Paper wallet

English Community Technical Support
1

Hello,

Once the paper wallet is ready to use in Daedalus, would it be ok to save the PDF on a USB stick?

Thanks

2

Dedalus’ papwallets don’t contain full recovery info, you can see it in this demonstrating video:

Daedalus generates papwallet with 15 out of 24 secret words on it, so you need to print it out and then write additional 9 words manually. I reckong it’s a secutiry measure against possible hacks in between the Daedalus and a printer.

If you manage to edit the resulting PDF to add 9 remaining words to it - you may store the result on a USB stick. But I don’t understand the reason. Do you want to store it on a flash-drive permanently? If so - then it’s the same result as just putting your 12 secret words in a text file and storing it on the same USB stick.

Or do you mean just temporarily use USB-stick to transfer the wallet file (maybe to a printing facility)? If so - then yes, it would be safe because of 9 missing words, but then you would have to do it like this:

  1. Create papwallet in Daedalus
  2. Save resulting PDF file on a flash-drive
  3. Write additional 9 words on a peace of paper and keep it secure in secret
  4. Go and print your papwallet anywhere you want
  5. In some safe place write down you 9 words from the peace of paper onto the papwallet
  6. Destroy peace of paper
  7. Glue papwallet together and keep it safe AS IF IT IS YOUR MONEY :slight_smile:
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3

Thanks for your awesome response.

Yes, I don’t have a printer at home so I need to use the printer at my work place. So to get this straight, I would save the PDF file to flash-drive then write down the additional 9 words on a piece of paper. Bring both with me to work, print out the paper wallet/certificate and write the additional 9 words on the paper wallet/certificate while no one is watching :slight_smile: Then I will destroy the piece of paper that has the 9 additional words on it by using a paper shredder. After doing this I will run ccleaner on my work computer just to make sure all temp files of the paper wallet is removed.

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4

Yup :+1:

  1. Or you may leave the paper with nine missing words at home and move them to papwallet when you get there from work )
  2. Or you can leave 9 words on this peace of paper forever, and never write them on the papwallet itself, so even if it’s stolen - they can’t restore it.
  3. Or you can write some of the 9 words on the papwallet, but leave some of them out, and just remember those, as kind of a password (just be sure to remember them correctly :slight_smile: )
  4. Or you may write down all 9 additional words, but make some of them wrong, and remember which ones are wrong, and which words are actually should be there )

Basically, whatever would satisfy the paranoia, and whatever memory allows :slight_smile:

I’m kinda paranoid a lot about unencrypted papwallets, so I would probably try to leave some words out, and remember them as a password. Currently there are 2048 possible words, so leaving out three of them would give 8’589’934’592 possible options. It would not necessarily protect from a primitive brut-force attack, but at least maybe give some time between the stealing of the wallet and retrieving all money from it, so I maybe could get another copy any move the funds. Somthn like that =)

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5

It depends on how much money is stored in that address, but in general (the list numbers are proportional to the individual’s paranoia and/or the money stored on the blockchain:):

  1. print 2 copies (EMP resistance and redundancy are ticked)
  2. laminate them (water resistance is ticked)
  3. put one in some safe deposit in your home city (fire resistance is ticked)
  4. make a legal Last Will that includes the instructions for your family
  5. put the other copy in some safe deposit in the other brand bank (explosion resistance is ticked)
  6. in some other city (catastrophic events ticked),
  7. in another country (doomsday ticked:)),
  8. update your will /w the second bank details.:slight_smile:

Finaly, check the balance on the Cardano explorer and if it’s still there then nobody has stolen your money as it would not be there by now.:slight_smile:

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6

Thank you vantuz-subhuman and _ilap for your instructions/input. You two are very helpful once again :smile:

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7

Any opinions/thoughts on just using the Daedalus wallet the way it is now and not utilizing the paper wallet when it becomes available? I think the way the wallet is now is pretty good. Isn’t this “good enough” because right now you have the word phase that you write out now. It’s kinda the same in a way. I guess the paper wallet makes it an “offline wallet”?

8

Yup, it’s just a “cold storage” (like a Ledger) that allows people to be sure that they wallet will not be “hacked” in the classical sense. Usually papwallets are used to store the major big savings, and you still can have your Daedalus to use separate regular “spendings” wallet. Basically - when you’re using the Daedalus - you still need to store your 12 words somewhere. Papwallet just makes it more “official” and pretty =)

I personally don’t like papwallets that much in their basic form, since it’s the same as having your 12 secret words just being written on a paper in open way. And I trust safes less, than I trust blockchain =)

I use different methods to store seeds, but I’m not that comfortable to openly discuss them here, sorry :slight_smile:

I also started a discussion in main official telegram chat about whether it would be possible to have official password-encrypted papwallets in the future, but got no response so far. Maybe will create specific topic for it on the forum a bit later.

