What is Oasis Vault? Exploring the Modern Solution to Self Custody

More than $2 billion was lost to hacks and scams in 2024, and Bybit, a top five crypto exchange by trading volume, was hit by the largest heist ever in February when North Korean digital terrorist unit, The Lazarus Group, hit the exchange for $1.5 billion.

While these highly sophisticated hacker groups primarily target DeFi protocols and exchanges, the everyday crypto user needs to remain equally as vigilant to avoid faulty links, protocol hacks, and software issues that can leave their private keys, and therefore their assets exposed.

As the age old saying goes: “not your keys, not your coins”.

The risks that come with self-custody can be debated, but in reality a vast majority of hacks and scams could be avoided if users eliminated singular points of failure where one security breach - whether it be via a seed phrase, a private key, or another form of infrastructure - stands to wipe them out.

In addition to malicious activity there’s also the threat of human error in the form of lost keys, which a backup solution through Oasis can mitigate.

Many users opt for legacy systems such as hardware wallets, which while tried and true, can be a little less versatile and can still be subject to singular points of failure.

Oasis Vault offers a solution to this issue with its 2-of-3 multisig (multisignature) design, which can be stacked on top of hardware wallets like Ledger.

Oasis Multisig

Through Oasis Vault, accounts are backed by three different keys, and two of the three keys must submit the same request of transaction in order for it to be executed. Oasis’ security design makes it the perfect “home base” for your cold-storage crypto assets.

The user holds two primary keys - often one on an externally owned account (EOA) and one on a ledger - while Oasis holds the third recovery key for recovery and inheritance claims. Due to the vault’s three-pronged design, Oasis never has control over any of the assets and simply protects the third backup key.

In layman's terms the model provides a two-factor authentication system for access to your wallet, with a recovery key in case one is ever lost or compromised. The model keeps your funds safe from singular points of failure, and also features a backup failsafe key that is held by Oasis in case of an emergency.

Through this model your funds are not only safe from malicious third parties, but are also safe from your own mistakes, and thanks to the 2-of-3 design Oasis itself never has access to your funds.

The model supports native BTC, ETH, and Ethereum based assets including ERC 721 and 1155 NFTs, as well as native CryptoPunks, ensuring that your high value NFTs can be safeguarded with the same diligence as your Bitcoin.

Oasis runs via a subscription model, offering three different tiers to its subscribers in the form of its Basic, Advanced, and Pro memberships. The Basic plan offers users one Oasis Vault and a free onboarding call, while the Advanced and Pro membership tout features such as unlimited vault addresses, an Oasis concierge call, and a free Ledger Flex hardware wallet to use in your security stack.

All three memberships also include an inheritance feature, where you can designate a set beneficiary wallet without giving up control or custody of the assets, which has been a pain point for self-custody proponents and their families in the face of tragedy in the past.

While malicious actors and pitfalls may never stop trying to come between crypto holders and their assets, improved infrastructure and transparency from products like Oasis Vault are keeping users safe, secure, and in control of their own assets.