SOV NETWORKLost your crypto key? You should be able to get back in.
With Bitcoin and most crypto wallets, whoever holds the private key owns the money. Lose the key, the seed words or the hardware wallet, and nobody can help you: the coins stay where they are for ever, and no one can spend them again. A great deal of the world's bitcoin is believed to be lost this way.
SOV Network was designed so that losing one thing does not mean losing everything.
Three ways back into a SOV account
| If you have | What happens |
|---|---|
| Your 12 words | The app shows a standard 12-word recovery phrase once, when the wallet is made. Those words alone restore the wallet on any device. |
| Your backup file | The app can save an encrypted backup of the wallet, protected by a password you choose. |
| Your guardians | You can appoint up to five citizens you trust as guardians, each appointment signed by you. If your key is lost or stolen, they sign approvals naming the old key and your new one. A node moves your account to the new key only after it has itself checked at least two different guardians' approvals within 72 hours. |
Why guardians are different
A guardian cannot spend your money, and no single guardian can move your account: it takes at least two of them, signing inside the same 72-hour window, and every node checks those signatures itself. The numbers (how many guardians, how many approvals, how long the window) are network rules that citizens can vote to change.
This works because every account on SOV Network belongs to one real, verified person (a palm and live face check on your own phone). A guardian is a real human vouching for a real human, not one of a thousand throwaway wallets.
What it does not do
- It does not reverse payments already made with a stolen key. Moving the account to a new key stops further spending.
- Scanning your palm again does not restore a wallet today. Recovery is by the 12 words, the backup file or your guardians.
- If you lose your words and your backup, and you never appointed guardians, there is no back door. That is why guardians are worth setting up on day one.
And when the problem is not a lost key but a death in the family, see what happens to your SOV when you die.
Ask us anything
Questions and criticism are welcome in public, where anyone can read the answer: SOV Network Q&A. The full design, including what the network does not do yet, is in the whitepaper (section 10 lists the limits in one place).
Download SOV Network — Android, Windows, macOS and Linux. Free, open source (Apache-2.0), nothing to buy.