[Exclusive Interview] Meet Rafal, founder and CEO of Guard

Today we are extremely grateful to have Rafal joining us on Surferinvestor for an insightful interview on the topic of web3 inheritance. During the interview, we will cover the background of the team, the project’s core features, the long-term vision of the project, and many more. So let’s dive in!

YOUR WEB3 INHERITANCE STARTS WITH
Your web3 inheritance starts with Guard. Source: Guard

[SurferInvestor] Could you please summarise briefly what Guard is about?

[Rafal] Basically, we’re a protocol that recovers your wallet in case of wallet loss or if you die. We have a lot of new features incoming to cover your wallet, but that’s what we do for the moment. The process is fairly straightforward and can be summarized as follow:

  1. You need to set up your Guard (choose your guardians and your inheritors.
  2. Once all the settings of your Guards are set up, you can confirm your guard by approving the transaction.
  3. Your guardians and inheritors will receive an email redirecting them to Guard. They’re able to connect with their wallet if they have one or create a wallet with their email address thanks to Torus or magic wallet.
  4. Once everybody confirmed your GUard, you can finalize the setup and access your dashboard. Your wallet is now kept safe with Guard.
  5. The day you die, your guardians need to declare it on their dashboard. Then, we’ll send you daily emails for 90 days to revoke your death if you’re still alive.
  6. If you don’t revoke it, the smart contracts assume you’re dead and will take the Then from your wallet and will send it to your inheritors.
  7. It’s the same process if you lose it. Give the new address to your guardians and we’ll send you daily emails for 90 days. If you didn’t revoke your wallet loss, the SC will send the funds from your old wallet to the new one.
A simple plan on how the legacy process of Guard works. Source: Guards Gitbook

[SurferInvestor] Could you please introduce yourself as a founder? What is your background?

[Rafal] My name is Rafal, I’m into crypto since 2016, I started mining ETH for myself in 2017, and then I started selling mining rigs. Now I’m full-time into web3 projects, I love digging into protocols and looking for the next innovative project. In the past, I already built several projects: the first one was Gearn, which is a plugin you can input in any game to make it a play to earn. I’m also on the financial side building arbitrage bots. On the side, I’m also a part-time professor at an Engineering school. All those projects are great but most importantly I’m building Guard, it’s a new journey for the team and myself and I can’t wait to see how far the project is going to go.

[SurferInvestor] How did you come up with the idea of Guard? Why go into the web3 legacy business?

[Rafal] First, I created Guard only for myself, I wondered what happens to my crypto the day I die, and I looked for the solutions available on the market. I was looking for a FULLY decentralized protocol, that could work even in 40 years, a protocol working with non-custodial wallets, and also a protocol that integrates social wallets, unfortunately, I didn’t find anything, so I decided to create a solution that would perfectly suit my needs. And then I told myself, why not share it with the public? And here we are building Guard!

[SurferInvestor] What item in the roadmap gets you the most excited?

[Rafal] We’re currently working on new features to improve the protocol, as I said for the moment, we’re focused on the legacy and wallet loss part, but we’ve prepared features to make Guard complete for your wallet. I can’t say much but the most exciting feature will be the scam and hack protection.

[SurferInvestor] Why should I use Guard as a user? What problem does it solve?

[Rafal] Guard is insurance that your work and your profits in web3 aren’t lost in case something happens to you. If you forgot to write down your seed and you don’t have access to your wallet anymore, you can still recover your wallet with Guard. The problem Guard solves is really simple. You have crypto on your ledger or in metamask, you don’t want anyone to have access to it. Which means you’re the only one to know your seed phrase. The problem with this situation is that if you die tomorrow everything is lost. We created Guard to transfer your crypto to your inheritors without locking your crypto into a smart contract upstream. The day you die, your guardians will declare it (they need to be your relatives and trustable people), then we’ll send you daily emails for 90 days, if you don’t answer them, the smart contract will assume you’re dead and will take the crypto out of your wallet to send it to your inheritors.

The process is exactly the same if you lose your wallet, but your guardians need to input your new address.

  • You don’t have to lock your crypto into a smart contract
  • Your inheritors and guardians don’t need to be into crypto, we made it web2 friendly, they don’t need a wallet, as they can create a wallet associated with their email address thanks to Torus or magic wallet.
  • Guard is the assurance that all your work won’t be lost if anything happens to you That’s basically all Guard is about! Choosing guardians that will declare your death or wallet loss into the protocol.
The multisig principle on which Guard is building. Source: Guardmyfund

[SurferInvestor] From what I understood from the documentation, you are paid at collection correct? So it might be that you will not have any revenue for years as most crypto users are between 20-35 years old. Could you please comment on this?

[Rafal] Yes exactly, we thought a lot about our pricing and we think that the most reasonable way of doing it collecting it whenever there is a process, even if it means there we’ll get revenue in 40 years. This pricing is for the free version. In the next step, we’ll work on a premium version that will come with another pricing. In this premium version you’ll get a lot more features than the free version. of course, we’ll keep the community updated about this premium version!

[SurferInvestor] What happens if Guard goes bankrupt while my inheritance still is executed? Especially because you will still have regular costs of operations before the collection event.

[Rafal] Guard doesn’t own any of your tokens, being fully decentralized is our main concern because you’ll not encounter this bankruptcy problem. In fact, even if the whole team dies, Guard can still work without us. We don’t verify your death, Guard is fully P2P which means the most important thing is the people you choose to be your guardians because they will be the ones declaring your death. And also, the code will be open source, which means people will be able to create websites using the Guard Smart contract. This will make sure that Guard will last over time.

[SurferInvestor] There are other inheritance protocols on the market, what do you do differently?

[Rafal] Inheritance is only a small part of what Guard really is. We’ll create new features to make it the only protocol you need to keep your wallet safe. Concerning inheritance in itself, each protocol does its own way. We prefer being 100% decentralized and relying on legators’ responsibility because we believe that’s what crypto is about before anything else. other projects for example have to integrate with births/deaths registers which makes it harder to scale.

[SurferInvestor] How many people are on the team?

[Rafal] Currently, we’re 5 in the team! If you’re interested in joining the project, submit your application at [email protected] We’re all passionate about crypto and web3, and we’re also doxxed on our website, feel free to check the team.

Meet the Guard Team. Source: Guardmyfund

[SurferInvestor] In an ideal world, how would Guard look in 5 years?

[Rafal] In 5 years, we want to be the leader in not only the web3 inheritance market but also in the security market. We want to be recognized as the only protocol you need to protect your wallet. By only accessing Guard, you’ll access many features:

  • Hack and scam protection
  • Suspicious contracts protections
  • Frontrunning transactions
  • NFT protection
  • Firewall
  • And many more…

[SurferInvestor] For people who wanna jump in, how to get started?

[Rafal] If you like the concept, you can test Guard for free as we’re currently in testnet until march! Here’s the link: https://testnet.guardmy.fund/. You just need to launch the app and follow the steps to complete your Guard. You can also join our Discord and our Crew3 to get specific roles, this way we can remember who contributed to the project.


We would like to thank Rafal for taking the time to share his vision and insights on the Guard project. We wish him and the team all the best in the upcoming months and we will personally keep a close eye on the project. For those interested in getting started with Guard, you can test the protocol on the testnet and join the Crew3 quest to get specific roles. Once again, thank you Rafal for your time!

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