Create a Vault

This guide walks through the process of creating a vault, from the keygen ceremony to verifying your wallets.

Note

Vault creation involves an MPC key generation ceremony that requires participation from all initial vault members. This ceremony is currently best performed through the Tholos Dashboard or mobile app, where the MPC protocol is handled for you.

Overview

Creating a vault is a multi-step process:

1. Initiate vault creation — choose a vault type (Standard or Flex), name, and initial members
2. Key generation ceremony — all vault members participate in the MPC keygen protocol to generate distributed key shares
3. Vault activation — the vault becomes active once the keygen ceremony completes
4. Wallet registration — wallets are automatically created for supported blockchains

Vault types

Choose the vault type that fits your use case:

	Standard	Flex
Signing model	All signers participate	Threshold approval + server signs
Policies	Not available	Spending limits, whitelists, cooldowns
Operational speed	Slower (all signers online)	Faster (async approval)
Best for	High-value cold storage	Day-to-day operations

After creation

Once the vault is active, you can interact with it via the API:

List wallets

curl https://api.tholos.app/vault/{vaultId}/wallets \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $THOLOS_API_TOKEN"

Returns all wallets with their blockchain addresses. Each vault gets one wallet per supported blockchain.

Check balances

curl https://api.tholos.app/vault/{vaultId}/balances \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $THOLOS_API_TOKEN"

Set up contacts

Add trusted addresses to the vault’s contact book for safer transactions:

cURL

curl -X POST https://api.tholos.app/vault/{vaultId}/contacts \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $THOLOS_API_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "name": "Operations Wallet",
    "address": "0x742d35Cc6634C0532925a3b844Bc9e7595f2bD18",
    "chain": "ethereum"
  }'

JavaScript

await fetch("https://api.tholos.app/vault/123/contacts", {
  method: "POST",
  headers: {
    Authorization: `Bearer ${process.env.THOLOS_API_TOKEN}`,
    "Content-Type": "application/json",
  },
  body: JSON.stringify({
    name: "Operations Wallet",
    address: "0x742d35Cc6634C0532925a3b844Bc9e7595f2bD18",
    chain: "ethereum",
  }),
});

Set up policies (Flex vaults only)

If you created a Flex vault, set up governance policies:

curl -X POST https://api.tholos.app/vault/{vaultId}/policies \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $THOLOS_API_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "name": "Daily spending limit",
    "conditions": [...],
    "authorizedSigners": [1, 2, 3]
  }'

See the Manage Policies guide for details.

Next steps

• Send a Transaction — initiate your first transaction
• Manage Policies — set up governance rules
• Vaults concept — learn more about vault internals