Paper 2022/075

Uncovering Impact of Mental Models towards Adoption of Multi-device Crypto-Wallets

Easwar Vivek Mangipudi, Supra Research
Udit Desai, IIT Kharagpur
Mohsen Minaei, Visa Research
Mainack Mondal, IIT Kharagpur
Aniket Kate, Purdue University, Supra Research
Abstract

Cryptocurrency users saw a sharp increase in different types of crypto wallets in the past decade. However, the emerging multi-device (threshold) wallets, even with improved security guarantees over their single-device counterparts, are yet to receive proportionate adoption. This work presents a data-driven investigation into the perceptions of users towards multi-device/threshold wallets, using a survey of 357 crypto-wallet users. Our results revealed two significant groups among our participants—Newbies and Non-newbies. Our follow-up qualitative analysis, after educating revealed a gap between the mental model for these participants and actual security guarantees. Furthermore, we investigated preferred default settings for crypto-wallets across our participants over different key-share distribution settings of multi-device wallets—the threat model considerations affected user preferences, signifying a need for contextualizing default settings. We identify concrete, actionable design avenues for future multi-device wallet designs and present novel cryptographic problems to realize those.

Metadata
Available format(s)
PDF
Publication info
Published elsewhere. Minor revision. ACM CCS 2023
Keywords
UsabilityCrypto-walletsMulti-device wallets
Contact author(s)
e mangipudi @ supraoracles com
History
2024-08-06: last of 3 revisions
2022-01-20: received
See all versions
Short URL
https://ia.cr/2022/075
License
Creative Commons Attribution
CC BY

BibTeX

@misc{cryptoeprint:2022/075,
      author = {Easwar Vivek Mangipudi and Udit Desai and Mohsen Minaei and Mainack Mondal and Aniket Kate},
      title = {Uncovering Impact of Mental Models towards Adoption of Multi-device Crypto-Wallets},
      howpublished = {Cryptology {ePrint} Archive, Paper 2022/075},
      year = {2022},
      url = {https://eprint.iacr.org/2022/075}
}
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