Will paper wallets created 2018 last perpetually?

I sometimes give my friends a paper wallet, with a small amount of ADA on it. I do wonder if the switch to complete decentralization, and the roll out of staking keys, may leave my paper wallet gifts at risk of expiring (This comes from knowledge the poor souls who bought Tron ETH tokens, and then missed the ‘Transfer to TRX Mainnet’, and the limited time availability to upgrade or die. I agree they were warned, but it was a sub-optimal outcome IMHO).

While it seems unlikely to me Cardano would let a such a tragedy happen, I thought I would raise it in search of the correct answer.

Will paper wallets created in 2018 require upgrading, or will the last perpetually, just without staking?

There should be no risk of your paper wallets expiring because of decentralisation unless if in the future for some odd reason the majority of stake voting power ends up deciding they want to invalidate everyone’s ada who uses the old Daedalus address scheme and deprecates them. I don’t know why this would ever happen, but it’s really arbitrary and benefits no one, so the likelihood seems slim.

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Yes, I appreciate your answer. So there is a potential risk, although it is an extremely low grade risk. Should a 2018 paper wallet holder infrequently engage in the decision making body to ensure no such CIP is put forward and taken up?

It is really is interesting, as as you have stated, we currently may not know why such an event as cancelling the old paper wallet addresses may need to come to pass.

It’d probably be a good idea to take part in voting once the liquid democracy governance structure is embedded into Cardano just in general so it ends up going in the direction you see as the best. When CIPs finally go live, the very thought of deprecating addresses that hold most likely billions of ada (IOHK, Charles, Emurgo, and CF all should still have their ada in the original Daedalus-style address scheme as far as I know at least) would be ludicrous as a proposal. If you really are worried you should just bookmark one of those big ada holding addresses with the original style addresses on a tracker like https://clio.one and check every once in a while. If they still keep their ada there, then you have literally nothing to worry about.

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Yes, really great concept. Using another address as a monitor. Personally I feel this risk of a 2018 paper wallet address being made redundant is on par with one’s risk of being hit by an object from space while walking. Not impossible, but impossible/unthinkable based on the current situation. Yet, the future is not set, and risk management is important to me.

It will be interesting to see the decision making framework develop and unfold. Participation in BIP or lack there of has lead to a bit of sillyness with a fork of a fork, and tantrums abounding in the Bitcoin sphere. Participation in CIPs and following and voting on Cardano does not ensure one’s wishes come to pass. I do feel the Cardano project is preparing to formally discover a better solution, and will be exciting to see develop

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There are also incentives for voting, voting is work and you get :ada: back for participating

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I thought voting would cost ADA as one needs to push one’s vote into the blockchain, like a minimal transaction fee. But this idea of being rewarded for participating in the decisions it may turn out to be pretty powerful.

and so, did I hear Sabastien say we’ll need to migrate funds to Shelley addresses…does this mean we may need to migrate paper wallets, or am I missing something??

When you will want to spend it, I think you will need to make the wallet update, which could take from minutes to a couple of hours, this is because the blockchain in Daedalus would require to be downloaded or reconstructed. Maybe you would be in a better position if you do that now and be ready with an updated wallet instead of waiting for the moment you need it.
It doesn’t mean that your funds are in danger, but if there is a sudden spike in price, if staking becomes available or if you find yourself in a hurry, you will lament not doing this before.
Note: I’m not 100% sure, so comments and corrections are welcome.

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Old addresses will stay valid forever so you can choose to migrate your funds to the new address scheme anytime you want. You won’t be able to stake with the current address scheme.

On a side note, Yoroi allows both recovery of Yoroi paper wallets and of Daedalus paper wallets and it only takes a few seconds.

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great to get your response on this. Much appreciated.