You can make a guardian lock your Ethereum account on-chain. The wallet can’t then make transactions. This is useful in case your phone is lost or stolen and you want to protect it beyond the phone-layer security.
When a guardian locks a wallet, a 5-day security period starts. This gives you time to get a new phone and recover your Ethereum account. (Locking doesn’t prevent recovery, for precisely this reason).
Any guardian can unlock a wallet, including the one that originally locked it.
For an even more in-depth understanding of our security model, read our blog post here.
A locked wallet cannot:
- Transact
- Add a guardian (though you can remove a guardian by interacting with smart contracts)
Locking duration
- Locking your wallet starts a five day security period
- You can unlock it at any time by using a hardware wallet or friend/family guardian
How to lock your wallet
- If you have friend/family guardian, ask them to open their Argent wallet > Ethereum account > Security tab > Guardians > Who I protect. There they need to tap your name in the list and they will see the option to lock the wallet:
- If you have Argent, Metamask or hardware guardian, you can lock the wallet at https://security.argent.xyz/lock-wallet - choose your guardian type and proceed with on-screen instructions.