Digital Life Raft Guide
Architecture, Cryptography, and Physical Survival Instructions.
What is the Digital Life Raft?
The Digital Life Raft is engineered to securely store sensitive plaintext information and release it to you or the important people in your life.
- Extinction-proof & Self-sovereign - Not dependent on any company that can go out of business or be controlled.
- Shirt on one's back recovery - Get your digital assets using only what is in your head, no hardware, no notes.
- Heirs are supported but not in control - Two heirs have one key each, a third released by the network if you don't check-in regularly
- Your encrypted raft is not linked to you in any way - no user id - anywhere
- Hold any text secrets, instructions, passwords, keys, locations and more.
- Memory tooling enabling anyone to remember their 'key'.
- Multiple fallback options for different recovery scenarios.
- Long-term tooling support from a minimal, value-add company.
- As future-proof as possible
Additional Resources
📖 Guide Navigation (Table of Contents)
🚨 Why Is It Needed? (Real-World Scenarios)
Traditional backups fail under extreme circumstances. The Digital Life Raft was designed to survive severe physical, political, and biological events that render normal digital security obsolete.
⚙️ How It Works: System Architecture
1. Trustless & Sovereign Architecture
2. Conceptual Data Flow
3. Detailed System Architecture
🥷 Absolute Privacy
Your main identity stays hidden. Each backup you make gets a completely unique, mathematically unconnected "public face" to ensure absolute privacy on the blockchain.
To maintain absolute privacy and prevent linkability, the system never tracks emails or real names. Instead, it uses a strict hierarchical key design:
- Parent Raft Public ID (Root Identity): The root public key derived directly from the Owner's Master Passphrase. Used internally to discover your own rafts.
- Child Raft Public IDs (Raft-Specific Locators): For every individual raft, the system derives a separate, unique public key.
childMasterKey = HMAC-SHA256(parentRootKey, raftName)
childDdkPublicKey = Ed25519_GetPublicKey(childMasterKey) - The Unlinkability Property: Anyone inspecting the blockchain has absolutely no mathematical way of linking two different Child Raft Public IDs together or associating them with the same owner.
- Strict Heir Isolation: An Heir's physical card contains only the specific Child Raft Public ID for that exact raft. They cannot see if you have other rafts or other heirs.
🛡️ The 2-of-3 Shield
The Owner's Master Key is split into three independent 24-word shares. To decrypt the raft, use the owner's master passphrase or any 2 of these 3 heir passphrases:
👤 Automated Single-Heir Recovery
Since Phrase A is hosted on Solana, it must be securely encrypted. Solana maintains two separate encrypted copies of Phrase A:
- One copy is encrypted for Heir A. Heir A uses their private mnemonic to download/decrypt it, then combines it with physical Phrase B.
- The other copy is encrypted for Heir B. Heir B uses their private mnemonic to download/decrypt it, then combines it with physical Phrase C.
🤝 Collaborative Offline Recovery
If the blockchain or internet is completely offline, or if both Heirs are physically present, they can bypass the network entirely. By entering Phrase B and Phrase C manually into the offline app, it reconstructs the Master Key immediately.
02. 🏰 MEMORIZING YOUR MASTER PASSPHRASE
NEVER type your Master Passphrase into an internet-connected device or store it in a password manager. The key to "shirt on your back only" recovery is carrying your 24 words in your head.
The 2-part physical backup consists of a Randomized Word Grid and Recovery Coordinates. Neither file contains explicit branding or context linking them to this system.
• The Word Grid acts as your ultimate memory failsafe. Because it looks like a generic randomized dictionary, it can be securely stored in highly accessible locations (e.g., a digital vault, or shared with a trusted friend). If you lose everything else but remember part of your phrase, the grid's layout will help jog your memory.
• The Recovery Coordinates contain the exact shapes of your passphrase paths. Keep these strictly separated from the grid (e.g., hidden in a physical safe). Never store the two files together.
Don't worry—there are offline physical backups held by your heirs and any printed offline storage you keep. But memorization is your ultimate failsafe.
A. Batch Memorization
People are not naturally good at remembering 24 random words all at once. However, humans can easily remember 6 words. Master one small batch of 6 words at a time before moving on to the next.
B. The Memory Palace
The Memory Palace (Method of Loci) is a proven technique. Think of a physical place you know well, walk through it in your mind, and place mental links to the batch of 6 words as objects in the room.
03. ⛵ FUNDING & GAS RESERVES
The Digital Life Raft operates a fully decentralized, non-custodial, and sovereign architecture. To perform secure writes on-chain (creating, editing, check-ins, or unlocking), your raft relies on native gas resources. Review the field manual below to understand how funding works:
A. Why is Funding Needed?
Unlike corporate backups that run on centralized servers, your raft is fully independent and lives directly on public peer-to-peer networks. Performing actions on the blockchain (such as publishing your raft, registering updates, sending check-in pulses, or allowing heirs to request recovery) requires small network transaction fees (gas) natively paid in Solana (SOL).
