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Key Security and Recovery

Salt's recovery model is built around a simple principle:

As long as an organisation's users securely retain their EOA credentials, all Salt-managed funds remain recoverable.

Salt is designed so that users retain control of their cryptographic credentials.

To maximise recoverability, organisations should ensure that:

  • Every user securely backs up their EOA.
  • Users understand that their EOA is the root of trust for recovering Salt-managed key material.
  • Recovery procedures are documented and regularly tested.
  • Organisation owners understand how to access Robo Guardian recovery material if required.

Protecting Your EOA​

The EOA serves two uses within Salt:

  • Every Salt collaborator authenticates using their own EOA.
  • The EOA is used to secure the encrypted key material associated with that collaborator, including their MPC keyshards.

Because of this relationship, protecting an EOA is the most important responsibility for every entity that uses Salt.

Organisations should ensure that every collaborator in an organisation:

  • Securely backs up their EOAs for recovery in case their primary device is lost or damaged.
  • Follow best practices for protecting wallet credentials.

As long as users retain access to their EOAs, they can recover the associated encrypted key material and continue participating in Salt.

Device Loss​

If a user's computer or device is lost, stolen, or becomes inoperable, this does not necessarily result in loss of access to Salt accounts.

Provided the user still controls their EOA, they can:

  • Authenticate with Salt from a new device.
  • Retrieve their encrypted key material.
  • Decrypt and recover their local Salt account signing material.

Future EOA Replacement​

Support for replacing a collaborator's EOA is planned for a future release.

This feature will allow a collaborator who still has lost access to their EOA to migrate to a new EOA without disrupting access to their Salt accounts.

Asset Recovery Paths​

There are two recovery paths. To recover a Salt account, you will need either all of 1 or all of 2 to recover each account. Accounts that will be recovered are based on the account(s) associated with the set of EOAs used for recovery.

  1. owner EOA + Robo Guardian seed phrase
  2. all user EOAs

Recovery Pricess​

Salt will provide a recovery process for operational recovery scenarios. It supports the above recovery paths.

Robo Guardian Recovery​

Each organisation's Robo Guardians also possess their own EOAs. Unlike user EOAs, Robo Guardian EOAs are derived from seed phrases.

An encrypted version of the Robo Guardian seed material is securely stored by Salt for retrieval by an organisation owner.

Provided an organisation owner can authenticate using their own EOA, they can:

  • Retrieve the encrypted Robo Guardian seed material
  • Decrypt the seed material locally
  • Recover the Robo Guardians if required