Self-Custody Responsibility: What You Take On

Self-custody architecture removes a third-party custodian from the equation — and with it, the safety net that custodian provided. One thing people tend to underestimate going in: that responsibility doesn't disappear, it just moves to you. This page lays out plainly what shifts onto the user — not to talk anyone out of self-custody, but because the tradeoffs deserve an honest look.

What Changes

• Irreversibility: a confirmed transaction on a decentralized network generally cannot be reversed by any party, including the user who sent it.
• No Recovery Service: if a private key and its backup are both lost, there is no support line that can restore access — no customer service department holds a copy.
• Sole Responsibility for Security: with no custodian monitoring for fraud on the user's behalf, security practices (verification, backups, phishing awareness) become the user's responsibility alone.
• Software and Tooling Risk: decentralized network software and the surrounding tooling are still evolving, and can carry risks that a mature, regulated financial system typically absorbs on a user's behalf.

Why This Page Exists

Wallet providers naturally emphasize what their product solves. This page states the parts that no product solves for you — the responsibilities that come with holding your own keys, regardless of which distributed-key architecture is used. See the readiness score for a practical check of whether these responsibilities are already covered in your own setup.