The Guidance of Social Recovery in Polkawallet

6 min readJun 18, 2020

Where to play?

Go to the official website to download the beta version: https://polkawallet.io/, available for Android and iOS. (Version ≥ 0.7.7)

Now is the beta version, please backup the mnemonic words.

The configuration of Social Recovery

Click on the button of Social Recovery on the Profile page, then select Make Recoverable and Click on Create Recovery to start configuring.

Click on Friends to select your reliant friends from your Contacts.

Select friends (Maybe the more friends ，the better, but the upper list is 9 ). To make the demonstration easier, we just select two friends: test 1 and test 2.
And set the threshold that is the minimum amount of your verified friend need to activate.
Set the delay period. As one new account starts the recovery process, the delay period will begin to calculate, and you can reuse your account after the whole delay period. (Suggestion: the longer the period, the safer your account, because if someone wants to recover your account maliciously, you can have enough time to perceive the abnormal condition and stop it, then get their deposit )
Click on Next Step, sign, and send the transaction. (Tips: You need to deposit some token to create the configuration, so ensure your account has enough token. Your deposit will be frozen after configuring successfully and deposit refund after deletes the configuration. )

Sign and Submit, then enter the password.
If the transaction successfully, you can see the entry page of social recovery that will display the current condition of configuration, and we have done the security configuration for our account. If you lose your private key, you can use social recovery by your verified friend to regain the right of your account.(Just for demonstrate easier, we set 14 mins for the delay period, we recommend you guys set the delay period as 90 days at least .)

The process of Social Recovery

What if you lost private key, unfortunately, but you have configured the function of social recovery, so you can create a new account and use the new account to initiate the process of social recovery. (Tips: You need to have enough token in your new account because initiate recovery need freeze some token as a deposit )

Click on Initiate Recovery, start to initiate recovery.
Select which account need to recovery.
Click on Next Step, sign, and send the transaction.
Initiate Recovery successfully, then you will see the page of initiate recovery and the information of the recovery process.

And then, the new account initiates the process of recovery for the lost account, and you can see the recovery progress by the lost account as follows picture. (Tips: If you perceive that some bad guy initiates recovery to your account on the configuration page of social recovery, you need to close the process immediately, and gain the deposit of the bad guy who wants to steal your account ).

Contact your verified friends to send verification for your new account, your friends need to enter the address of your lost account and new account, sign and send the transaction.

Use your new account to the page of Initiate Recovery, look up the process of social recovery. As follows the picture , we can see our friend [test 1], that the head of address is Hmyonj, have finished the assurance for us. (Tips：Because we set the number of friends which require activate just is 1, and the delay period just 14 mins, so we can activate social recovery for our lost account. )

Click on the button Action, select Claim Recovery, then sign and send the transaction. When the transaction is done, you can use your new account as the proxy of your lost account to sign your transactions.

Use your new account as the proxy of your lost account to send transactions

We have finished the operation of Social Recovery, so our new account can use the assets of the lost account. Because we assuming the private key has lost, so we just can use the lost account as observation, and we have two ways to import our observation :

Add the new address in the Address Book, then check the [Observation], as follows picture :

Enter in the page of Create Account, select Observation, as follows picture :

Now we try to use the proxy account to send a transaction, select our [Observation], enter in the page of transaction :
Turn on [sign with proxy account].
Select a proxy account.
We can see the state that an invalid proxy account becomes valid, and we can use it to sign and send transactions.
If the account that you selected wasn’t proxy, the transaction can’t be sent. Because our new account [ acc-02 ] has been proxy, so we can successfully use the new account to send transactions for the assets of the lost account.

In addition to the above transaction demonstration, you can use the proxy account to send other types of transactions, such as staking, governance, and a series of operations of Acala (Honzon & Homa protocol, Deposite & Earn ).

Finish the Social Recovery

When we finished the operation for the assets of the lost account, such as unbonding stake in Polkadot or close the Debt-Position in Honzon protocol, then you can transfer your assets to your new account and delete the lost account.

You need to use the proxy account to close the recovery process, and unfreeze and deposit refund in the recovery process.
Use the proxy account to delete the configuration of Social recovery, and unfreeze and deposit refund in the configuration.

After the operation of the above, the lost account has already not assets in freezing, so we can transfer our all assets to the new account , and don’t use the lost account.