Every edition makes keys the same way, from the same audited engine. One of them adds a switch.
One generation engine, audited once, in every stick we ship. Nothing about how your key is born is held back for a higher price — the difference buys a property of the object, never a better key.
Randomness drawn from the hardware at our own boundary, checked at runtime, blended with your own dice rolls. If the source fails its checks, every edition refuses to generate and says so loudly.
BIP-39 phrases, BIP-32 and SLIP-0010 derivation. Your phrase restores in any conformant wallet ever made. Nothing about it is ours.
Receive addresses for Bitcoin, Ethereum and EVM chains, and Solana, shown once at the ceremony. One phrase covers all three.
The stick holds code, never keys. Every ceremony draws fresh randomness, and each key is unrelated to every other.
Stick and card in one tamper-evident bag, inside a plain unbranded mailer. Your neighbours learn nothing.
Every edition runs the same code, independently reviewed before we ship and sealed in tamper-evident packaging — the same review and the same seal on the cheapest stick and the most expensive.
Your KŌINIkeystick never stores a key. So the risk it carries between ceremonies is not theft. It is substitution.
Our tamper-evident seal proves what left our hands. It cannot prove what is true on your stick today, after it has lived in your world for a few years. On the standard edition you close that gap yourself, by keeping the stick away from any running computer between ceremonies. Done carefully, that works.
The read-only edition closes it with a physical switch. With the switch set, the drive refuses writes — so software on the host has nothing to write through. It turns a threat you meet constantly, an infected computer, into one that is rare: a person with your stick in their hand.
With the standard stick, integrity is a ritual you have to repeat. With the read-only stick, it is a fact that persists.
Standard and for Mac are the same physical stick, as are the two read-only editions. The Mac name tells us which instructions go in the bag, and tells you which promise applies. You are choosing one thing: switch, or no switch.
| STANDARD$60 | READ-ONLY$75 · RECOMMENDED | FOR MAC$60 | FOR MAC READ-ONLY$75 · RECOMMENDED | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The ceremony | Boots the computer | Boots the computer | Sealed room inside macOS | Sealed room inside macOS |
| Generation engine | Identical | Identical | Identical | Identical |
| Keys stored on the stick | Never | Never | Never | Never |
| Keys you can generate | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Can software change the stick? | Yes, on an infected machine | No — the drive refuses | Yes, on an infected machine | No — the drive refuses |
| Keeping it genuine | Keep it off running machines | Set the switch. It stays true. | Keep it off running machines | Set the switch. It stays true. |
| Its state, at a glance | You check | You look | You check | You look |
| What destruction means | The vault ceases to exist | The vault ceases to exist | A sealed room, not a destroyed building | A sealed room, not a destroyed building |
| Moving to a new release | Rewrite it | Move the slider, rewrite, move it back | Rewrite it | Move the slider, rewrite, move it back |
| Tested before sealing | Written, read back, checked | Written, read back, checked, then a write attempted and refused | Written, read back, checked | Written, read back, checked, then a write attempted and refused |
We would rather say it plainly than let you work it out from a table. The standard stick is safe when it is used as directed. The trouble is that “as directed” is a rule you have to keep for as long as you hold the key — and the reason you are generating offline is that you do not want your future self’s memory to be load-bearing. Fifteen dollars turns a rule you must remember into a property of the object.
You are generating once, funding once, and the stick goes away for good. You keep the stick somewhere no running computer will ever meet it. The amount is modest and your horizon is short.
You expect more than one ceremony over the coming years. You are generating for family, partners, or a business. This is treasury, and someone will ask you to document the ceremony — the boot media was hardware write-protected is a line an auditor wants to read. The balance is large enough that you would rather it not depend on your own discipline.
A control that only looks reassuring is theater, and we cut theater rather than sell it. Here is exactly where the switch stops.
On a PC or an Intel Mac, the stick boots the computer and your installed system never runs. Pull the plug and the memory that held your key loses power. That is the promise we make without qualification: your computer becomes the vault, then ceases to exist.
Apple Silicon cannot boot an external system without installing boot files onto the internal disk and lowering the machine’s boot security. That installation would itself leave a trace, which is the one thing this product exists not to do. So we don’t do it. The same stick opens instead as a sealed, network-less app inside macOS.
This is also why read-only carries more weight on a Mac, not less. The integrity of the media is the one hard physical guarantee that survives into the sealed-room ceremony intact. One switch, both doors.
A write-protectable drive costs us a few dollars more than a plain one, and you are welcome to look that up. What you are paying for is that every read-only stick is put through the test by hand before it is sealed — because a switch the drive quietly ignored would make this edition a lie we told you in good faith.
Each stick is written by us from the sealed image. Never preloaded by a factory.
The stick is read back and checked against the image we built. If it does not match, it does not ship.
The switch is set, and we then attempt to write to the stick and confirm it is refused. On this edition, that test is the product.
Die-cut vinyl applied by hand, never over the switch or the plug. Stick and card sealed into one tamper-evident bag.
Still deciding? Buy the one you will not have to think about again.
