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Security Considerations

As a Node Provider, you're entrusted with secret-shared sensitive data. While secret sharing ensures that individual shares reveal nothing on their own, it's still essential to follow strict operational and security best practices to safeguard privacy and integrity.

Key Management Best Practices​

Every Node Provider is assigned a unique key phrase, which serves as the seed for generating the node’s cryptographic key material. This includes:

  • An encryption key (used to receive secret shares securely)
  • A signing key (used to authenticate messages and proofs)

The public parts of these keys are uploaded during initial registration with the TACEO:Proof network.

⚠️ TACEO will never ask for your key phrase. Do not share your key phrase with anyone—not even someone claiming to represent TACEO.

The CSE binary enforces a minimum entropy requirement for key phrases to help prevent weak seeds. However, it is your responsibility to:

  • Keep the key phrase strictly local to your machine.
  • Never back it up to cloud services or shared systems.
  • Use secure hardware or encrypted storage when possible.

🔐 If your key phrase is compromised, an attacker could impersonate your node and decrypt any shares encrypted under your public key.

In short: treat your key phrase like a private key.. It is the root of trust for everything your node does on the network.