B. Where Do My Funds Go?
• Assisted Mode (Relayer Gateway): When paying via the RaftCo Relayer (Bitcoin Lightning), your funds purchase a Lifetime Membership voucher. No SOL is stored in your Raft Public ID address on-chain; the Relayer sponsors all transaction fees from its treasury.
• Sovereign Mode (Direct SOL): All deposited SOL funds go directly to your unique, private Parent Raft Public ID address on the Solana blockchain. This wallet is derived in local memory from your Master Passphrase. **No company, relayer, or developer has access to this address or can touch your funds.**
C. How Can I See My Funds?
• Assisted Mode (Relayer Gateway): Navigate to the ⛵ Funding tab to view your active membership status (e.g. ACTIVE_LIFETIME). Your on-chain Raft Public ID address balance will remain 0 SOL.
• Sovereign Mode (Direct SOL): You can check your live SOL balance inside the ⛵ Funding tab (click 🔄 REFRESH BALANCE STATUS) or paste your Parent Raft Public ID address into any public Solana block explorer (like Solscan).
D. How Can I Withdraw My Funds?
• Assisted Mode (Relayer Gateway): Vouchers are redeemed permanently. Since no SOL was deposited to your Raft Public ID address, there is no on-chain balance to withdraw.
• Sovereign Mode (Direct SOL): You can withdraw your remaining SOL at any time. Import your 24-word Master Passphrase into any standard Web3 wallet application (such as Phantom, Solflare, or Backpack) as an existing recovery phrase and transfer your remaining SOL to any other address.
Note on data hygiene: When you click the CLEAR button on the top menu, all active keys and local credentials are immediately wiped from your browser's temporary memory.
E. Network Gateways & Infrastructure
To appreciate how the Digital Life Raft stays alive forever without a central hosting company, it is essential to understand the underlying engines (Solana & Arweave), the role of the Relayer Gateway, and Sovereign deployments.
Your raft relies on two separate decentralized networks:
• Solana (SOL): Tracks your Dead Man's Switch timer, check-in pulses, and metadata.
• Arweave (AR): Permanently and immutably stores your encrypted secrets payload.
The Relayer proxy is a stateless, privacy-preserving helper. Instead of setting up complex wallets, you use Bitcoin Lightning. The Relayer exchanges the funds and handles network interactions on your behalf.
[User Browser] ──( 1. Encrypts Raft locally )
│
├─( 2. Requests invoice for gas & storage )
│
▼
[RaftCo Relayer] (Stateless Proxy Gateway)
│
├─► [Irys Gateway] ──────► [Arweave] (Permanent Data)
│
└─► [Solana RPC] ────────► [Solana] (Time-Lock State)
Why it's Trustworthy:
- 100% Privacy: All encryption occurs locally. The Relayer stores no private keys and cannot view secrets.
- Hot-Wallet Proxy: The Relayer pays the network fees, saving you from exposing private keys containing real crypto.
- Metadata Indexing: Indexes your IDs to bypass slow public node queries for faster load times.
If you value absolute self-reliance, you can run a private gateway proxy. Your browser talks only to your custom endpoint URL, and your gateway's hot-wallet funds all requests.
[User Browser] ──( 1. Encrypts Raft locally )
│
├─( 2. Sends payload to Custom Gateway )
│
▼
[Sovereign Gateway] (Private Node)
│
├─► [Irys Gateway] ──────► [Arweave Storage] (Permanent Raft Data)
│ (Paid by Gateway Hot Wallet)
│
└─► [Solana RPC] ────────► [Solana DMS Program] (Time-Lock Switch State)
(Paid by Gateway Hot Wallet)
How Sovereign Mode operates:
- Self-Hosted Gateway: You host the relayer proxy on your own server or Docker container. You only fund the gateway's hot wallet once.
- Proxy Upload & Registration: The client sends standard HTTP REST requests to your gateway. The gateway uploads to Arweave and initializes the Solana time-lock PDA programmatically.
- Enhanced Privacy: Only your custom gateway sees your IP address. Bypasses all public blockchain node logs and rate limits.
For absolute zero-connectivity, you can select the None - Offline gateway. This disables all network requests.
- Local Operations: You can encrypt secrets and decrypt them locally in your browser memory.
- Download Physical Kit (ZIP): Save the standalone, printable client files to run on any air-gapped machine.
- Export Payload: Save your encrypted raft metadata locally as a JSON file.
04. 🤝 SECURITY PARTNERS & SERVICES
Need professional assistance securing your underlying keys, setting up collaborative custody, or drafting estate and trust legal documents that reference your raft?
Because the static raft.html client is designed to run entirely offline, decentralized, and commercial-free, we do not bundle third-party tracking links, affiliate cookies, or external advertisements here.
View verified security partners, hardware wallet guides, collaborative custody platforms, and digital estate planners.
Visit digitalliferaft.com/partners ↗