proposal can be similar to a will…
You can send a tx to a friend or family member if you want them to pick up your stuff one day…

These steps should make users feel more comfortable in the event they lose their keys or get hacked…

[yemel]

Hi bet,

I started a pull request with the change LAND and ESTATE smart contracts.

WIP: Probate process

The method sets an operator to an inactive account. An operator is allowed to transfer all tokens of the sender on their behalf.

I found there was a ping mechanism in place and I use it to require at least 1 year of inactivity. I’m not sure if this mechanism is needed whatsoever. Thoughts?

The next step is to add tests and get a code review from the community.

[BET]

Does an operator address have to have contact with the address prior to losing the account?
Otherwise I think this proposal is quite dangerous if someone pinged all address’ at the same time…

[Sango]

This will make it Centraland rather than decentraland. Not only is it making it centralised it also opens up a vulnerability of people being able take land which isnt theirs.

Your private key is your identity and if you loose that then thats it in the crypto world. You need to be responsible for your own stuff if not im sure theres a service who will hold your land for you who will never loose their keys. but as for decentraland taking this into effect i think it will be a bad thing to do

[yemel]

I agree on this for MANA which is a non-unique fungible token.

However for NFTs like LAND and STATE that are unique non-fungible tokens it’s different. If someone lose their private keys we lost the LAND and a valuable user forever.

The mechanism to regain control of a plot of LAND or STATE should be decentralized, through a vote of MANA holders. We can still call it Decentraland, a world owned by its users.

[yemel]

Please see this related post:

Vote yes to return lost land to the rightful owner and protect your land from the unexpected

Hi BET and San, Thanks for your comments. Let me share with you the summary of our call with Ethen. Glossary: Owner: Sole address marked as the owner of a parcel or state. Operator: Set of addresses with Owner privileges over one or all assets of an address (they can transfer land). Proposed modification: Include a method in the smart contracts handling parcels and states to allow the owner of the contract (currently the DAO) to grant/remove operator privileges over all assets of an addres…

[BET]

I disagree that this makes it ‘centraland’…
It could still be a decentralized and governed process at the same time…
I find it annoying that half of the squares on decentraland contribute nada…
You can’t throw money at problems and hope they give you a nice return…
It’s a complicated process but I’m in favor of chaos and innovation personally!

[johnkammy]

Decentraland is the virtual reality platform that runs on the Ethereum blockchain. It enables its users to purchase land which can be later built and monetized. It is called the first virtual platform which is completely owned and managed by the users. The protocol has three layers namely the Consensus layer, the Land Content layer and Real-time layer.

[TheNFTGallery]

I was told that the operator can not transfer land. If someone has operator rights over my land, they can transfer it? What does that mean for the owner?