HOW IT WORKS
Three keys. Two sign. One is never enough.
Sovereign custody, made visible: your share, Soveris's share, and your reserve share. Any two of them release a move — Soveris alone never can. What that looks like day to day, when things go wrong, and on the way out, the next section shows you, step by step.
IN SHORT
Three independent shares. Two are enough. One never is.
Your assets rest behind a cryptographic scheme built on three mutually independent key shares. A move becomes valid only when two of those three shares work together. You hold two of them, Soveris holds exactly one — and a single share alone can sign nothing. That Soveris cannot move your assets alone is therefore not a good intention, but a property of the mathematics. Before we show you the detail, this is all that counts: one is never enough.
2 OF 3 TO SIGN
WHO HOLDS WHAT
Three shares. Two are enough. One never is.
Who physically holds which share, and why no two of them ever sit with Soveris alone.
- PRIMARY (you) — Lives in your smartphone, protected by FaceID or your fingerprint. This share never leaves your device. You release it with a touch — no one else.
- SECONDARY (Soveris) — Lives in a secured hardware module at Soveris in Frankfurt. Soveris contributes this share only once you start a move — on your instruction, never of its own accord.
- BACKUP (you) — Lives behind your own passphrase, or on a Sovereign Card we do not know. Your reserve share, which only you open — and which, together with PRIMARY, is enough to exit without Soveris at any time.
Any combination of two shares is enough for a valid signature — Soveris alone never is. 2 of 3 to sign
DAY TO DAY
An ordinary payment — a fingertip is enough
Day to day it feels like approving a transfer in your banking app. Nothing more happens.
- 1 · Enter the amountYou open the app and enter what you would like to send.
- 2 · FaceID or fingerprintYour smartphone asks for your biometrics — just like unlocking a payment.
- 3 · PRIMARY and SECONDARY sign togetherYour share on the device and Soveris's share compute the signature together — without a complete key ever coming into being.
- 4 · You broadcast the move to the blockchainThe finished transaction is sent, the confirmation arrives in seconds.
In the normal case PRIMARY and SECONDARY sign together. You start it, your fingerprint confirms it, Soveris contributes its share — done. No password to type. No second device. No seed phrase. Your fingerprint is enough.
PRIMARY + SECONDARY · THE EVERYDAY PATH
RECOVERY
Phone lost — back in under a minute
The fear of losing everything with your phone does not apply here. A new device, a sign-in, a glance into the camera — and you are back in.
- 1 · Install the appLoad the Soveris app onto the new device.
- 2 · Sign in with your account passwordStraight from your password manager if you like — Apple Keychain, 1Password, Bitwarden, whichever you use.
- 3 · Set up FaceIDRegister your biometrics on the new device, as you would with any other app.
- 4 · DoneFull access. Your addresses unchanged, your BACKUP share untouched.
Every few years a new smartphone arrives, and sometimes the old one disappears overnight. Neither changes anything about your assets: they were always on the blockchain, your addresses stay the same, and your BACKUP share is not even touched. Your new device simply learns again how to activate your PRIMARY share. If you need the deeper route via your BACKUP — because you have also forgotten the password, say — a 30-day waiting period applies. It is not an obstacle but your protection: a forced recovery does not run quietly, it announces itself across all your channels and can be cancelled at any time.
EXIT
You can leave at any time — and take everything with you.
Independence from Soveris is not a gesture but a built-in property. PRIMARY and BACKUP are yours — together they are enough, entirely without us.
Should Soveris one day disappear, or should you simply want to go elsewhere, you already hold everything in your hands: PRIMARY on your device and BACKUP via your passphrase or your Sovereign Card. These two shares reconstruct your wallet, move your assets to any other wallet, and broadcast through a public node of your choice. Your addresses stay the same, and Soveris need not take part.
PRIMARY + BACKUP · WITHOUT SOVERIS
INHERITANCE & PROVISION
Your heirs inherit your assets — not a puzzle.
With self-custody, access often dies with the holder; with exchanges, a slow and opaque process follows. Soveris is built for this case: you name your heirs in advance, place the passphrase in your will or a Sovereign Card in your estate — and your heirs become rightful successors, guided and under German law. Three answers to the questions almost no one dares to ask.
