DashPass — Encrypted Credential Vault on Dash Platform

DashPass lets you store API keys, passwords, and other secrets encrypted on the Dash blockchain. Only someone with your private key can decrypt them — not the blockchain nodes, not your AI agent, not anyone else.

Your AI agent calls a CLI tool to store and retrieve credentials. Encryption happens locally before anything touches the network. The blockchain only ever sees ciphertext. Think of it as a password manager where the "cloud" is a decentralized blockchain.

Why DashPass Instead of a .env File

Quick Reference

CLI=skills/dashpass/scripts/dashpass-cli.mjs

# Store a credential
echo "sk-xxx" | node $CLI put --service anthropic-api --type api-key --level sensitive --label "Anthropic key" --value-stdin

# Retrieve a credential
node $CLI get --service anthropic-api --pipe

# Retrieve via mutual confirmation (2-of-2 Shamir shares)
node $CLI get --service anthropic-api --mutual

# List all credentials
node $CLI list

# Rotate to new value
echo "sk-NEW" | node $CLI rotate --service anthropic-api --value-stdin

# Check expiring credentials
node $CLI check --expiring-within 7d

# Vault status + credit balance
node $CLI status

# Delete a credential
node $CLI delete --service my-service

# Export as env vars (for eval)
eval $(node $CLI env --services anthropic-api,brave-search-api)

# Initialize Shamir 2-of-2 shares from CRITICAL_WIF
node $CLI init-shares

# Check share health
node $CLI share-status

# --- Key Backup & Recovery (standalone, no evo-sdk needed) ---
REC=skills/dashpass/scripts/dashpass-recover-cli.mjs

# Back up the vault key as a 24-word mnemonic (write it on paper, offline)
node $REC backup > /dev/tty            # prints to stdout; redirect as you see fit

# Confirm a written mnemonic still matches the current key (non-destructive)
cat words.txt | node $REC verify       # exit 0 = matches, 1 = mismatch

# Recover the WIF from the mnemonic after losing CRITICAL_WIF
cat words.txt | node $REC recover      # prints WIF; then: export CRITICAL_WIF=<wif>

Mutual Confirmation Protocol

DashPass supports a 2-of-2 mutual confirmation mode using Shamir Secret Sharing over GF(2^8). This upgrades the single-key Scheme C to require both Evo (main agent) and CC (execution agent) to agree before any credential can be decrypted.

How It Works

1. init-shares: Splits the 32-byte private key derived from CRITICAL_WIF into two Shamir shares using a random degree-1 polynomial evaluated at x=1 (Share A) and x=2 (Share B).
2. Share storage: Share A goes to ~/.dashpass/evo.share, Share B to ~/.dashpass/cc.share (both 0600 permissions).
3. get --mutual: Reads both shares, combines via Lagrange interpolation to reconstruct the private key, derives the per-credential AES key (same ECDH+HKDF as Scheme C), decrypts, then zeroes all sensitive buffers.
4. Audit trail: Every request/approval/denial/execution is logged to ~/.dashpass/audit.log in JSONL format. No key or share material is ever logged.

Security Properties

• Information-theoretic: Neither share alone reveals any information about the key (each byte is independently split).
• Backward-compatible: Without shares, get still works via Scheme C. With shares, get --mutual uses the new protocol.
• Memory-safe: Private key bytes and AES keys are zeroed immediately after use via Buffer.fill(0).

Setup

# One-time: generate shares from CRITICAL_WIF
node $CLI init-shares

# Verify health
node $CLI share-status

Key Backup & Recovery (P0-3)

The whole vault is encrypted under one root: the 32-byte private key derived from CRITICAL_WIF. Lose that key and every credential is gone — there is no maintainer-held recovery. v0.9 closes this with a BIP-39 mnemonic backup of the key, modelled on standard wallet recovery-word practice.

This lives in a separate, dependency-light tool (dashpass-recover-cli.mjs), not the main CLI, on purpose:

• recover is needed exactly when CRITICAL_WIF is lost — but the main CLI exits immediately when CRITICAL_WIF is unset, so recovery cannot live there.
• Recovery must work when the Platform SDK or network is unavailable. The tool imports only node:crypto + @scure/bip39 — no @dashevo/evo-sdk.

Commands

The mnemonic encodes the raw 32-byte key. Scheme C strips the WIF version/compression byte, so the derived AES key depends only on those 32 bytes — a recovered key decrypts every existing credential, unchanged.

Security notes

• The mnemonic is as sensitive as the WIF itself — full vault control. Never store it on the same disk as the vault; treat it like wallet seed words.
• backup/recover zero the key buffer (Buffer.fill(0)) after use.
• Recovery reconstructs the same key — it is not a second key hierarchy and does not re-encrypt anything.

Architecture

Encryption Flow (Scheme C)

CRITICAL_WIF
  │
  ▼
wifToPrivateKey()           ← Base58Check decode, extract 32-byte private key
  │
  ▼
ECDH self-sign (secp256k1)  ← computeSecret(getPublicKey()) → sharedSecret
  │
  ▼
HKDF-SHA256                 ← hkdfSync('sha256', sharedSecret, salt, 'dashpass-v1', 32)
  │
  ▼
AES-256-GCM                 ← per-credential encrypt/decrypt
  │
  ▼
Dash Platform               ← encryptedBlob + salt + nonce stored on-chain

Each credential gets a unique salt (32 bytes) and nonce (12 bytes), so even identical plaintext values produce different ciphertext.

