What Is Sarcophagus?
Sarcophagus is a blockchain-enabled, cryptographically secure, general-purpose digital dead man’s switch. It is autonomous, censorship resistant and immutable. It relies on modern smart contracting networks like Ethereum as well as Arweave’s permanent file storage network, files you place in a sarcophagus are only unlocked and available to your designated recipient in the event of you failing to attest to the contract within the time period specified during its creation.
Historically, dead man’s switches have been used in heavy machinery to ensure the operator is paying attention and is present at their post. However, in the recent decades it has become increasingly obvious that a digital version of this tool is needed. Small strings of data are becoming more and more important in the lives of humans, and it is time to create a tool to help tie sovereign humans and their machines a little closer together.
Bitcoin gave us the base of blockchain tech, it proved that making computers do physical things to supplant human trust (or violence) is not only sustainable, but approaches antifragility. Ethereum gave us the ability to execute code on a 100% uptime, decentralized and immutable computer. Arweave gives us the ability to economically store and retrieve files from a separate, immutable and permanent file system. Only the combination of multiple groundbreaking innovations in the past 10 years has made Sarcophagus possible.
A dead man’s switch is a mechanism (digital or physical) that triggers when the user FAILS to perform an action. A standard switch will trigger when the user performs a positive action, a dead man’s switch triggers when the user fails to perform a specified action within a set time period.