AeternumAeternum
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Quick Start

Connect your wallet, register a vault, and run your first recovery test on Sepolia in under five minutes.

Testnet only

Aeternum is currently live on Ethereum Sepolia testnet. All ETH used is test ETH with no real-world value. View contract on Sepolia Etherscan. Mainnet deployment follows an independent external security audit.

Prerequisites

Before you start, you need:

  • A browser-based Ethereum wallet — MetaMask, Coinbase Wallet, or any wallet supported by RainbowKit
  • Sepolia test ETH — free from the faucets listed below
  • A second Ethereum address to use as your backup (another wallet you control, or a fresh address from a hardware wallet)

Getting Sepolia ETH

Sepolia test ETH is available free from two reliable faucets. Each allows one claim per day:

FaucetURL
Alchemy Sepolia Faucetsepoliafaucet.com
Ethereum Sepolia FaucetGoogle Cloud Web3

Request at least 0.05 Sepolia ETH — enough to cover gas fees and fund your vault during testing.

Set Up Your Vault

Open the Aeternum app

Navigate to aeternumvault.xyz in your browser. You will see the vault dashboard with a Connect Wallet prompt in the top-right corner.

Connect your wallet and switch to Sepolia

Click Connect Wallet. Select your wallet from the RainbowKit modal and approve the connection request. If your wallet is not already on the Sepolia network, the app will prompt you to switch — confirm the network switch in your wallet.

Register your vault

Click Register in the vault dashboard. Provide the two required parameters and an optional initial deposit:

Backup address — the Ethereum address that receives your ETH if recovery triggers. For this test, use a second wallet you control; on mainnet this would typically be a trusted beneficiary or heir. It cannot be your own connected address.

Inactivity period — how long you need to be silent before recovery fires. For the test, enter 5 minutes. For real use, the minimum on mainnet is 180 days.

Optional deposit - the initial amount of ETH you want to secure in the vault right away. Leaving this empty is perfectly fine; you can easily deposit funds into your vault at any time after registration is complete.

Confirm the registration transaction in your wallet. The register() call costs a small amount of gas.

Deposit test ETH (if skipped in Step 3)

If you chose not to make an initial deposit during registration, click Deposit on your dashboard now. Enter an amount of Sepolia ETH to secure (e.g., 0.02) and confirm the transaction.

Once the funds are deposited, your vault balance will update and the recovery countdown timer will start.

Watch automatic recovery execute

With a 5-minute timer, simply do nothing after your deposit confirms. The Aeternum keeper bot checks its own indexed database roughly every 12 seconds to find vaults that have crossed their inactivity deadline, then re-confirms directly on-chain before acting. Within moments of your timer elapsing, it submits triggerRecovery() on-chain, and your Sepolia ETH moves to your backup address automatically, with no action required from you.

This step is permissionless at the contract level — any address could call triggerRecovery() once your timer is up, not just the Aeternum keeper bot — but for this walkthrough, the keeper bot handles it for you.

Allow a few minutes from timer expiry for the transaction to confirm on Sepolia, then open your backup address on Sepolia Etherscan and check the Internal Txns tab to confirm the transfer arrived.

Once recovery executes, your vault is deregistered. Click Register to start a fresh cycle whenever you are ready.

Reset the timer any time

While waiting, you can test the Ping button in the dashboard — it resets your countdown timer without moving any funds. This is how you would signal liveness on mainnet if you go on holiday and do not need to move funds for a while.

What to Do Next

Now that you have seen the full cycle on testnet, explore the rest of the documentation to understand how each part works: