🧠 What Is a Crypto Vault?

🚪 Wallets vs Vaults: What’s the Difference?
🔒 Why Cold Wallets Aren’t Secure (Anymore)
🤖 Smart Vaults: Programmable Security
🧩 Real Examples: How Vaults Could’ve Stopped Recent Hacks
🔐 How ZeroSig Reinvents the Vault
📣 Want to Secure Your Stack?

🚪 Wallets vs Vaults: What’s the Difference?

Let’s keep it simple:

Wallet = a key that can sign transactions.
Vault = a policy engine that decides whether a transaction should be signed.

A wallet blindly signs if it holds the right private key. A vault adds logic. It can:

Approve only allowlisted addresses
Require 2FA or OTP
Block risky behavior (like draining funds at 2am)
Limit daily spending

In other words: a vault has an opinion. A wallet does not.

🔒 Why Cold Wallets Aren’t Secure (Anymore)

Cold wallets used to be the gold standard: airgapped, offline, unhackable.

But here’s the truth in 2025:

If cold wallets were safe, over $1.5B wouldn’t have been stolen last year from people using them.

Common cold wallet failures:

✅ Key leaked via phishing or clipboard malware
✅ Signed malicious tx manually, didn’t notice
✅ Got tricked by a fake frontend (hello, drainer sites)
✅ Insider compromise or social engineering

They’re secure until they’re not. And once compromised? They have zero guardrails. No 2FA. No policy logic. Just blind signing.

🤖 Smart Vaults: Programmable Security

Smart contract vaults flip the model:

Instead of just holding a private key, your wallet becomes a programmable account — a smart contract that executes only when its conditions are met.

Examples of smart vault features:

🔐 OTP-based approvals (like Web2 2FA, but on-chain)
📋 On-chain allowlists (limit where funds can go)
🧠 Rules engine (e.g., block txs >$10K outside business hours)
👥 Multisig or session keys for teams and delegation

Basically, you turn your wallet into a firewall.

🧩 Real Examples: How Vaults Could’ve Stopped Recent Hacks

✅ Case: Ledger Connect Drainer

Hackers compromised the frontend and tricked users into signing malicious approvals.

Vault fix: Transaction policy would have flagged unknown contract interaction + OTP required to approve.

✅ Case: SlowMist Report – DAO Treasury Drains

Insider dev used team multisig access to drain funds before offboarding.

Vault fix: On-chain access policy would’ve revoked access + required quorum after role change.

✅ Case: Phishing Victims with Cold Wallets

They manually signed approvals for drainer contracts.

Vault fix: OTP and allowlist would have blocked the interaction, even with the key.

🔐 How ZeroSig Reinvents the Vault

Most wallets are either basic hot wallets or dumb cold storage.

ZeroSig is a smart contract vault with:

🧠 On-chain policies via a Gatekeeper contract
🔁 OTP-based transaction approvals
📲 Web2-style 2FA meets Web3 wallets
🧱 EIP-4337 architecture (Account Abstraction FTW)

Your vault becomes programmable. Your stack becomes resilient. Your risk becomes manageable.

Because your wallet should say "no" — not just "signed."

📣 Want to Secure Your Stack?

🧠 Want more breakdowns like this?

We publish security reports, trading tips, and vault design patterns every week.

📣 Join our beta tester Telegram → https://t.me/zerosigxyz
🔐 Try the vault at → https://www.zerosig.xyz

Table of Contents