Definition
A social recovery wallet uses a recovery policy involving trusted people, devices, or services often called guardians. When the owner loses normal access, a required combination of guardians can authorize replacing or restoring the controlling credentials. In many designs, guardians do not hold the owner’s original private key and do not approve every routine transaction. The exact powers depend on the wallet’s implementation.
How It Works
The owner configures guardians and a recovery threshold in advance. A recovery request may require several approvals, a waiting period, and a chance for the existing owner to cancel an unexpected change. This differs from distributing pieces of a seed backup: social recovery can change the account’s authorization state rather than reconstruct the same secret. It also differs from ordinary multisig when the guardian role is limited to recovery instead of daily spending.
Key Considerations
Choose guardians that are independently controlled, reachable, and unlikely to be compromised together. Too few available guardians can prevent recovery, while enough colluding or compromised guardians may take control under the policy. Review delays, cancellation rights, replacement procedures, and any service dependencies before relying on the setup. Guardians should understand their responsibilities without being asked to share sensitive credentials. Social recovery can improve resilience to key loss, but it introduces trust and coordination assumptions and cannot automatically reverse completed transfers or protect against every malicious authorization.