Passphrase Lock Shares

What are Passphrase Lock Shares?

The Passphrase Lock Shares are an important part of our social recovery system. When you back up a mnemonic phrase, you will need one or more Secret wallet addresses of people you trust. These people will receive pieces of your passphrase lock that we call "Lock Shares". When the time comes to recover your passphrase, you will need to get some of those shares back before starting the recovery process.

The number of shares you need to recover depends on the threshold you have chosen during the backup process.

Can someone with one share see part of my passphrase?

No. Shares are all or nothing. If you have enough shares to meet the threshold, you get the entire passphrase. If you have even one less then the threshold, you get nothing. In fact, in our smart contract shares are simply represented using a counter system and are completely separate from the passphrase.

Why do we need shares?

We created shares to decrease the likelihood of a single point of failure in case your email address (or our email server) gets compromised. Anyone including the passphrase owner themselves needs to ask the shareholders to return the shares. Otherwise there is no other way of retrieving the passphrase. This adds an extra layer of security for your passphrase.

How many Shares should I create and what should my Threshold be?

The recommended number of shares is 3 with a threshold of 2.

Can I have Zero Shares?

1 is the minimum but more is recommended.

Can the shareholder send my share to anyone?

Only with your explicit approval. See the approval phase in the step-by-step.