Bitcoin Keeper offers advanced features to enhance your security and experience, two of them being Hide Vaults and Archived Vaults.

What is the Hide Vault feature?

Hide Vault is a security feature designed to keep your vaults out of sight. It is ideal for users who want an added layer of discretion. By hiding a vault, you can prevent it from appearing on your home screen, hiding it from prying eyes. Introducing deniability, the feature is especially useful under duress.

When to Hide a Vault?

• Under Threat: If you are under threat from someone who is trying to coerce you into revealing your bitcoin holdings, you can hide your vaults and claim that you don’t have any. This provides an additional layer of protection in high-pressure situations where you need to keep your bitcoin safe.
• Privacy Concerns: If you want to keep certain vaults discreet from others who might have access to your device.
• Reducing Clutter: If you manage multiple vaults, hiding some can simplify your user experience by reducing the number of vaults visible on your screen.

What is an Archived Vault?

An Archived Vault, on the other hand, serves a different purpose. When you change one or more keys in a vault — perhaps due to loss or theft of a key — it creates an archived version of the vault. These vaults keep the old key configuration, but they remain accessible if you still hold the requisite number of keys needed for a quorum.

The archiving process ensures that even though the vault’s key configuration has been updated: 1) The funds stored in that vault (if any) are not lost. 2) If bitcoin is sent to an older address from the archived vault, you are still able to withdraw them as long as the quorum is met with the available keys.

When and Why to Archive a Vault?

• Key Loss: If one of your vault’s keys is lost, you may need to replace it. This change creates an archived version of the vault with the old configuration.
• Key Theft: In case a key is compromised or stolen, you’ll need to change it, resulting in an archived vault.
• Key Rotation: Regular key rotation for security purposes can also lead to the creation of an archived vault.

The primary reason a vault gets archived is to ensure that any changes to its keys do not affect your ability to access the funds stored in that vault. It is a safeguard against unexpected situations, such as losing or compromising one of your keys.

Key Differences Between Hidden Vaults and Archived Vaults

• Visibility vs. Configuration: The main difference lies in their purpose. Hidden vaults are about hiding vaults from view, while archived vaults involve maintaining access to older versions of vaults with changed key configurations.
• Use Case: Hidden vaults are for enhanced privacy or to reduce clutter, whereas archived vaults are used when keys are changed, ensuring you can still access your funds under previous key setups.
• Fund Access: With hidden vaults, the vault remains fully functional, just hidden. With archived vaults, while the vault holds an older key configuration, you can still access your funds if you meet the quorum requirements.

Importance of Archived Vaults

Without archived vaults, changing a key configuration could potentially deny you access to your funds permanently, especially if the vault and app are not backed-up properly. Archived vaults act as a safety net, allowing you to manage your keys flexibly while ensuring access to your funds.

Where to find these features?

You’ll find these features within the settings of each vault that you create within Keeper.

tl;dr

Both Hide Vaults and Archived Vaults offer unique features that enhance the security and usability of Bitcoin Keeper. While hidden vaults allow for more discretion and a cleaner interface, archived vaults ensure that changes to key configurations don’t result in lost funds. Understanding how these features work can help you make the most of the app’s security features, giving you peace of mind as you stay humble and stack sats!