9

Yeah the paper wallet did look cool in that 3 min video I saw but I don’t have hundreds of thousands ADA so might just use Daedalus the way it is. Thanks again!!

10

Basically, you may have two wallets: “everyday spendings, etc” that you actually use to send ADA once in a while, and the other one like “savings” that you never actually touch, but only send coins to it. Then you create two these wallets in Daedalus, and securely store 12 words to each of them. After this you may open the “savings” address in ada-tracker or official explorer and just save a bookmark in your browser, and remove this wallet from the Daedalus.

Whenever you need to send some coins to the savings address - just open the browser bookmark and copy the address. Daedalus is not required at all, until you actually need to send coins (create transactions). This way even if Daedalus gets hacked, or computer stolen, or whatever (you never know) - you will lost only your everyday spendings, but the savings will be safe - as long as the 12 secret words are safe.

But whether you keep your wallet in Daedalus or not - be sure to store the 12 secret words!

Daedalus also will be required to make delegation in the future, but I hope they will allow to create a delegation-certificate not for a particular sum of coins, but for the whole wallet as is. Like “I delegate my full stake to the pool X, and even if I get more coins in this wallet - delegate them too”, that would be hella cool.

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11

So the “savings” address is the deposit address I used in Daedalus when I withdrew ADA from Binance and deposited into the wallet, I’m assuming? I haven’t gone on the ada tracker webpage yet.

What I planed on doing is to keep using Daedalus for just a savings and to delegate ADA earning more ADA as time progresses. I plan to not spend any of the ADA for at least 5 to 10 years. I really want to hold them in this wallet for as long as possible and by then hopefully the Cardano Project and the price of ADA is doing real good for all of us :):sunglasses: When and if the credit card comes along I could fund it if I ever run into a tough spot where I might need some cash. Just hope the CC will convert from ADA to USD.

So after thinking about it. I could actually uninstall Daedalus from my computer right now as I have already made two copies of the 12 word phrase. Then if I do decide to delegate I could just reinstall Daedalus and use the 12 word phrase and all would be good? This way it has no shot at being hacked lol

12

Exactly. Your ADA is not stored in Daedalus - it’s stored on the blockchain. The “Daedalus wallet management program” is just a tool that allows you to:

  1. Create new wallets and obtain 12 secret words
  2. Import (restore) already existing wallet, using 12 secret words
  3. View your “wallet balance”, once you have a wallet
  4. Create and send transactions, signed by your secret key, to spend ADA
  5. [future] Delegate stored ADA to pools

The “problem” here is that when you withdraw your coins from an exchange - your send them to a specific address. Once you have sent some ADA to an address - that address has a balance. A “wallet” may consist of multiple addresses, and each of these addresses may have it’s own balance, so the “wallet balance” is the sum of all the balances of it’s addresses. So when you send coins to someone, or yourself from an exchange - you don’t send them to a “wallet” - you send them to an “address” that’s owned by a specific “wallet”.

Only Daedalus (for now) may show you the total balance of a “wallet”, cuz you need to have the secret key to know, which addresses are owned by this wallet. But you don’t have to know a secret key to be able to watch the balance of a single address, and that’s why “explorers” exist:

  1. https://cardanoexplorer.com/
  2. https://adatracker.com/

(I like the second one more, but the first one is official.)

Each of them have a list of latest transaction on the main page, for example. So your can click on any of them and to see, how much ADA was send, from which address[es] and to which address[es]. There’s also a search field where you can put any address and it will show you it’s balance.

When you create your wallet for the first time in Daedalus - it contains only one address that you can see on the “Receive” tab. There’re two ways for the wallet to get new addresses:

  1. You may manually ask for new receiving address on the “Receive” tab. This will generate new address with zero balance, but that address will also be owned by your wallet, so you can give it to someone to send you money, and they won’t be able to check your previous balance (cuz they have no way to know that this particular address is related in any way to your first address. Only you, as the owner of the wallet can know that those addresses are related. Unless you send ADA, and it has to use both addresses cuz there’s not enough coins on any one of them - in that case people will be able to see that addresses are actually related).

  2. When you send some ADA to someone, and there’s some change - Daedalus will automatically create new address and send the change there. Address will also be owned by you in the same way. For now there’s no way to change this behaviour, but there’s some hope:

So… if you have a wallet where you don’t spend ADA, but only accumulate it - then this wallet has only one address, and there’s basically no difference at all between watching your balance in the Daedalus, or watching the balance of this address on explorer website. And you don’t actually need Daedalus, since you don’t create any transactions that would require your secret key. So having it installed and with this wallet in it is actually a pointless possible point of failure that gives no advantages over not having it :slight_smile:

Once there’s staking available - then yes, you just have to once restore your wallet in the Daedalus, then delegate all your coins, and then remove wallet again and forget about it.

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13

Thanks alot! Appreciate it :blush:

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