If you’ve lost access to a trusted device, you can securely recover your ability to sign in your Bron account — with the help of your Guardians, or on your own with an extended 30-day delay. This guide explains how to set up Guardians in advance and how to recover signing in case of an emergency.
Setting Up Your Guardians
1.1 Choose Your Guardians
Select at least two trusted people — friends, colleagues, or partners — who you can rely on and communicate with easily. You can set up three guardians, and two are mandatory.
Guardians do not have access to your assets, accounts, or balances. Their only role is to help you recover access by providing recovery codes when requested.
Share the Guardian setup and recovery guide with them so they know exactly what to do if you ever need their help.
1.2 Agree on a Сommunication Сhannel
Establish a secure communication method (e.g., phone, Signal, Telegram, etc.) with your Guardians. This will be used to:
confirm the legitimacy of your recovery request;
send you the recovery code.
1.3 Invite Guardians to your Workspace
Log in to Bron using the web app or desktop app.
Go to Workspace → Team Members.
Click Invite and choose Guardian as the role.
Enter your Guardian’s email and click Send Invite.
You can also make an existing workspace member a Guardian, or grant a Guardian additional permissions to manage your workspace.
If approvals for adding team members are enabled in your account settings, the Guardian invite will only be sent after another workspace member approves the request.
Your Guardian will receive an email with a link to activate their Guardian account.
🔒 After account activation, a newly invited Guardian enters a 48-hour Security Delay before they can assist with recovery. This security delay begins when a Guardian account is activated.
Recovering Signing
You can use recovery in these scenarios:
Your device has been lost, stolen, or compromised.
You’ve reset or reinstalled the OS on your device — a factory reset changes the device identity, so Bron treats it as a new, untrusted device even though it’s physically the same phone or laptop.
A teammate’s device (that was a trusted device for signing) was lost or compromised.
No other device or user in the workspace currently has the ability to sign.
⚠️ If you still have a trusted device available — or another user in the workspace can still sign — use “Trust this device” (trusted device flow) instead of recovery.
2.1 A few things to know
Recovery must be started from the Bron desktop or mobile app — it’s not available in the web version.
You’ll need to run recovery for each affected account separately.
Bron securely rebuilds your signing capability with help from a trusted third party. The old data is removed and cannot be used again.
2.2 How to Start the Recovery Process
💡 The recovery flow works the same on desktop and mobile: open Device Management → Trust this device and follow the steps below. Screenshots show the desktop app; the mobile steps are identical.
Install the Bron desktop or mobile app and sign in to your workspace.
Select the account you need to recover.
Go to Devices Management and click Trust this device.
If you still have other trusted devices, Bron will first offer to Request approval from another trusted device — approve the request from that device, and no recovery is needed. If you can’t access any of them, click I can’t access any of these devices to see the recovery options.
If you don’t have permission to recover access, you’ll see “Can’t trust this device” — ask your workspace owner for help.
⚠️ Recovery removes all other trusted devices. After it completes, only this device will be trusted and able to sign transactions — other devices will need to be trusted again manually.
Option A — Guardian Recovery (48-hour delay)
Under Request approval from your guardians, click Request approval. This initiates the recovery process.
At this point:
Your Guardians will receive recovery request emails.
All workspace members will be notified that recovery has started (for security purposes).
1. Contact your Guardians using your pre-agreed communication method and ask them to share their recovery codes. They will need to log in and follow steps described in the Guardian instructions.
2. Enter the two recovery codes into the app and click Confirm.
3. A 48-hour Security Delay will begin. No recovery actions can be taken during this time.
4. Once the delay is over, return to Manage Devices → Approve.
5. Select your pending request and click Start Recovery.
Option B — Self-Recovery (30-day delay)
If your guardians are not available, click Recover next to Self-recovery. A 30-day security delay begins, and all workspace members are notified. Once the delay is over, return to Devices Management and start the recovery — no guardian codes are required.
The system will now securely generate new key material using the MPC (Multi-Party Computation) protocol, involving you, Bron, and the trusted third party.
This process takes a few minutes. Once completed, your ability to sign is restored, and you can continue working as usual.
If you need assistance at any point, don’t hesitate to contact us at support@bron.org or via the chat on the platform.