Digital Asset Recovery Process

The mandatory digital asset recovery process ensures that miners comply with valid court orders to leverage the capabilities of the Bitcoin public ledger to advance more honesty, transparency and accountability in the world.

Digital Asset Recovery Process

Step 1

A plaintiff initiates a legal process to establish the ownership of coins they deem to be rightfully theirs.

Step 2

The plaintiff obtains a freeze court order or document of equivalent legal force and commissions a Notary who can broadcast it to the miners through the Blacklist Manager tool.

Step 3

The Notary acts analogously to a bailiff for conventional assets, translating legal documents into machine readable format and broadcasting it to miners.

Step 4

Miners receive the broadcast from a Notary delivered to their Blacklist Manager (MIT License), freezing the coins in question on the same consensus basis that the network uses now.

Why Miners Should Participate

Counter double-spend attacks.

Enforce the legal rights of victims of crime.

Engender more confidence in Bitcoin among everyday users, businesses and government agencies.

Encourage wider adoption of Bitcoin’s innovative technology.

Miners who do not participate in the mandatory Digital Asset Recovery process are at risk of including frozen UTXOs into their blocks, putting their blocks at risk of orphaning and could face legal action due to contempt of court.

By participating in the DAR process, miners remain in good standing with the legal system.