What is a Social Recovery Wallet?

Too Long; Didn't Read

Special thanks to Itamar Lesuisse from Argent and Daniel Wang from Loopring for feedback. One of the great challenges with making cryptocurrency and blockchain applications usable for average users is security: how do we prevent users' funds from being lost or stolen? Losses and thefts are a serious issue, often costing innocent blockchain users thousands of dollars or even in some cases the majority of their entire net worth. There have been many solutions proposed over the years: paper wallets, hardware wallets, and my own one-time favorite: multisig wallets. And indeed they have led to significant improvements in security. However, these solutions have all suffered from various defects - sometimes providing far less extra protection against theft and loss than is actually needed, sometimes being cumbersome and difficult to use leading to very low adoption, and sometimes both.