Nunchuk Inc. is an open supply, multi-signature cellular pockets for superior bitcoin safety, self-custody, and inheritance. Launched in 2020, the app provides customers a feature-rich toolkit to arrange high-security bitcoin wallets, with little competitors on the cellular app market, as most different cellular wallets don’t help multi-signature performance in any respect.
Most wallets require a single non-public key to signal a legitimate Bitcoin transaction. Multi-signature Bitcoin wallets, in flip, require multiple non-public key to signal a legitimate Bitcoin transaction, typically a threshold, corresponding to two of three or three of 5. This lock, so to talk, is enforced by the complete energy of the Bitcoin community, making it one of the vital safe methods to retailer wealth as we speak and possibly in historical past.
Nunchuk informed Bitcoin Journal they assist safe over a billion {dollars} price of bitcoin as we speak, “it’s our (paid) assisted providers which have helped customers safe +$1B in BTC to date.”, however that was not at all times the case. Born out of Bitcoin idealism within the thick of the COVID pandemic, Nunchuk was constructed to facilitate superior safety wallets that use multi-signature within the protection of self-custody. In 2022, as a younger start-up, these beliefs had been put to the take a look at, as activists of the Canadian Freedom Convoy Protests determined to make use of Nunchuk to safe bitcoins donated to the protest towards COVID repression.
The turmoil noticed over 1,000,000 {dollars} price of Bitcoin donated to Honk Honk Hodl, a gaggle of respected activists within the nation, to assist fund the prices of Truckers who had been gathering in Ottawa. The truckers had been placing their lives on the road to protest the intense restrictions put in place by the Canadian authorities in response to the pandemic, and had been going through large stress to go away the capital.
Over 20 bitcoins had been obtained right into a Nunchuk multi-signature pockets beneath the banner of Honk Honk Hodl. Nunchuk multi-sig was chosen to mitigate the chance of placing all that cash within the fingers of only one particular person.
Hugo Nguyen, founding father of Nunchuk, informed Bitcoin Journal that the Honk Honk Hodl pockets obtained so many particular person donations that it really broke the pockets. The app was not designed to signal transactions with so many bitcoin inputs, and the start-up needed to push an replace to let the activists simply transfer their funds.
The protests had been so efficient and gained such a optimistic reception internationally that Trudeau’s authorities panicked and invoked the Emergencies Act, a uncommon use of federal powers, which he used to attempt to shut down all sources of funding coming to the protesters, in an effort to scare them off the capital. This included 10 million {dollars} in donations from Canadians to a GoFundMe marketing campaign, which had been in the end returned to contributors after the cost processor confronted authorized motion from the Canadian authorities.
When it got here to the bitcoin donations, the digital foreign money’s alleged censorship resistance was put to the take a look at. Canada despatched a Mareva injunction to Nunchuk Inc., demanding the corporate freeze consumer funds and disclose consumer information to the federal government. Nunchuk, as a privacy-oriented, non-custodial pockets, had no energy to conform. Nunchuk was simply two months outdated on the time, a self-funded startup. This was their response:
“Expensive Ontario Superior Courtroom of Justice,
Nunchuk is a self-custodial, collaborative multisig Bitcoin pockets. We’re a software program supplier, not a custodial monetary middleman.
Our software program is free to make use of. It permits folks to eradicate single factors of failure and retailer Bitcoin within the most secure manner attainable, whereas preserving privateness.
We don’t acquire any consumer identification info past electronic mail addresses. We additionally don’t maintain any keys. Due to this fact:
– We can not “freeze” our customers’ property.
– We can not “stop” them from being moved.
– We would not have information of “the existence, nature, worth and site” of our customers’ property. That is by design.
Please lookup how self-custody and personal keys work. When the Canadian greenback turns into nugatory, we shall be right here to serve you, too.
Sincerely,
The Nunchuk group”
In a matter of hours, over 14 bitcoins had been delivered to over 90 truckers by hand in envelopes, roughly 8000 Canadian {dollars} on the time, every. By the point the Canadian police raided Nicholas St. Louis’s residence — the primary activist behind the Honk Honk Hodl marketing campaign — a lot of the bitcoin had been distributed. Solely 0.28 BTC had been reportedly seized within the raid. As much as 6 BTC in complete had been frozen from different truckers and protesters within the turmoil, leading to a tough 70% success fee for the censorship-resistant foreign money.
These occasions had a deep influence on the Nunchuk group, a few of whom give up out of concern of authorized prosecution. Others who stayed and Nunchuk Inc. survived, its future design cast within the fires of the late COVID political turmoil.
The Nunchuk That Survived
Quick ahead two years or so, and Nunchuk has carved itself a stable area of interest throughout the Bitcoin trade. It’s the solely open supply, absolutely featured multi-signature cellular pockets for cellular gadgets. The place options exist, they’re typically both antiquated, almost deserted, or closed-source and never practical with out being a paid consumer.
Nunchuk can be the primary vital implementation of miniscript, a high-level programming language for Bitcoin script, which lets builders construct Bitcoin “good contracts” with class and energy not simply achieved utilizing Bitcoin’s native scripting language. Miniscript was invented by Pieter Wullie, a legendary Bitcoin core developer with 14 years of expertise contributing to the digital foreign money.
The pockets lets customers create software program and {hardware} keys primarily based on a variety of {hardware} signing gadgets, supporting essentially the most superior Bitcoin deal with varieties, like Segwit and Taproot. Customers can then create a totally customizable vary of wallets, from single key to superior, to any mixture of a number of keys the consumer deems helpful.
Nunchuk even helps decaying multi-sigs, that are helpful for inheritance and sophisticated setups. For instance, you may want a 3 of 5 multi-sig the place you management all of the keys however they’re geographically distributed, this can be a frequent mannequin for prime worth inheritance accounts. A type of keys might be shared with an inheritor. After 5 years, the multi-sig degrades to a single-key pockets, letting your inheritor transfer the cash. To forestall your inheritor from gaining access to your Bitcoin earlier than your time, you would want to maneuver the cash to a recent multi-sig 3 of 5 and reset the clock.
It’s vital to notice that creating your personal complicated safety setups has dangers; typically, customers who turn out to be so subtle that they determine to make use of absolutely featured instruments like Nunchuk find yourself creating mazes for his or her Bitcoin that they find yourself getting locked out of. It’s vital to watch out and usually use finest practices when creating self-custody Bitcoin wallets to keep away from frequent pitfalls.
Nunchuk has commonplace templates and an entire inheritance function set designed to assist non-technical Bitcoin customers profit from the complete energy of Bitcoin self-custody. They even introduced the inheritance answer for Bitcoiners that doesn’t require a third-party middleman to co-sign a switch. Common options like Casa pockets supply inheritance options, however as a co-signer, in addition they get a full view into consumer information, and if the corporate fails, customers should take an alternate key-signing path to get better funds. Nunchuk’s on-chain inheritance pockets leverages time locks and pre-designed multi-sig setups like the instance above to present customers most management and sovereignty of their inheritance setup.
Nunchuk nonetheless helps aided (off-chain) inheritance options as nicely, which use the co-signer mannequin of inheritance and might be simpler to make use of, providing related options as different fashionable Bitcoin inheritance options.