Watch-Only Wallet

Overview

Watch-only wallets use addresses, public keys, extended public keys, descriptors, or network-specific view information. They support accounting, monitoring, payment detection, audit, and portfolio visibility while keeping signing authority in another system.

Watch-only data can still be sensitive. Extended public keys may reveal current and future address relationships, and view keys can expose transaction details on privacy-focused networks. Incorrect descriptors, derivation ranges, or network settings can omit balances and create false assurance.

Users should import the minimum public data required and protect it with access controls. Organizations need accurate ownership mapping, gap and derivation settings, monitoring continuity, and reconciliation to authoritative ledgers. The system should clearly prevent signing and distinguish observed from confirmed activity. Public wallet data and labels require backup because key backups alone may not restore monitoring context.

Production ownership for Watch-Only Wallet should identify the user or legal entity, supported assets and networks, address model, custody boundary, signing authority, recovery method, and systems permitted to request or observe transactions. For Watch-Only Wallet, these fields determine who can act and which evidence is authoritative.

Watch-Only Wallet should be distinguished from the asset balance and from the application that displays it. For example, a customer-facing success message does not prove that the intended transaction executed on the correct network; operations should verify execution and reconcile the result before irreversible fulfillment.

Material risks for Watch-Only Wallet include credential compromise, malicious destinations, unsupported assets, wrong-network transfers, stale balances, compromised software, provider outage, privacy leakage, and inaccessible recovery material. For Watch-Only Wallet, controls should reflect value, automation, reversibility, and whether the organization or a third party controls signing.