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🧾 Zaphenath White Paper

A secure, time-based data release protocol powered by smart contracts.

1. Introduction

Zaphenath is a smart contract protocol designed to securely store encrypted data and release it based on user-defined inactivity timeouts. Its core objective is to provide conditional data disclosure mechanisms for sensitive information such as digital wills, contingency business plans, or legal arrangements.

The protocol enables key owners to assign access permissions to external users ("custodians") based on roles and ping activity. Once the defined timeout passes without a ping from the key owner or designated proxy, the encrypted data becomes accessible to specified custodians.

Zaphenath combines smart contract automation, access control delegation, and cryptographic enforcement of inactivity conditions into a single, auditable protocol.

2. Problem & Motivation

2.1 The Problem

Sensitive information, such as final wishes, internal corporate knowledge, or legal claims, often requires access only when the original holder is inactive, incapacitated, or deceased. Traditional systems lack:

  • Automatic release mechanisms
  • Verifiability and transparency
  • Cryptographic integrity and decentralization

2.2 Existing Solutions Fall Short

  • Centralized services: Depend on trust in institutions.
  • Legal arrangements: Require physical intervention.
  • Cloud storage + access sharing: Risk of early data leakage.

There’s no secure, decentralized, and programmable solution for time-gated disclosure based on user inactivity.

3. Zaphenath Solution Overview

Zaphenath implements a timeout-driven key management system:

  1. A user creates a key, associates it with encrypted data, and configures a timeout window.
  2. As long as the user "pings" periodically, the data stays private.
  3. If the timeout passes with no ping, custodians with appropriate roles can access the data.

Key Features

  • Per-owner key isolation
  • Role-based access control: Owner, Writer, Reader, None
  • Per-user canPing flag
  • Custodian delegation and revocation
  • Readability toggle before timeout

Innovation Highlights

  • Trustless liveness signaling without relying on external oracles
  • Time-conditioned encryption with programmable release
  • Modular role enforcement per key instance
  • Non-custodial delegation model using self-custody-compatible logic

4. Why Blockchain?

4.1 Trustless Timekeeping

Smart contracts ensure:

  • Transparent enforcement of ping/timeout logic
  • Immutability of time-based state transitions

4.2 Decentralized Custody

By using Ethereum-compatible networks, Zaphenath avoids reliance on any single authority or infrastructure.

4.3 On-chain Access Logic

Every access, update, or ping action is verified, logged, and timestamped, offering traceability and auditability.

4.4 Compatibility with Decentralized Storage

Zaphenath stores only encrypted pointers or data references, which can integrate seamlessly with:

  • IPFS
  • Arweave
  • Encrypted S3 buckets

This hybrid model enables scalable and private storage without bloating on-chain data.

5. Technical Architecture

5.1 Core Contracts

  • Zaphenath.sol: Entry point and state manager
  • KeyData: Stores encrypted content, timeout metadata, and access maps
  • Custodian: Encodes a user’s role and ping rights
  • Role: Enum of access levels

5.2 Data Flow

sequenceDiagram
  participant User
  participant Contract
  participant Custodian

  User->>Contract: createKey(keyId, data, timeout)
  loop alive
    User->>Contract: ping(keyId)
  end
  alt timeout expired
    Custodian->>Contract: readKey(keyId)
  end

5.3 Ping Mechanism

Pings reset the lastPing timestamp. Timeout enforcement compares block.timestamp - lastPing against the timeout.

5.4 Access Rules

  • Roles are enforced using onlyRoleOrAbove()
  • Owner always bypasses role checks
  • Custodian access requires explicit role + canPing (if sending ping)

5.5 Gas & Storage Considerations

  • Each key creates a new storage mapping under a derived bytes32 key.
  • Role and ping rights use compact structs for efficient access.
  • All data is stored as opaque bytes allowing for encrypted payloads of any format.

6. Use Cases

Use Case Description
Digital Will Keys released to heirs after owner inactivity
Business Fallbacks Keyholders can access credentials or policies upon team absence
Dead Man's Switch Secrets become readable if not reset within specified interval
Multi-party Disclosure Share read rights among multiple stakeholders post-timeout
Posthumous DAO Voting Reveal final votes after wallet inactivity period
Time-locked Research Delay release of intellectual property or publications

7. Roadmap

Phase Timeline Deliverables
MVP ✅ Q2 2025 Smart contract suite, tests, deploy scripts
Docs & Site ✅ Q2 2025 MkDocs reference, README, changelog
Audit Q3 2025 Static analysis, formal verification
UI Portal Q4 2025 DApp for key creation, pinging, and read access
DAO/Grants Q1 2026 Community governance & integrations

8. Team

Zaphenath is developed by contributors at Astervia, a research collective building decentralized infrastructure for privacy-respecting automation.

