What Is Social Recovery?
Social recovery is a wallet-recovery method where a group of trusted parties, called guardians, can collectively restore access to your account if you lose your key or device. No single guardian can move your funds; only a defined quorum — say three of five — can approve a recovery.
The idea is to replace a single point of failure (one seed phrase) with distributed trust. Guardians can be people you know, your own other devices, or institutions, and they typically approve a key rotation on a smart-contract account rather than ever holding your assets.
How Social Recovery Works
You set up a smart-contract wallet and nominate guardians — friends, family, hardware devices, or services.
If you lose access, you start a recovery request from a new device.
A quorum of guardians confirms it's really you, usually through separate channels, and signs approval.
After the approvals — often plus a time delay to block rushed attacks — the account's signing key is replaced with your new one.
Trade-Offs to Understand
No phrase to lose — but guardians become part of your security model.
Colluding or compromised guardians could attempt a hostile recovery; time delays and alerts mitigate this.
Guardian availability matters: people change phones, lose keys, and drift away — review your set periodically.
Mostly a smart-account feature: classic single-key wallets can't do it natively.
Social Recovery and Trust Wallet
Trust Wallet uses the classic self-custody model: your secret phrase is the master key, with Encrypted Cloud Backup available as an extra safety net you control. Social recovery is a different design with its own trade-offs — and whichever model you use, anyone who can recover an account effectively controls it, so choose your safety net deliberately.
