Guardian (Social Recovery)

A guardian is a trusted party — which could be another person, a separate device the owner controls, or a specialized recovery service — designated within a social recovery wallet (see Kaavon's "Social Recovery Wallet" glossary definition) setup to help the wallet owner regain access if they lose their primary means of accessing the wallet. A wallet typically designates multiple guardians, requiring agreement from a threshold number of them (for example, three out of five) before a recovery can proceed, rather than giving any single guardian unilateral power over the wallet.

Guardians don't have ordinary day-to-day access to move funds from the wallet; their role is specifically limited to approving a recovery process, typically subject to a mandatory time delay that gives the legitimate owner a window to notice and block a fraudulent recovery attempt if their guardians' approval was somehow obtained improperly or through deception. Choosing guardians well — spreading them across people and services unlikely to all be compromised or colluding together at once — is central to how much genuine security benefit a social recovery setup actually provides.