In a space plagued by wallet drainers, phishing kits, and seed phrase scams, Vultisig enters with a simple proposition: What if seed phrases themselves are the problem?
Vultisig isn’t a browser extension. It’s not a hardware device.
It’s a cryptographic vault system built around threshold signature schemes (TSS) — a design that aims to make self-custody as secure as multisig, without sacrificing usability.
The Core Idea: Kill the Seed Phrase
Most wallets rely on a simple premise: generate a private key (usually from a 12—or 24-word seed phrase), store it locally, and use it to sign transactions. But the industry has repeatedly seen that the weakest link is human behavior—people lose seed phrases, store them insecurely, or fall for scams.
JP Thor from Vultisig explains that this tech replaces this single point of failure with threshold cryptography. Private key material is never created in full, never stored, and never exists in one place. Instead, key shares are generated across multiple devices and must collaborate to sign transactions.
This means:
- No seed phrase to store or leak
- No recovery phrase to phish
- No master key on a single device to exploit
JP Thor from Vultisig also noted that if any single device happens to get lost or compromised, your wallet is still secure.
Our discussion with JP Thor is shared below.
Crowdfund Insider: What drew you to focus on crypto wallets and custody infrastructure?
JP Thor: In my view, wallets are the most critical layer in the Web3 stack—and the most neglected. Every meaningful interaction with a blockchain begins with a wallet. But for most users, that experience is confusing at best, and dangerous at worst. We’ve built a system that’s theoretically empowering but practically unusable for the average person. That contradiction fascinated me. How can a technology that promises self-sovereignty hinge on interfaces and recovery methods that routinely fail users?
So I started asking: What would a wallet look like if we designed it around humans instead of protocols? What if we stopped pretending every user is a security expert, and started designing systems that work even when people make mistakes?
That question has guided all my thinking since.
Crowdfund Insider: Why do you think wallet UX has lagged so far behind?
JP Thor: Crypto moved fast. Infrastructure was always playing catch-up to speculation. If your token pumped, your UX didn’t matter. But we’re past that phase now. The market’s maturing, and users are demanding real utility, real security, and real ease of use. Wallets, unfortunately, haven’t kept pace.
One big reason is the reliance on outdated security assumptions—most notably, the seed phrase. It’s a fragile, high-stakes method of key management that assumes users will never lose a piece of paper or fall for a scam. That’s not security; that’s denial.
The deeper issue is that most wallets were designed by developers, for developers. That worked fine in the early days. But now, with millions of users onboarding from all walks of life—many of whom have no technical background—it’s not sustainable.
Crowdfund Insider: You’ve said before that seed phrases are “a systemic risk.” Can you elaborate on that?
JP Thor: Seed phrases are a holdover from the early days of crypto, and they’ve aged terribly. They ask users to safeguard the keys to their financial life with methods that are, frankly, unreasonable—writing words on paper, punching them into metal or stashing them in a drawer, and hoping nothing ever goes wrong.
This model creates a binary outcome: either you keep your seed phrase safe forever, or you lose everything. That’s not how good systems work. In traditional finance, there are layers of protection—multi-factor authentication, fraud detection, password resets. Crypto, by contrast, still operates on a model where a single misstep can destroy your savings.
Beyond that, seed phrases are a magnet for attackers. We’re seeing phishing campaigns, clipboard exploits, browser vulnerabilities—all targeting private keys and seed phrases. When your entire system hinges on a single string of text, it doesn’t matter how decentralized your protocol is. That’s a centralized point of failure.
Crowdfund Insider: So what’s the alternative?
JP Thor: There’s a whole field of cryptographic innovation we’re not taking advantage of. Threshold signature schemes (TSS), multi-party computation (MPC), policy-based authorization, programmable signing conditions—these tools exist. They’ve been battle-tested in other industries. We just need to apply them thoughtfully in crypto.
At a high level, the goal is to move away from systems that require users to be perfect. Good design assumes imperfection and still keeps people safe. That’s how we get wallets that don’t just serve power users, but actually scale to the billions of people who need secure, user-friendly access to crypto.
Crowdfund Insider: You’ve also spoken about the role wallets will play in the AI economy. How do you see that evolving?
JP Thor: As autonomous agents begin transacting on-chain, wallets will become their control layer. These agents will need to hold assets, execute transactions, and interact with protocols. And they’ll need to do it securely, with or without human oversight, in real time.
That means the wallet isn’t just a key vault anymore. It becomes a programmable interface for policy enforcement—what transactions are allowed, when, under what conditions, with what approvals. This shift requires us to completely rethink how wallets are architected.
Most of today’s wallets are woefully unprepared for that future. They’re built for human users manually signing txs. But the next phase of Web3 will involve AI agents making thousands of decisions a day. If we don’t design wallets for that reality now, we’ll end up with a fragmented, insecure mess.
Crowdfund Insider: Some people argue self-custody is too risky for mainstream users. Should we be moving toward managed solutions instead?
JP Thor: Self-custody doesn’t have to mean “you’re on your own.” That’s the trap we’ve fallen into—equating decentralization with abandonment. But we can build wallets that are self-custodial and safe by default.
That’s the real challenge: giving users sovereignty without setting them up to fail. And it’s achievable. We can build recovery mechanisms that don’t rely on single points of failure. We can create onboarding flows that make security intuitive, not intimidating. We can let users set smart policies—like daily spending limits, time delays, or multi-device approval—without needing to write a line of code.
Ultimately, I think managed solutions will always exist, and that’s fine. But they shouldn’t be the only safe option. Users deserve a real choice between custodial convenience and self-custodial empowerment.
Crowdfund Insider: What’s the biggest misconception people have about wallet security?
JP Thor: That it’s a purely technical problem. It’s not. It’s a human problem. The biggest threat to your funds is usually not a zero-day exploit—it’s a social engineering attack, a phishing link, a misclick, a moment of confusion.
So solving for security means solving for behavior. We need interfaces that help people make the right choices, even when they’re tired or distracted. We need transparent transaction previews that explain what’s about to happen in an easy understandable format. We need training wheels, not landmines.
The best security model is one where the user doesn’t need to think about security all the time—because the design already gives them great protection.
Crowdfund Insider: What excites you most about the future of wallets?
JP Thor: The idea that wallets could become full-blown operating systems for our digital identities. Right now, they’re mainly used to store keys and sign transactions. But they could do so much more—manage credentials, enforce access policies, coordinate agents, power DAOs, and serve as a digital passport across different networks and services.
And if we do it right—if we bake security and usability into the foundation—we can make self-sovereignty not just a niche option, but the default for billions of people.
That’s the mission. And we’ve barely scratched the surface.