DA-04 · Expert

Guardian, FROST, DKG, and custody

Understand what Guardians can sign, refuse, coordinate, and never learn.

Follow these 10 lessons in order, or choose the topic you need. Each lesson combines an explanation, a worked example and practice inside the Guild.

  1. Guardian responsibilities

    Guardians receive signed requests, validate protocol rules and transaction structure, reserve issuance accounts, and contribute authorization when policy permits.

    35 minutes · Open lesson

  2. FROST signing rounds

    Guardians exchange nonce commitments and signature shares so a threshold subset produces one BIP340-compatible group signature.

    45 minutes · Open lesson

  3. Distributed key generation

    Participant-local DKG creates shares without any coordinator learning the group secret or plaintext participant shares.

    55 minutes · Open lesson

  4. Thresholds and quorum

    A t-of-n topology trades availability against compromise resistance; current tests and planned deployments must not be confused with one permanent quorum.

    65 minutes · Open lesson

  5. Coordinator trust boundary

    Signature aggregation is public; safety depends on each honest Guardian independently rejecting invalid signing requests.

    35 minutes · Open lesson

  6. TEE custody

    Attested enclaves bind code measurements and short-lived sealing keys so shares are finalized, stored, and used inside confidential workloads.

    45 minutes · Open lesson

  7. Signing policy binding

    Request IDs, action types, transaction hashes, signing inputs, group keys, and policy digests prevent replay and cross-round substitution.

    55 minutes · Open lesson

  8. Guardian passphrases

    Wallet passphrases protect encrypted local wallet files; production Guardian key packages have separate enclave and operator custody controls.

    65 minutes · Open lesson

  9. Failure, rotation, and migration

    The v1 custody design treats lost Guardians and rotations as a new DKG plus funds migration rather than reconstructing shares centrally.

    35 minutes · Open lesson

  10. Production-readiness boundaries

    Implemented policy gates, test proofs, live cloud rehearsals, external audits, and real-funds enablement are separate milestones.

    45 minutes · Open lesson