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Recovery is how your organisation gets its backed-up key material released when a key is lost or compromised. It runs through named approvers in CoinCover Control — never automatically, and never by one person alone. Anyone in your organisation can start a recovery, but nothing is released until the backup’s Access Control List (ACL) has approved it.
Recovery is a high-stakes operation, and every recovery is recorded. Start one only when there’s a genuine need.

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Before you start

  • Your ACL is ready. The backup needs an established Access Control List of at least three members. See Set up your Access Control List.
  • A GPG key pair you control. You provide the public key when you raise the request, and you need the matching private key to open the recovered material — so have the pair ready before you begin. If you don’t have one yet, see Create a GPG key pair.
  • Know whether the key is held online or offline. Online (hot) and offline (cold) keys release differently, so it’s worth confirming which of your keys is which before you need to recover.

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Run a recovery

1

Start the request

On the backup you need to recover, start a recovery request and select the package or packages to recover.
2

Provide your GPG public key

Paste or upload your GPG public key. The recovered material is encrypted to it, so only the holder of the matching private key can open it. Control confirms the key is valid before the request goes ahead. New to GPG? See Create a GPG key pair.
3

Approvers vote

Everyone on the backup’s ACL is asked to approve. Each verifies their identity as they vote — and, where your organisation has hardware security keys enabled, taps a registered security key too — and a simple majority is required. You can follow who has voted on the recovery’s progress page.
4

The material is released

For an online (hot) key, the encrypted package is prepared automatically once the recovery is approved. For an offline (cold) key, CoinCover’s team retrieves the offline material first — Control tells you this is happening and notifies you when the download is ready.
5

Collect and decrypt

Download the encrypted package from Control and decrypt it with your GPG private key. See Create a GPG key pair for the decryption steps on macOS, Windows and the command line.
The download is available for a limited time after it becomes ready, and each download link is short-lived — so collect the material promptly once you’re notified.

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Who can do what

Anyone in your organisation can start a recovery. Only members of the backup’s ACL can approve it — see Approve or reject a recovery request for the approver’s side.

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What’s next

Approve a recovery request

The approver’s side of a recovery.

Set up your Access Control List

The approvers a recovery depends on.

Vault sync

Have your derivation paths ready in the recovery package.

Recover for Institutions

How institutional recovery is integrated and gated.