Confirm your Digital Vault setup

In order to back up a seed phrase, you must have a working Digital Vault. If you have not created a Digital Vault and assigned Guardians to protect it, you can easily do that by following these instructions first.

After you have created a Vault, from the Guard app's Home screen, add an asset to your vault by tapping on "Add a Web3 Wallet."

Add an Asset to your Digital Vault

Alternatively, you could start from the app's "My Vault" screen, by tapping the Add an Asset button, or the [ + ] button in the upper right corner, and then choosing Web3 Wallet.

Choose your Wallet type

On the next screen, you will be able to choose the wallet vendor you are backing up from (or which you plan to use). By identifying the wallet vendor, it is easy for you to distinguish multiple seed phrases and private keys that you may accumulate in your Vault in the future.

When you select a wallet type, you can choose from all major vendors of software and hardware wallets.

Choose a display format for your Seed Phrase backup

Now, you need to select the format in which you want to store your seed phrase - word-by-word or free-text format. The 'Enter each word" option presents the words in your seed phrase as a formatted list. The "Free-form text" option allows you to enter your seed words in whatever way you choose.
There are also Advanced options in case you want to securely generate a new seed with the Vault12 Guard app, or import your seed backup as a file or as a photo of your paper backup.

Prepare to add a Seed Phrase to your Vault 

Create or open your Web3 wallet, and display your seed phrase. Often, right after you set up your wallet, it will ask you to back up your Seed Phrase - this is the best time to add it to your Vault. Confirm how many words your seed phrase contains (for example, 12), and select that option in the Vault12 app.

Carefully enter your Seed Phrase into your Vault

"Enter each word" option

"Free-form text" option

Name your Asset, and store it in your Vault

Once you have entered all of the words and clicked the "Done" and "Continue" buttons, you have the option to give your Wallet's Asset a unique name (otherwise it will be stored with the name of the Wallet vendor chosen before).

Also, if you already set up the Guardians for your Vault, there will be a choice between creating an Asset Backup using your Guardians only, or "Guardian Backup + local copy" of the Asset too. Having a local copy might be convenient in case you need regular and prompt access to this seed phrase, however choosing "Guardian Backup only" is more appropriate for cold storage and higher security needs.
Finally, press the "Add to Vault" button, to store the Asset.

Your Vault distributes a Backup of your Asset to your Guardians

After you tap "Add to Vault," the app will bring you to the main "My Vault" screen, showing you the newly added Asset. You can check the status of the backup by tapping on the Asset.

After the seed phrase is stored in your Vault, it will be encrypted, split, and distributed to your Guardians (if you already set up the Guardians for your Vault). In case you choose not to store a local copy, the asset will be locked after distribution to Guardians is complete.

"My Vault" with added Asset

Asset Details: Backup status

Access and unlock Seed Phrase Asset

By default, your Asset will remain locked. To unlock and access your Seed Phrase, check out this article.

Once unlocked, your Asset's Seed Phrase will be temporarily displayed so that you can enter it into a new wallet.

Note: The asset will automatically lock after 2 hours.