Recovery
Recovery can help you regain access to a NEAR account or recover control of a rented name. For an account you control with your own wallet, recovery gives you a new seed phrase. For a rented name, recovery moves the name to a replacement owner account. You must set up recovery before you lose access. If you did not set it up, NEAR Accounts cannot recover the account for you.
Who Can Set Up Recovery?
Anyone who can sign in to a NEAR account can set up recovery for that account. You must have access because your wallet needs to approve the recovery setup.
Meteor Wallet is recommended for setup because the Meteor team works with the House of Stake on the recovery flow.
Protect All of Your Rentals
Set up recovery on your ownership account to protect every rented account it controls. You do not need to set up recovery for each rental.
Example: If davis.near controls alice.degen, shop.club, and gallery.art, set up recovery for davis.near. Recovering davis.near returns control of all three rented accounts.
Set Up Recovery
Recovery setup has three parts.
Verify an Email
Enter an email address and confirm it with a six-digit code. NEAR Accounts uses this address for recovery messages.
You also choose an anti-phishing word. The word appears in every official recovery email. Do not trust an email if the word is missing or wrong.
The anti-phishing word helps you recognize official email. It is not a recovery method.
Add Two Different Recovery Methods
Choose at least two different method types:
| Method | What you set up | How it counts |
| Passkey | Add one or more passkeys. | All passkeys count as one method type. |
| Password | Create a recovery password. | The password counts as one method type. |
| Recovery codes | Save ten one-time codes. | The set counts as one method type. Each code works once. |
| Security questions | Add one to five questions and answers. | All questions count as one method type. |
| PIN | Create a PIN with 4 to 8 digits. | The PIN counts as one method type. |
Two methods of the same type do not meet the requirement. For example, two passkeys still count as one method type.
Choose methods you can reach if your usual device is lost or broken.
Approve the Recovery Access Key
During setup, your wallet asks you to add a recovery key to the account. NEAR may label it a FullAccess key. This means the key can manage the whole account. Its use in recovery depends on the recovery rules and the trusted services described below.
When you recover a regular NEAR account that you use with an outside wallet, your wallet app creates or selects a new key. House of Stake receives only the public key, which is safe to share. It does not receive the private key that lets you control your account. After the recovery checks pass, several parties use a shared key to add your new key. This way of sharing control is called multi-party computation (MPC). Your new key has full access: it can manage your account.
If you need to recover a rented name, a separate process can move it to a new owner account. This process does not add a key to the rented account.
After you recover a regular account, the recovery key and rules stay on your ownership account. Your email and recovery methods stay in place. Recovery stays active until you remove it.
Recover Your Account
Follow the Recovery Walkthrough to recover an account, check or cancel a request, or remove recovery.
Recovery After a Sale or Transfer
Selling one rented account does not remove recovery from your ownership account. Recovery still protects the ownership account and its other rented accounts.
The sold account does not keep the seller's recovery information. NEAR Accounts clears the seller's recovery methods, policy, and open recovery requests from that rented account.
The buyer's recovery protects the rented account if recovery is active on the buyer's ownership account.
How Recovery Is Protected
Every request must pass three checks:
- Your checks: Enter the code sent to your saved email and complete a recovery method you set up.
- 72-hour wait: The request waits 72 hours. You can cancel it during this time.
- Watcher approval: A group of independent reviewers, called watchers, must approve the request.
All three checks are required. The recovery service also signs a confirmation that your email and recovery method checks passed. This signed confirmation is called an attestation.
Turn on recovery before you lose access. You do not sign each recovery request with your ownership account. Recovery depends on the House of Stake service, the methods you set up, its signed confirmation, and watcher approval.
All three checks are required. You also rely on the recovery service, your chosen methods, and independent watchers.
Follow the Recovery Walkthrough for step-by-step instructions. Technical readers can use the Recovery Backend Pipeline and Recovery Technical Reference.