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Vault12 Releases Open-Source Capacitor Plugin for Quantum-Safe Data Storage

4 December 2025

As progress in quantum computing accelerates, so does the urgency to protect data that must remain confidential for years or even decades. Much of today’s encryption depends on mathematical problems that could become solvable by future quantum computers, creating a “steal now, decrypt later” risk for sensitive information.

This week, Vault12 introduced an open-source Capacitor plugin that brings quantum-safe data storage to mobile developers. The plugin is built on Shamir’s Secret Sharing (SSS), a method of splitting a secret into mathematically independent pieces. It provides information-theoretic security — protection based on mathematical certainty rather than computational difficulty.

MoveTheNeedle.news spoke with Blake Commagere, cofounder and COO of Vault12, about the company’s reasoning for open-sourcing the technology and what it enables for developers.

Open Source as a Foundation for Security

For Vault12, open source is not a marketing stance but a core security principle.

“The best way to ensure that security and privacy solutions are the best they can be is to use an open source approach — this way the security is transparent, it has the benefit of many experts reviewing the code and improving on it, and security flaws rarely survive this kind of scrutiny.”

Commagere notes that relying on the reputation of proprietary vendors is not enough when facing sophisticated attackers.

“In a world with serious bad actors, the transparency and collaboration that comes with open source is the best approach to achieve the best security.”

The company’s record reflects that view. Its first component, the peer-to-peer relay Zax, was open-sourced in 2015. Vault12 has continued contributing to open source and supporting independent developers since then.

Why Capacitor

The plugin is built for Capacitor, Ionic’s cross-platform framework that runs on iOS, Android, and the web.

“They provide a fast and efficient way to create mobile apps… so when we decided to open source the Shamir’s Secret Sharing quantum-safe approach, the Capacitor stack was the obvious way to proceed.”

This brings quantum-resistant data protection into a mainstream, highly adopted development environment, lowering the barrier for builders of consumer and enterprise apps.

Use Cases: Inheritance, Collaboration, and Secure Storage

Vault12 developed the plugin to support a broad set of security workflows. Commagere highlights several scenarios:

Family digital inheritance

“Parents can ensure their digital assets transfer smoothly without exposing sensitive information during their lifetime.”

Multiple family members each hold a share of the secret; only a threshold can reconstruct it.

Collaborative authentication

Teams can distribute access to critical systems so no single person holds full control. This reduces both external attack risk and insider misuse.

Progressive disclosure

Applications can unlock information only when required conditions are met, such as multi-party agreement or time-based triggers.

Redundant backups

Encrypted shares can be stored across cloud providers, devices, or physical locations without giving any single provider complete information.

The plugin works across iOS, Android, and web environments, allowing these workflows to function consistently across devices.

How Shamir’s Secret Sharing Differs From Other Approaches

Commagere draws a clear distinction between SSS and typical key-storage methods used on mobile devices.

“There is no single piece of key material stored anywhere. The secret is mathematically split into shards, and any shard on its own reveals nothing.”

This avoids the single point of failure inherent in:

  • device keychains

  • secure enclaves

  • cloud key storage

  • centralized servers

He also outlines differences with MPC/TSS (multiparty computation / threshold signature schemes):

“Compared to MPC/TSS schemes, SSS is simpler and offline-friendly. It is better suited for long-term backup, recovery, and inheritance use cases.”

In the plugin:

  • heavy computations run natively on iOS and Android for performance,

  • large-file operations do not block the UI, and

  • a JavaScript fallback supports web usage.

Production-Level Security and Performance

The plugin uses the same SSS engine that powers the Vault12 Guard application, which has been in production since 2017.

“It has been used to protect high-value secrets across lots of iOS and Android devices.”

Vault12 highlights several measures taken to ensure reliability:

  • Fully open-source codebase

  • Automated test coverage

  • Native implementations for performance-critical operations

  • Long-term, cross-platform interoperability testing

  • Public review and contribution encouraged

This positions the plugin as a production-ready component rather than an experimental library.

A Track Record Leading to Open Release

The new module is not newly invented for this release. Vault12 has iterated on it for nearly a decade.

“We have been developing the Vault12 Guard product since 2015… Having battle tested it in a commercial setting, we believe it was an easy step to release to the broader community as concerns over the use of quantum computing to access encrypted data becomes greater.”

The release aligns with growing industry attention on quantum-resistant methods for long-term data protection.

Future-Proofing Against Quantum Attacks

Many encryption schemes rely on the difficulty of factoring or discrete logarithms. Quantum algorithms threaten those assumptions.

“Quantum computers could solve these same problems in hours.”

Shamir’s Secret Sharing works differently.

“Its security doesn’t depend on computational difficulty — it depends on mathematical impossibility.”

With fewer shares than required, an attacker cannot reconstruct the secret. There are infinitely many mathematically valid solutions, so partial information reveals nothing. This remains true whether the attacker uses classical systems or future quantum computers.

“Applications built with the Shamir Secret Sharing plugin for Capacitor today will remain secure through whatever computing revolution comes next.”

Who Can Use It

The plugin is available to any developer building with Capacitor. While it supports digital wallets, Vault12 also targets developers working on:

  • password managers

  • secure document vaults

  • data-backup tools

  • enterprise authentication systems

  • applications that handle sensitive user information

Quantum-safe design is often seen as specialized and difficult to implement; Vault12 aims to make it accessible as a standard component.

What’s Next

The SSS plugin is part of a broader effort from Vault12.

“We are working on releasing more components as we discover new opportunities to secure data.”

One forthcoming focus area is security modules for desktop applications, which have historically lagged behind mobile and web environments in adopting modern cryptographic practices.

Conclusion

Vault12’s open-source Capacitor plugin represents a practical step toward quantum-safe application development. By making a production-tested Shamir’s Secret Sharing implementation available to mobile and web developers, the company is broadening access to one of the few data-protection techniques resistant to both present and future computational threats.

The release fits within a long-running pattern for Vault12: commit to open source, build for real-world use cases, and prepare developers for a future where quantum-capable adversaries are a realistic consideration. Its impact will depend on adoption, but the building blocks for secure, distributed, and long-lasting data protection are now widely available.