Juicebox's design of distributing secrets to n independent services sounds similar to Lit Protocol's threshold signature schemes. Is this in the same problem space or no?
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.
It's the same space but most "solutions" in the space (like Lit Protocol) are actually custodial solutions parading as non-custodial. If you look closer at Lit Protocol, you will see that their nodes are unknown and unamed providers. Reading between the lines, it's just Lit hosting everything.
I actually just has a call with David from Lit Protocol. He patiently explained some of the nuanced pieces of Lit Protocol. A lot of this information is out there but they are moving so fast that it's hard to find. They are going to update their docs to make it more apparent but they have named their providers and appear to have a robust distributed network for key storage. Sorry for the hasty comment! It looks like Lit Protocol is one of the few non-custodial and resilient systems out there.
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.