The problem TapSafe solves

For more than a decade, every hardware wallet has asked users to do the same thing: write down a 24-word seed phrase and protect it forever. This works in theory, but it fails constantly in practice. People lose the paper. They store it where someone else finds it. They photograph it and the photo ends up in a cloud backup. They type it into a phishing site.

The seed phrase is both the strongest and weakest part of every traditional hardware wallet — it gives you full control, but a single mistake costs you everything.

TapSafe was designed to fix this at the source: by replacing the seed phrase with a system that has no single point of failure.

How TapSafe works

When you set up your Ryder One, your wallet is generated on the device itself. TapSafe then splits the backup of that wallet into multiple encrypted pieces using Shamir's Secret Sharing, a cryptographic technique that divides a secret into parts that only work when combined.

Each piece has a defined contribution to recovery:

• Recovery Tag — a small, battery-free, IP69K-rated NFC tag. Holds an encrypted piece worth 50% of your recovery.
• Paired phone — stores an encrypted piece in your iCloud or Google Drive. Worth 50% of your recovery.
• Recovery Contact — a trusted friend or family member holding an encrypted piece on their phone. Each Contact is worth 25%.

To recover your wallet, you need pieces that add up to 100%.

The valid recovery paths

Because the pieces add up flexibly, you have multiple ways to recover:

• 1 Recovery Tag + your phone (50% + 50%)
• 2 Recovery Tags (50% + 50%)
• 1 Recovery Tag + 2 Recovery Contacts (50% + 25% + 25%)
• Your phone + 2 Recovery Contacts (50% + 25% + 25%)
• 4 Recovery Contacts (25% × 4)

This is what makes TapSafe resilient. Lose your phone? Use a Tag and two Contacts. Lose all your Tags? Use your phone and two Contacts. Lose your phone and your Tags? Four Contacts can still bring you back.

What Ryder, Apple, and Google can see

Nothing. The encryption happens on your Ryder One before any piece leaves the device. Ryder operates no servers in the recovery flow. Apple and Google store only encrypted data they cannot read or use. Even your Recovery Contacts hold encrypted pieces they cannot decrypt on their own.

This is the entire point of self-custody: your keys, your coins, with no third party able to access them — including the companies whose infrastructure you're using.

Why this is more secure than a seed phrase

Three reasons:

• No single point of capture. A photographed or stolen seed phrase gives an attacker everything. With TapSafe, an attacker would need to compromise multiple independent pieces — across physical objects, cloud accounts, and other people's devices.
• Nothing to type. Seed phrases are vulnerable the moment they exist as text — on paper that can be photographed, in apps that can be screenshotted, in your memory that can be coerced. TapSafe never produces a typable string.
• Phishing-resistant by design. A user can be tricked into typing 24 words into a fake support site. A user cannot be tricked into typing a Recovery Tag, because there's nothing to type.

Built to be verifiable — and to outlast Ryder

TapSafe is built on Shamir's Secret Sharing, a well-established cryptographic standard that's been studied and used for decades. It has been independently audited by Halborn, a security firm trusted by leading financial institutions.

TapSafe will also be fully open-sourced in 2026. Our goal is for TapSafe to become a standard that any wallet can adopt — the same way every wallet today supports seed phrases. Your recovery should never depend on a single company. Once TapSafe is open, anyone can verify exactly how it works, and any wallet maker can integrate it.

What if I still want a 24-word seed phrase?

You can have one. Ryder One supports traditional seed phrase backups in addition to TapSafe — you can view your seed phrase on the device at any time, import an existing wallet from another hardware wallet using its seed phrase, or use a seed phrase as an additional backup layer alongside Tags and Contacts.

Treat any seed phrase you generate with the same care as any other hardware wallet, and remember: Ryder will never, under any circumstances, ask you for it.