Mutual Confirmation Flow (Shamir 2-of-2)

  INIT (one-time):
  ┌─────────────────────────────────────────┐
  │  CRITICAL_WIF → 32-byte private key     │
  │       │                                  │
  │       ▼                                  │
  │  For each byte i:                        │
  │    a0 = key[i], a1 = random              │
  │    f(x) = a0 ⊕ (a1 · x)   [GF(2^8)]   │
  │       │                                  │
  │  ┌────┴────┐                             │
  │  ▼         ▼                             │
  │ f(1)      f(2)                           │
  │ Share A   Share B                        │
  │ evo.share cc.share                       │
  │ (0600)    (0600)                         │
  └─────────────────────────────────────────┘

  DECRYPT (each request):
  ┌─────────────────────────────────────────┐
  │  1. CC: requestDecrypt(service, reason)  │
  │  2. Evo: approveDecrypt(request)         │
  │  3. combineShares(A, B)                  │
  │       │                                  │
  │       ▼                                  │
  │  Lagrange interpolation at x=0:          │
  │    key[i] = sA[i]·L1 ⊕ sB[i]·L2        │
  │    L1 = 2·inv(3), L2 = inv(3)           │
  │       │                                  │
  │       ▼                                  │
  │  Reconstructed private key               │
  │       │                                  │
  │       ▼                                  │
  │  ECDH + HKDF → AES key → decrypt        │
  │       │                                  │
  │       ▼                                  │
  │  Zero all buffers (privKey, aesKey,      │
  │  sharedSecret)                           │
  └─────────────────────────────────────────┘

Key design choices:

• Split the raw private key, not derived AES keys. One pair of shares covers all credentials — no per-credential splitting needed.
• GF(2^8) with irreducible polynomial 0x11d. Standard Rijndael/AES field. Byte-level operations, no bignum library required.
• Precomputed Lagrange coefficients. L1 and L2 are constants (2-of-2 at x=1, x=2), computed once at module load.

Security Model

What This Protects Against

What This Does NOT Protect Against

Honest Assessment

The current deployment is same-machine 2-of-2: both Evo (main agent) and CC (execution agent) run on the same host. This means:

• The security gain is procedural, not physical — it enforces a two-step confirmation workflow and audit trail, preventing a single code path from silently accessing credentials.
• It is not equivalent to a true multi-party setup where shares are on different machines controlled by different entities.
• The upgrade path to cross-machine deployment is straightforward: move cc.share to a separate host and replace readShareB() with a network request.

Troubleshooting

Share files missing or corrupted

# Check share health
node $CLI share-status

# If shares are missing or unhealthy, re-initialize:
rm -f ~/.dashpass/evo.share ~/.dashpass/cc.share
node $CLI init-shares

Note: Re-initializing creates new shares from CRITICAL_WIF. Existing encrypted credentials are unaffected — they are decrypted using the same private key derived from the same WIF.

Permission errors on share files

# Shares must be 0600, directory must be 0700
chmod 700 ~/.dashpass
chmod 600 ~/.dashpass/evo.share ~/.dashpass/cc.share

If init-shares reports success but share-status shows wrong permissions, check if a umask override is active.

get --mutual fails with decryption error

1. Verify shares are healthy: node $CLI share-status — both must show Healthy: yes
2. Verify WIF hasn't changed: If CRITICAL_WIF was rotated after init-shares, the shares are stale. Re-initialize.
3. Check credential exists: node $CLI list — confirm the service name matches exactly.

Audit log growing large

The audit log at ~/.dashpass/audit.log is append-only JSONL. To rotate:

mv ~/.dashpass/audit.log ~/.dashpass/audit.log.$(date +%Y%m%d)
# New entries will create a fresh audit.log automatically

Scheme C still works without shares

Yes — this is by design. Without shares, get (without --mutual) decrypts directly using CRITICAL_WIF. Shares are optional and additive. You can set up mutual confirmation at any time without re-encrypting existing credentials.

When to Use DashPass

Activate this skill when the user or agent needs to:

• Store an API key, token, password, or other secret
• Retrieve a previously stored credential
• Rotate / update an existing credential
• Check which credentials are expiring
• List all stored credentials
• Delete a credential from the vault
• Export credentials as environment variables
• Check vault status or credit balance
• Discuss credential management strategy
• Compare DashPass with other secret storage approaches

Agent Behavior Rules

1. Never log or display decrypted values unless the user explicitly asks. Use --pipe for programmatic access.
2. Always use --value-stdin (pipe) for put and rotate. Never use --value with literal secrets — it leaks to shell history.
3. Never hardcode WIF or Identity ID in scripts. They come from environment variables only.
4. Wait 3-5 seconds between consecutive write operations (put, rotate, delete) to the same Identity. Platform nonce timing constraint.
5. Check status first if any operation fails with credit or balance errors.
6. Testnet only — do not attempt mainnet operations unless the user explicitly authorizes.
7. Treat CRITICAL_WIF as radioactive — if it appears in conversation, immediately warn the user about exposure risk.
8. The recovery mnemonic is as radioactive as the WIF — it grants full vault control. Never display, log, or store it on the vault's disk; backup output goes to paper/offline only.

First-Time Setup

If the user has not used DashPass before, read the setup guide:

Read {baseDir}/setup.md

Detailed References

For full CLI command documentation (all parameters, examples, output formats):

Read {baseDir}/references/cli-commands.md

For encryption details, architecture diagrams, trust model, and security analysis:

Read {baseDir}/references/security-model.md

For troubleshooting common errors and known limitations:

Read {baseDir}/references/faq.md

For the prior security audit summary:

Read {baseDir}/references/security-analysis-summary.md

Command → Reference Map