Uses · Recovery by friends
Friends hold the spare keys.
If you lose every device, people you chose, friends or family who use a wellknown.id wallet such as kivi, help you back in. Any three of five, say: no one of them can do it alone, and nor can wellknown.id. Built, in kivi: on the web today, and in the next builds for Android and iPhone.
How it works
A key in five pieces, any three of which will do.
- You choose your custodians, and how many must agree: three of five, two of three. Each needs a wellknown.id wallet, such as kivi, and you bond with each of them as someone else’s device, the way you’d share a secret with them. Each is then one of your contacts, under a name only your devices see, as you are one of theirs.
- Your device makes a recovery key, and splits it. It locks a copy of your keyring with that key, then splits the key into shares, one for each custodian, so that any three rebuild it and two together learn nothing. Each share travels to a custodian’s kivi over your bond, end to end encrypted.
- The locked copy is kept in more than one place. wellknown.id’s store keeps it, as it keeps your other encrypted copies, and your custodians can keep one each too, so getting back in doesn’t depend on wellknown.id still being there. Nobody can read it without enough shares.
- If you lose everything, you install kivi on a new phone and choose “Get back in with my custodians”. It shows a link and four digits. Each custodian reads the link in their kivi, recognises you, in person or on a call, checks that their kivi shows the same four digits, and says yes.
- Then a wait. The recovery waits (seven days, unless you chose otherwise when you dealt the shares; never less than three) and tells every device you still have, so any of them can stop it. If none does, each custodian’s kivi sends their share to your new phone alone, which rebuilds the key, opens your keyring, and you’re back in, with every site’s key as it was. Secrets you marked recoverable come back too; a passkey or a recovery code alone never brings those.
If a custodian loses their own phone, or you change who they are, your device makes a new recovery key and deals new shares, so an old share is no use to anyone.
What it isn’t
Your friends get you back in. They don’t become you.
- No custodian can do it alone, and nor can wellknown.id, which holds only the locked copy and can’t open it.
- Custodians never see your data. A share on its own is noise, and the copy they might keep is locked.
- It isn’t acting for you. Custodians only help you back into your own wellknown.id, on your own new device. They can’t sign in as you or act as you. Letting someone act for you is a separate, signed permission: Act on someone’s behalf.
- The honest limit: enough of your custodians acting together could get in. That’s what a threshold means, so the choice of people and of the number is yours, and the wait is there for when you still have a device.
Related
The same idea, elsewhere.
Getting back in through accounts you already have, any three of five you choose, with nobody keeping a list that links them to you or to each other, is a related plan, and the two could mix. The same custodians, or others, could pass on secrets you choose if something happens to you: If something happens to you. And a shared identity, where three of five trustees must agree before it acts, uses a threshold too: 3 of 5 must agree.
What to know
Where it stands.
- Built: choosing custodians among your contacts, the people you’ve bonded with, each under a name only you see, dealing them shares (any 3 of 5 by default; you choose the number and the wait), their kivis holding your share under the name they gave you, the locked copy of your keyring in the store and with them, getting back in on a new kivi (the link, the four digits, the wait, “Stop it” on any device you still have), dealing again, and secrets marked recoverable. In kivi on the web today, and in kivi’s next builds for Android and iPhone.
- Not built: a further check at recovery, your passport read afresh through a witness, for those who want one; shares on paper for a custodian without a wallet.
- Honest limits: enough custodians acting together could get in; and after a recovery, the shares that travelled stay with your custodians until you bond with them again from the new device and deal again, which kivi asks you to do.
wellknown.id is in development. This page says what works now, and nothing more.