If the day comes: a plan

A plan is only useful if it is written before it is needed. This page lists what a keyhold changes and what it does not, if credible news arrives that elliptic-curve keys can be broken.

Before: move what you intend to keep

A keyhold only protects assets that are already inside it. Moving them later means sending a transaction from your old ECDSA wallet, and that transaction may be the one an attacker races. Moving early, while nothing is wrong, is the calm version of the plan.

During: what keeps working

• Operations from the keyhold are still authorised only by your one-time keys. An attacker who can break ECDSA keys gains nothing over the keyhold.
• The wallet that submits your operation uses ECDSA. If its key is taken, the attacker can spend that wallet's gas money and could refuse to submit for you, but cannot alter a signed operation. Use another submitter.
• Assets that require the issuer's cooperation (stock tokens, stablecoins) still depend on that issuer and on the chain's operators.

What depends on others

The chain's consensus, its sequencer and bridges, and the token contracts you hold are maintained by other people. If they need to change their own cryptography, that is a protocol upgrade, not something a wallet can do. MERKI covers the account layer, which is the part you control.