How does Ledger and Daedalus sync together?

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1

Hi,

I am trying to understand how Daedalus and Ledger sync together. To start, when we create a new wallet using Daedalus, we are essentially creating a Master Private Key which can subsequently generate a bunch of other private key where each of them can map to a public address. This is the high level idea of how HD wallet works.

When we pair Ledger with Daedalus, do both Ledger & Daedalus store the master private key? The reasoning behind this is that Daedalus still needs to be able to generate a bunch of public addresses for the paired master key, and from the Ledger’s perspective, it can recover all the private keys from the master private key alone.

Let’s suppose the statement above is true. Suppose I lost my computer that contains Daedalus that stores my master private key. Luckily, I can still recover all my private keys from my master private key stored in Ledger, however, given the near infinite number of private keys that can be generated from the master private key, how can I make sure that I am able to recover all the public addresses that I own that contains ADA without brute forcing all possible public address that can be generated from the master private and querying the blockchain?

To sum them up here are my questions

  1. When we pair Ledger with Daedalus, do both Ledger & Daedalus store the master private key?
  2. Suppose I lost my computer, but I remember my master private key, and I also own many addresses that contains ADA. How does Daedalus or the Node recover all my funds? Do they brute force and generate all possible addresses from the Master key and query the blockchain to get the balance at those addresses?

Thank You!

2

No, your private keys cannot be extracted from ledger device. Wallets will store master public key, using which it can derive addresses and accounts. When you pair, you’re essentially adding a new wallet whose keys would belong to your ledger device.

It isnt for hardware devices.

For any HD wallet, you can derive entire wallet map using master pub key. For Hot Wallets (only), master key are also saved in your wallet DB , but encrypted using the spending password. If you lose your computer:

  • for a hot wallet, you can simply restore using your mnemonics.
  • For hardware wallet, you simply pair the hardware device again.
3

Got it. In that case, since Daedalus only stores the master public key. Whenever I want to make any transaction I would have to authorize it through my hardware wallet then. Is that correct?

4

Indeed, that’s right

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