What Is Social Recovery?
Social recovery is a wallet design where trusted people or devices, guardians, can help you replace a lost signer without ever holding your funds in normal times. It is the humane answer to "I dropped the only hardware wallet in a lake." It is also how you accidentally give three friends a veto over your savings.
How It Actually Works
- The account is usually a contract (account abstraction or a multisig). A threshold of guardians signs a recovery. The old key is rotated. Guardians cannot spend on Tuesday if the contract is written correctly.
- Guardians can be people, other devices you own, or institutions. Time delays are common, so you can cancel a hostile recovery.
- This is not "split the seed into three texts." Sharing a seed shares spend authority. Social recovery, done right, shares only the power to rotate.
Risks and Common Mistakes
- Guardians who all live in your phone's iMessage, or all work at the same company. Correlation is the silent killer, same as multisig.
- Guardians who do not know they are guardians, or who cannot complete a recovery under stress.
- A recovery path with no delay, run by a vendor. That is custody with extra steps. See custodian.
When It Matters
Inheritance, clumsy hands, and any household that should not have a single point of failure. Test a recovery on a throwaway account. The Security page still starts with a written seed for simple setups.
Related Terms
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