It’s a different problem space. Lit seems very focused on the MPC use case. They are using some similar, albeit less strong cryptographic techniques, but at their core (based on https://developer.litprotocol.com/v3/resources/how-it-works) they seem focused on MPC, blockchain applications, and more social key distribution.
Juicebox is very focused on how does an individual user manage their private key for one service, in a simple and user-friendly way, without any compromise in security. Think like your keys for Signal, WhatsApp, or any other E2EE service. It could also be used to manage a wallet private key for a noncustodial wallet.
As far as I can tell, Lit also manages all the nodes available to you (even if they don’t personally run them). There’s not a freedom for you to run your own nodes. This is the most important thing for this kind of distributed cryptography to be used securely, and something Juicebox supports by default – all our server code is available on GitHub and we encourage people to host their own realms to build networks with appropriate trust characteristics.
Programmable HSMs, with verifiable software (e.g. via a key ceremony), removes the need to trust a shard holder to do counting correctly. You know what software they're running, so you can verify it works as designed.
Yes, that is the work "individually" is doing here – multiple realms (services) could collude to combine shards and attempt to extract secrets.
However, programmable HSMs, with verifiable software (e.g. via a key ceremony), minimize this form of collusion. The shards they hold can't be extracted by a malicious operator, at least without substantial effort (requiring HSM hardware vulnerabilities).
Making encryption more convenient for everyone is definitely a good thing. Some people will always have that paranoia around letting keys out of their hand, but for the rest of us this protocol aims to reduce the need to trust any one service with your key material by distributing it across independent distrusting services.
TL;DR we're sharing an open-source encryption key recovery protocol that provides high security coupled with a user-friendly design, to make encryption further accessible to larger numbers of people. What we've built leverages programmable HSMs, distributed cryptography, and a user-friendly PIN-based recovery process to simplify key recovery without compromising security.
Juicebox is very focused on how does an individual user manage their private key for one service, in a simple and user-friendly way, without any compromise in security. Think like your keys for Signal, WhatsApp, or any other E2EE service. It could also be used to manage a wallet private key for a noncustodial wallet.
As far as I can tell, Lit also manages all the nodes available to you (even if they don’t personally run them). There’s not a freedom for you to run your own nodes. This is the most important thing for this kind of distributed cryptography to be used securely, and something Juicebox supports by default – all our server code is available on GitHub and we encourage people to host their own realms to build networks with appropriate trust characteristics.