What PolicyVault is NOT
PolicyVault is not a wallet, not a custodian, and not the security boundary. Read this before connecting funds.
It is easy to misread PolicyVault as "a wallet with extra rules." It is not. Getting this distinction right matters for understanding what actually protects your funds.
PolicyVault is not a wallet
PolicyVault never generates, stores, requests, or has access to a private key or seed phrase. All signing happens in an external signer — today that means KasWare, a browser extension wallet. When you "connect" to PolicyVault, you are connecting a wallet you already control; PolicyVault never takes custody of anything.
PolicyVault is not a custodian
There are no master keys, no admin bypass, and no custodial recovery mechanism. Nobody operating a PolicyVault server — including its own developers — can move funds out of your vault. Recovery of a vault (if an agent key is lost or compromised) is a covenant-level operation signed by the owner's own key; see Owner recovery.
The hosted server is not the security boundary
PolicyVault ships as self-hostable open source, and also as a hosted convenience deployment at https://app.policy-vault.org. Either way, the backend, frontend, SDKs, REST API, MCP server, and payment-protocol adapters are not where funds safety lives. They are coordination — building unsigned transactions, presenting state, collecting approvals, submitting to the network. Kaspa L1 consensus is the security boundary. Any rule PolicyVault calls "covenant-enforced" holds even against someone who has:
- the legitimate delegate's private key,
- full knowledge of PolicyVault's internals, and
- direct access to a Kaspa node — bypassing the PolicyVault app entirely.
If a hosted PolicyVault server were fully compromised, an attacker could lie to you about vault state, refuse service, or attempt to trick a wallet into signing something unintended — but they could not forge a signature, and the covenant would still reject a transaction outside its policy. Independent browser-side verification exists specifically to catch a lying or compromised server before you sign anything; see Local intent verification and If the hosted server is compromised.
PolicyVault does not grant authority through app-level roles
Organization membership, role labels ("Administrator", "Treasurer"), and similar application metadata are conveniences for humans reading a dashboard. They never grant or modify on-chain spending authority. Only the covenant's own owner/agent/approver keys do that.
PolicyVault has not been externally audited
No independent professional security audit has occurred yet. One is planned, and this documentation will say so clearly if and when it happens. Nothing in PolicyVault's documentation claims "audited," "independently reviewed," or "professionally audited" today — see External audit status.
PolicyVault is not a percentage-fee or subscription product
PolicyVault charges nothing — no transaction fees, no subscriptions, no paid tiers, no paid security. It is free forever, including commercial use, supported only by voluntary KAS donations.
Next: PolicyVault in 5 Minutes.