August 2026Protocol
Continued Anastasis protocol development
Work continues on the recovery protocol specification, with a focus on clarifying provider-side state handling and tightening the description of policy evaluation during recovery.
Privacy-preserving key recovery
Recover critical keys without giving anyone custody of them.
Anastasis provides privacy-preserving recovery for cryptographic keys and digital credentials — without giving any single provider custody of your secret.
- Distributed trust
- Privacy by design
- Open-source architecture
- Flexible recovery policies
The problem
Self-custody creates a recovery problem.
Strong cryptography protects users precisely because nobody else possesses their key. That same property is what makes loss final: if the key is gone, the asset, credential or encrypted data may be permanently inaccessible.
No backup
Risk of permanent loss
A lost device or forgotten passphrase can make the asset, credential or encrypted data unrecoverable.
Centralised backup
Custody and security risk
Someone or something must hold a recoverable copy — and becomes a target, a dependency and a liability.
Both options concentrate risk in one place. Anastasis provides a third option.
The Anastasis approach
Recovery without centralized custody.
Anastasis encrypts recovery information and distributes it across independent providers. Recovery can require several authentication methods and several providers, according to a policy chosen by the user or the organisation. No single provider is meant to hold enough information to recover the original secret.
The design assumption is deliberately conservative: providers are treated as independent parties that may fail, be compromised, or attempt to learn more than they should. The recovery policy — not a custodian's goodwill — decides what it takes to get a secret back.
- 01
Protect
The secret is encrypted on the user's own device and prepared for distributed recovery under a policy they choose.
- 02
Distribute
Recovery information is stored across independent providers, none of which is meant to hold enough to reconstruct anything alone.
- 03
Recover
The legitimate user authenticates according to the chosen recovery policy, and the secret is reconstructed on their device.
Why Anastasis
Built for organisations that cannot place trust in one place.
Distributed trust
No single provider needs to hold enough information to reconstruct the protected secret. Trust is spread across independent parties chosen by the user or the organisation.
Privacy-preserving recovery
The protocol is designed to minimise what recovery providers learn — about the secret, about the person recovering it, and about the other providers involved.
Flexible recovery policies
Combinations of providers and authentication methods can be configured to match an organisation's risk model, regulatory context and operational reality.
Open architecture
Anastasis is built on documented protocols, Free Software and interoperable components, so integrations can be reviewed and audited rather than taken on faith.
No centralised custody
Recovery does not require handing the original secret to a single trusted custodian, so the recovery path does not become the weakest link.
Use cases
One recovery architecture. Many critical secrets.
The same distributed recovery model applies wherever the loss of a key would be operationally, financially or legally serious.
Digital wallets
Recover access to wallet keys without introducing centralised key custody.
Digital assets
Protect access to cryptographic assets while preserving strong self-custody properties.
Digital identity
Recover identity credentials and cryptographic identity keys.
Enterprise encryption
Recover keys protecting critical files, infrastructure and applications.
Payments
Enable resilient recovery of keys used in payment infrastructure and digital money systems.
IoT and machine identity
Recover cryptographic credentials used by connected devices and autonomous systems.
Security architecture
Designed for systems where trust cannot sit in one place.
The architecture separates who authenticates a user from who can reconstruct a secret, and keeps the protected secret out of any central store.
| Scenario | Anastasis design goal |
|---|---|
| User device lost or destroyed | Recovery remains possible through the configured policy, without the original device. |
| A single provider is compromised | The protected secret should remain protected; one provider's material is designed to be insufficient on its own. |
| A provider database is leaked | Stored material should not reveal the original secret to whoever obtains the dump. |
| A provider becomes unavailable or ceases operation | Alternative recovery policies may remain usable, provided the policy was configured with redundancy. |
| The user forgets a password | Recovery need not depend solely on a memorised secret; other authentication methods can be part of the policy. |
| A provider tries to profile its users | The protocol is designed to limit what a provider learns about the user and about the wider recovery policy. |
Transparency
Open by design.
Anastasis is built around open protocols and Free Software. Security-sensitive infrastructure should be inspectable, auditable and interoperable — not accepted on trust.
Enterprise integration
Bring Anastasis into your infrastructure.
Organisations evaluate Anastasis for recovery in wallets, digital asset platforms, payment systems, identity systems, cybersecurity products, encrypted storage and regulated digital infrastructure.
Latest development
Active work on the protocol and the software.
June 2026Software
Anastasis GTK client development
The GTK reference client received usability work on the policy-configuration flow, making it clearer which combinations of providers and authentication methods a user is actually committing to.
April 2026Pilots
Integration pilots with wallet teams
Discussions are ongoing with wallet and payment teams evaluating Anastasis for recovery in self-custodial products. Pilot participants get direct access to the engineering team.
Ecosystem
A European research and infrastructure project, with a company behind it.
GNU Anastasis is the open-source protocol and reference implementation. Anastasis SARL supports development, integration, deployment and research collaboration — and is who an enterprise talks to.
Evaluate Anastasis for your recovery problem.
Tell us what you are protecting and how recovery has to work in practice. We will tell you plainly whether Anastasis fits today, or what would need to be true first.