  • Ruy (Rfluid) Vieira – Lead Solidity Engineer
    Architect of Zaphenath's smart contract infrastructure, with deep expertise in cryptographic protocols, distributed systems, and automation logic.

  • Pedro Caninas – Head of Business Development & Strategic Alliances
    Leads external relations, partner ecosystems, and product-market fit strategy across legaltech, DAO tooling, and digital estate infrastructure.

  • João Victor Zaniboni – Director of Strategy & Ecosystem Growth
    Drives long-term vision, funding alignment, governance modeling, and cross-sector adoption of Zaphenath across web3 and institutional platforms.

9. Marketing & Community Strategy

  • Open-source and donation-based sustainability model
  • Community support via GitHub Discussions
  • Long-form educational content and walkthroughs
  • Targeting legaltech, DAOs, NGOs, and decentralized infrastructure builders
  • Consulting packages for legal teams, death-tech startups, and custody protocols

10. Safety Considerations: Time Oracle Desync

Zaphenath relies on block.timestamp as a time oracle to enforce timeout conditions. While this is a standard and generally reliable approach in Solidity, it is subject to miner manipulation within a limited range (~±15 seconds).

Potential Attack: Timestamp Skewing

An adversarial miner or validator could attempt to advance or delay the block timestamp to:

  • Trigger premature timeout (disclosing data early)
  • Delay timeout enforcement (preserve secrecy longer than intended)

Safety Measures

  • The protocol enforces reasonable timeout durations (recommended ≥ 1 day), which mitigates the impact of ±15s drift.
  • High-resolution pings (e.g., hourly) are not recommended in high-risk use cases.
  • The contract assumes honest-majority consensus in L1 or L2 block production.
  • Users should avoid critical decisions based on near-expiry timeout margins.

Developer Recommendations

  • Use block explorers or simulation tools to validate timeout behaviors.
  • For mission-critical deployments, consider future support for cross-chain oracles (e.g., Chainlink) to confirm liveness.

11. Testing & Verification

Zaphenath is built with a security-first mindset. Its smart contract suite is developed using Foundry for speed, reproducibility, and high-quality testing.

11.1 Test Strategy

  • Unit tests ensure correctness of individual contract functions like createKey(), ping(), and readKey().
  • Role tests verify permission boundaries, ensuring Reader and Writer roles behave as expected.
  • Edge case tests simulate high timeout deltas, ping intervals, unauthorized access attempts, and role transitions.
  • Failing scenarios are explicitly tested using vm.expectRevert(...) for unauthorized calls.

Over 10+ test cases are implemented with forge-std and executed with forge test -vv.

11.2 Code Coverage & Linting

  • Achieves 100% branch coverage on core contract logic
  • Linting and formatting enforced via forge fmt and solhint
  • Console logs used for granular test feedback (console.log() from forge-std)

12. Deployment

Zaphenath supports deterministic, reproducible deployment using Foundry’s forge script module.

12.1 Deployment Pipeline

  1. Compile contracts with:
forge build
  1. Dry run deployment using:
forge script script/Zaphenath.s.sol --rpc-url <RPC> --dry-run
  1. Broadcast deployment:
forge script script/Zaphenath.s.sol --rpc-url <RPC> --private-key <KEY> --broadcast

12.2 Networks Supported

  • ✅ Anvil (local development)
  • ✅ Sepolia / Goerli (testnets)
  • ✅ Mainnet / L2 rollups (Optimism, Arbitrum)
  • ✅ Private Ethereum networks (see security docs)

12.3 Deployment Output

The deploy script logs:

  • Contract address
  • Transaction hash
  • ABI (for frontend integration)

12.4 Deployment Recommendations

  • Use CREATE2 for deterministic contract addresses in future DAO integrations
  • Persist deployment metadata to deployment.json for frontend syncing
  • Consider multi-sig upgrade patterns for future contract evolution

13. Future Directions

Cross-Chain Interoperability

Zaphenath can be adapted to operate on multiple chains with standardized time signaling across rollups, sidechains, and L1s.

Zero-Knowledge Enhancements

  • zkPing proofs to allow off-chain proof of liveness without sending an on-chain transaction
  • zkAccess for conditional disclosure without revealing custodian addresses

Social Recovery

Planned integration with social recovery frameworks to allow delegated key reactivation via quorum-based pinging.

DAO Module

An optional module for DAOs to use inactivity-triggered data exposure to enforce proposals, time-locked voting, or treasury disclosures.

14. Conclusion

Zaphenath brings a novel approach to on-chain data custody. By tying access logic to ping-based activity, it creates a programmable mechanism for conditional release — ideal for high-trust, time-sensitive scenarios.

It is:

  • Minimal by design
  • Secure through enforced roles
  • Extensible via custom custody policies

Join us in building verifiable trust at rest.