Social Recovery

Social recovery is a wallet security design that helps you regain access to a crypto wallet without relying on a single seed phrase. Instead of one secret controlling everything, the wallet lets you appoint trusted “guardians,” such as close friends, family members, another device you own, or a security service. If you lose your phone, forget a password, or misplace your seed phrase, a required number of guardians can approve a recovery process that moves control of the wallet back to you.

It matters because losing a private key can permanently lock you out of your assets, while storing a seed phrase in one place can create a single point of failure. Social recovery is commonly used in smart contract wallets, where rules can be programmed into the wallet itself. For example, you might set five guardians and require any three to approve recovery. This can be more user-friendly than traditional backups, but it still requires careful guardian selection and protection against collusion, coercion, or compromised accounts.