Recovery
Lost your computer or your browser? Sign in, load your Recovery Kit, and your wallet comes back after a 72-hour safety wait. No seed phrase needed.
How it works
When you protect your wallet, it is split into three parts. Any two rebuild it, and only on your device.
| Part | Where it is |
|---|---|
| 1 | This browser, inside your encrypted wallet |
| 2 | OpenWallet ID, encrypted. Useless on its own |
| 3 | Your Recovery Kit: a file, locked by a recovery code only you have |
If you lose part 1, parts 2 and 3 bring the wallet back. Part 2 is released to a new device only after you sign in and a 72-hour wait has passed.
Your Recovery Kit
- A small file, plus a recovery code of 8 groups of 4 characters. The code is shown once and never stored anywhere.
- Keep the file in a password manager or a cloud drive that is not the same account as your sign-in email, and the code somewhere else.
- Whoever opens a recovery needs both, and your sign-in.
On a new device
- Install OpenWallet and choose to recover.
- Load your Recovery Kit and type its recovery code.
- Sign in with your email code or Google, and your authenticator code, all inside the extension.
- Wait 72 hours. Every recovery waits the same 72 hours, and nobody can shorten it.
- Your email and your other devices are told when it starts, again after 24 hours, and 1 hour before the wallet is released.
- The new device rebuilds the wallet and makes you a fresh Recovery Kit.
If you did not start it
A recovery needs your Recovery Kit, its code and your sign-in, so a surprise one means someone has all of those. Act at once.
- Protect my funds, on a device where your wallet is set up, moves everything to a new wallet made on that device before the recovery can finish.
- Pause, from the link in the email or from any of your devices, adds 7 days to the wait, once. The email link can only pause: it cannot approve anything, and the page it opens never asks you to sign in.
- Stop needs a device where your wallet is set up and all your sign-in steps. It cancels the recovery, removes the browser that opened it, and blocks new devices from opening another recovery for 7 days.
OpenWallet never asks for codes on a website. Type email and authenticator codes only inside the extension.
Your 24 words
Your wallet also has 24 recovery words. You do not have to keep them, but you can: go to Settings and enter your password to see them. They restore the wallet in OpenWallet or in other wallets that use the standard path, without any wait. Anyone who has them can take the wallet, so keep them private.
A wallet you choose not to protect with OpenWallet ID can be restored only with its 24 words.