Defense-in-Depth & the Lifecycle of a Transaction

Failsafe is built on the defense-in-depth principle: a multilayered set of security mechanisms, with built in redundancy, designed to minimise loss of user assets even in the worst case circumstances (e.g., user is tricked into giving away the wallet’s passphrase).

To understand how this works, let's take a closer look at the lifecycle of a transaction: from initial user engagement phase with the dApp, to the point it becomes part of a permanent record on a public ledger (as illustrated in figure 1).

Figure 1: Timeline of a Transaction

Each phase presents both an opportunity for the attacker, as well as a chance to employ a countermeasure.