Holiday Surprise: Dr. Leemon Baird on Decentralized Recovery and Custody – The Private Key to Mass Adoption

Almost everyone has been subject to multi-factor authentication before, whether it was having to confirm a code sent to your phone or email address or having to answer an additional security question after inputting your password. However, a new form of web security called decentralized recovery and decentralized custody is now on the horizon.

How do decentralized recovery and custody offer security to web users and what makes them different from multi-factor authentication?

On today’s episode of Gossip About Gossip by Hedera, podcast Host and SVP Communications, Swirlds Labs, Zenobia Godschalk, speaks with Dr. Leemon Baird, Co-CEO, Swirlds Labs and Founder and CEO of Swirlds Inc., to discuss how Web3 ledgers and blockchains lack security and what decentralized recovery can do to address this insecurity.

Godschalk and Dr. Baird also discussed…

  1. How decentralization lacks security via Web3 ledgers and blockchains
  2. What decentralized recovery and decentralized custody are and their use cases
  3. The four Internet protocols essential for instilling and recruiting decentralized recovery and custody “helpers”

Dr. Baird explained how decentralized recovery works: “When you have enough helpers, your key—your secret—is shared among all of them in pieces. None of them can see your secret. And any half of them can recover it. That’s decentralized recovery.”

Dr. Leemon Baird is Co-CEO, Swirlds Labs and Founder and CEO of Swirlds Inc. Dr. Baird has served as Founder/CEO of Hedera Hashgraph, Senior Research Scientist for the Academy Center for Cyberspace Research ,and Professor of Computer Science at the United States Air Forcce Academy. He holds a BS in Computer Science from the United States Air Force Academy and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University.

Recent Episodes

In today’s creator economy, small businesses are being built on platforms as accessible as the smartphones in our pockets. From photographers to filmmakers, entrepreneurs are redefining what it means to “go into business” — often without traditional storefronts or investors, but with creativity, collaboration, and digital tools that make scaling possible. For many, payment…

Detroit is redefining its role in the next era of American innovation. The conversation has shifted from what to build to how to build it in ways that deliver lasting impact. The goal is to do so sustainably, inclusively, and with the community at its core. The state’s growing network of research universities, multi-billion-dollar…

In today’s digital marketplace, the competition for customer attention doesn’t end when a shopper clicks “Add to Cart.” In fact, that’s often where the real challenge begins. For many retailers, the guest checkout process—once designed as a convenience—has become a conversion killer. Endless form fields and repeated data entry drive shoppers away, leading to…