How Merka Vault Keeps Your Data Yours

Security write-ups usually fail in one of two ways. Either they hand-wave (“your data is safe with us”) and leave you guessing, or they bury the trust decision under a pile of technical specs. We want to do better than both, because the question that actually matters is simple: who can read your data, and what do you have to believe for the answer to be “only you”?

Merka Vault handles personal data, family memories, identity, recovery — and eventually multi-user access. So the security model has to be understandable to a normal household and still hold up under real scrutiny. Here it is.

The keys stay with you. This is the root of everything. Merka is designed so Cosmic Rocks can support the service without ever holding custody of your data. Your identity and recovery path are yours. Backups are encrypted before they leave your control, so storage providers only ever hold ciphertext they can’t read. Support works without a back door into your vault. The goal isn’t “trust us” — it’s needing to trust us less. A security model that depends on a company behaving well forever isn’t really a security model.

Native apps are the foundation, across iOS, Android, macOS, Windows, and Linux. That’s a deliberate choice to shrink the attack surface. Browsers are good at many things, but they’re general-purpose machines built to render any website on the internet — the wrong foundation for the most sensitive data you own. Native apps can lean on platform security features and local device identity, which gives serious operations firmer ground to stand on.

The free tier runs the same model. Same identity approach, same native apps as the hardware versions — so you can understand the trust story before you spend anything. Moving to always-on hardware strengthens the boundaries further, because the system can assume more about the environment it runs in.

Multi-user access is gated on hardware, on purpose. Holding data for multiple people raises the stakes well beyond a solo trial: the moment you add a spouse or a recovery contact, the product has to get several people and several devices right at once. So shared access only ships on supported hardware that matches the required protection level. Laptop evaluation stays single-user; dedicated machines unlock multi-user once the foundation is strong enough. If the hardware can’t support it safely, the answer is no. That slows our roadmap, and it’s the right call for life-level data.

Recovery is designed around failure. Hardware breaks, houses flood, devices disappear, companies change direction, services shut down. The design assumes all of it. Backups are encrypted and provider-neutral, and Cosmic Rocks supports recovery without becoming the only path to it. The test we hold ourselves to: if your original hardware is gone, can you get your data back without handing custody to anyone? The answer needs to be yes.

We’re not claiming perfection. There are real tradeoffs you still own: where the software runs, when hardware is worth it, how much backup you want, and how carefully you guard your recovery materials. The claim is narrower and more useful. You can start without buying hardware. Your keys don’t live with providers. Native apps replace browser-only layers. Hardware comes in when always-on protection matters. And encrypted backups let you recover without depending on any single company.

That’s how your data stays yours — not because we promised, but because the design doesn’t leave us another option.