Your heirs present the certificate of inheritance (Erbschein) and the death certificate. Soveris checks their identity against the heir data registered in advance. After a 14-day waiting period the heir becomes the new account holder — through the passphrase from the will or the Sovereign Card from the estate. Technically this happens via a Share Update: no transaction on the blockchain, no network fee, no taxable disposal event. The wallet stays the same, only the holder is new.
Coma, stroke, dementia: your assets do not freeze for years. An emergency switch (a timer you set, 90 to 365 days) and a time-limited power of attorney ensure that trusted people can act when you no longer can — within the precise bounds you define in advance. The emergency switch (90 to 365 days) and power of attorney are features from Sovereign upwards; on Sovereign the power of attorney is limited to withdrawals (full configuration on Individual), and on Essential neither is included.
Your reserve share lives either as something you know (the passphrase, written into your will and lodged with your notary) or as something you have (the Sovereign Card, which may sit in a safe or with your notary). On inheritance the card is often the gentler path: your heirs simply hold it to the phone, with no passphrase to pass on. The Sovereign Card is purely a recovery and estate tool, not a payment card. More on the Sovereign Card →
FOR THOSE WHO WANT TO KNOW EXACTLY
For those who want to know exactly
Anyone who wants to inspect the mechanism finds the depth here — without the rest of the page suffering for it. Everything stays traceable and verifiable. The complete architecture — from the cryptographic build through the threat model to the regulatory reasoning — lies open as a Concept Paper in our GitHub repository.
At its core runs a 2-of-3 MPC — a computation distributed across several parties (Multi-Party Computation). There is no „shared file" that someone could re-assemble. The participating shares compute on a signature together, without a complete key ever coming into being anywhere — not even for a moment. PRIMARY lives in the Secure Enclave of your iPhone or in the StrongBox on Android, unlocked by biometrics. SECONDARY lives in a hardware security module (HSM) in Frankfurt to FIPS 140-3 Level 3, encrypted with AES-256-GCM, a separate key for every customer. BACKUP lives either as an Argon2id-encrypted record (the knowledge variant, openable only with your passphrase) or physically on one or more Sovereign Cards. In the knowledge variant your app also keeps the encrypted record automatically in the device's secure storage (Keychain or Keystore) — if Soveris disappears, the data already sits with you.
New phone (seconds): install the app, sign in with your account password, set up FaceID again — your PRIMARY share is restored from the encrypted backup and re-lodged in the new device's secure chip, not regenerated; BACKUP stays untouched, addresses unchanged. Password forgotten (weeks): Soveris re-checks the security of your account — not a money-laundering identification, but a verification of account ownership. A 30-day waiting period applies as protection against coercion; afterwards you decrypt the BACKUP record with your passphrase on the device, and a Share Update generates a new PRIMARY. Inheritance (weeks): certificate of inheritance and death certificate, a check against the heir data registered in advance, a 14-day waiting period, then a Share Update onto the heir — no operation on the blockchain. Soveris insolvent (on your own terms): you combine PRIMARY and BACKUP, sign to any other wallet, and broadcast through a public node of your choice. Soveris need not take part and is mathematically dispensable.
DKG (Distributed Key Generation): the first creation of the three shares at setup — a new shared key, a new address. Happens only once. Share Refresh: all three parties generate new shares of the same key; the address stays, old shares become invalid even if they still physically exist. Happens automatically every 90 days and after any security-relevant event. Share Update: a special case in which only one party replaces its share — for instance when recovering the PRIMARY or on inheritance. The others keep their shares, the address stays. For the scenarios above a Share Update or Share Refresh is used — addresses and values stay untouched, entirely without any operation on the blockchain.
FIPS 140-3 L3 · AES-256-GCM · Argon2id
WAITLIST
Sovereign custody, as soon as we open.
Three shares, two to sign, one never with Soveris alone. Join the list and be there when we hand out the first places.
You are on the list. We will be in touch as we open access — quietly, and only when there is something worth your time.