Freezing is an emergency "kill switch" that lets an admin instantly halt all activity in your workspace from a single action. Use it to contain an incident — a suspected key compromise, a phishing event affecting a signer, abnormal automation behavior, or an insider threat — without having to disable users, revoke tokens, and pause automation one surface at a time.
Freezing is deliberately asymmetric: a single admin can freeze immediately, but releasing the freeze requires both Fordefi Customer Success and an Admin Quorum approval. This makes it hard for an attacker to silently reverse the containment.
A workspace is in one of three states:
- Active: The normal state. All actions are available.
- Frozen: Every value-moving and configuration-changing action is blocked.
- Pending unfreeze: A release has been started and is awaiting Admin Quorum approval. The workspace stays frozen until the quorum approves.
While a workspace is frozen, all value-moving and configuration-changing actions are blocked, including:
- New transactions and swaps
- Approvals and signatures on already-pending transactions
- Policy creation, edits, and deletion
- User, role, and API User changes
- Address book changes
- MFA and passkey changes
- Webhook endpoint changes
- Importing keys and activating an API Signer
Any write action added to the platform in the future is frozen by default as well.
Read access stays available. Users can still log in and view balances, transaction history, and audit logs. A persistent banner across the web console and mobile app shows that the workspace is frozen. Admins can also see when it was frozen, by whom.
Only an Admin can trigger or release a freeze. Traders and Viewers can see the workspace state but cannot act on it. Every step of the freeze and release flow is attributable and written to the audit log.
| Role / User type | Trigger freeze | Initiate release | Approve release quorum | View state |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Admin | Yes | Yes (once CS enables) | Yes | Yes |
| Trader | No | No | No | Yes |
| Viewer | No | No | No | Yes |
| API User | Inherits from underlying user role | Inherits | Inherits | Yes |
You can freeze from either the web console or the mobile app. A confirmation step prevents accidental triggers.
From the web console:
In the side menu, click Settings > Emergency.
In the Emergency Freeze area, click Freeze Organization.
Confirm the action by typing the confirmation keyword.
From the mobile app:
- Open the emergency freeze control.
- Confirm with your biometric or device passcode.
You can optionally record a free-text reason at freeze time, which is surfaced in the audit log and notifications. The freeze takes effect immediately, and all workspace users are notified in the app.
Releasing a freeze is intentionally harder than triggering one. The Unfreeze Organization control stays disabled for everyone until Fordefi Customer Success enables it.
Contact your Fordefi CSM through your shared Slack or Telegram channel to request a release.
Your CSM validates the request — verifying the requester's identity and confirming the incident is contained.
Your CSM enables self-serve release. The Unfreeze Organization control in the web console and mobile app becomes active.
An admin initiates the release. In the Emergency Freeze area, the admin clicks Unfreeze Organization. This does not unfreeze the workspace immediately — it starts an Admin Quorum approval, and the workspace moves to Pending unfreeze.
The Admin Quorum approves. Once the quorum threshold is reached, the workspace returns to active and the audit log records the full chain: the CSM operator, the initiating admin, every approver, and all timestamps.
