Bank of America, the second-largest bank in the U.S. by assets, has applied for a patent for a digital currency wallet with multiple layers of asset access.
According to filing entitled “Multi-Tiered Digital Wallet Security,” the application would contain a multi-tiered wallet interface in a decentralized peer-to-peer network, which could possibly be public or private.
Users would be able to partition their digital currency holdings into one or more differentiated tiers or "compartments," which in turn could be secured by password and allow access only to the amount of holdings specified by the user. Users can enter one password out of several, and one password would grant access to one tier of the wallet while different password can open another tier.
The patent claimed that “… users may be able to hold their digital currency more safely and securely as compared to existing digital wallet information.”
The concept of the proposed patent may be similar to certain types of multi-signature bitcoin wallet, which requires a transaction to have two or more signatures before it can be executed. However, the filing imposed the need for a better digital wallet infrastructure since private keys can be forgotten, lost, or mishandled by third parties.
The North Carolina-based bank filed the application on February 2018 with the United States Patent and Trademark Office. The application was posted last week and listed Manu Kurian, a senior tech manager at the bank, as an investor.
According to CoinDesk, Bank of America has won 36 blockchain patent applications, and 31 are pending.
Just recently, American tech giant IBM also filed for a blockchain-based web browser patent, which “records and maintains a record of browser events in a blockchain using a peer-to-peer network.” Visited websites, bookmarks, search terms, cookies, and geolocations are possible kinds of data that can be saved on-chain.
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