hi,
Created a Daedalus (Mac) wallet March 2018, cannot remember my spending password and cannot find a 12 word phrase that i wrote down. I understand that there is no way to retreive my ADA through a wallet. However is there any other way to retreive ADA from the wallet? Trace the keystrokes back to the wallet setup date on the Mac? there is 15k ADA sitting in the wallet. Willing to talk share of the ADA if there is a successful way to retreive it.
Thanks
Reset spending password - restore the wallet using the seed words
If u donāt have the seed words u will need to try as many password u can (brute force)
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Hi @Linards_Berzins,
When you created your wallet in daedalus in 2018 you have absolutely certainly got your recovery phrase. Moreover you must have entered it back in before the wallet being allowed to be created. Now when daedalus shows you your recovery phrase on screen you must done something to be able to type it back in for confirmation in the next screen. So maybe you created a screen shot you still got somewhere (very bad practice)? Or wrote it somewhere? Or maybe you saved it online somewhere or on your computer?
Anyway without the recovery phrase or spending address you canāt retrieve your ada unfortunately.
However, you can try your spending password as many times as you want. Think backā¦
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I see, this must be the last option i guess, there is no way for me to remmeber teh passphrase or teh spending password. Do you know of any software that can do that, or other way? Thanks
It was a simple wallet right?
U should have the seed words somewhereā¦ without bkp the seed words (picture or on paper) u could not completed the installation
I had it, cannot find it for 3 years. Pretty much 99.9999% probability it is lost
You will find it I am sure
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Most end up finding them eventually. I say grab all of you passwords from all of your website accounts since 2018 and input them into spending password. Canāt hurt, and one of them may help you remember your Daedalus one.
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Thanks, I did all that, tried systematically to remember it. Wrote everything down in the notepad, what was tried, what to try, noting. Could tools like these Popular tools for brute-force attacks [updated for 2020] - Infosec Resources
somehow crack the PW on Daedalus? Or it pointless, as the security of teh wallet will not allow it.
Although I understand your problem, the fact that non-hardware ada wallets can be brute forced because they have no attempts restrictions, is the exact reason why I ran to start using a hardware wallets. I donāt like the fact that it is even possible to brute force the password!
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Since you have the month and year of your wallet setup, one option you may be able to exploit is regressive hypnosis to recall the events of that day. I sent a similar suggestion via LinkedIn Messenger to Stefan Thomas, who famously forgot or misplaced his keys to a laptop with hundreds of millions worth of BTC. Not sure if he ever tried it. In any case, your event was much more recent, and a good forensic hypnotherapist may be able to bring you back to that day and recall every keystroke (or even where you wrote down your 12-word phrase). Good luck!
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If you have some idea of the spending password (e.g. you know parts of the words, but maybe missing a few numbers or symbols) then there is a slim chance you could brute force it, but youād need to start with something mostly correct.
As for the 12 word recovery phrase, if you knew almost all of the words then brute force recovery is possible, fixing 2-3 words is feasible but more than that is not.
To put it another way, if anyone with no knowledge of your 12 word phrase or password could simply brute force your ADA, nothing wouldāve stopped them from doing so already, or from doing the same to everyone elseās wallets too. There are some bitcoin wallets with billions of dollars in them, if brute force was even remotely feasible it wouldāve been done already.
thanks, was thinking I could try that too
This holds only true for the recovery phrase. Just guessing the spending password right canāt do anything without access to that specific wallet file stored on his computer.
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What can also help. I know someone who forgot his spending password, tried all the passwords he uses and then recreated the wallet with his recovery phrase. Then when he was asked to make a new spending password, provided the same and then got an error message: āPassword must be at least X characters longā and he immediately knew what the problem and his original spending password was!
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Howdy ADA4Good: Hope youāre still around. I have a couple issues I am looking for data on how to resolve. My old computer failed; I backed up/saved my Daedalus and hopefully all the wallets (two of them, one Shelley, one Byron.) I reinstalled Daedalus on a new computer but only one of the two wallets I had on there was restored. Not sure why the 2nd one didnāt show up because I didnāt even have to access the āback-upā I did; the wallet just showed up. I have confirmed the recovery phrase on that one but: .
- The spending phrase I wrote down doesnāt access (not sure how to tell whether itās the Byron or Shelley) - Iāve read elsewhere I can ādeleteā and restore and it will prompt a new spending phrase? Any data on whether ādeleteā versus āuninstallā makes a difference in ability to recover the wallets/coins?
- Do you have any info on how to tell what type (Byron/Shelley) wallet I have thatās showing? I figure that might help to recover the 2nd which has more Cardano in it.
Byron wallets have 12 word seed phrases and Ddzā¦ addresses.
Shelley wallets have 24 word seed phrases and addr1ā¦ addresses.
(At least thatās the case for Daedalus. In principle any seed phrase length could be used for any type of wallet.)
As long as you have the seed phrases, you do not need to use Daedalus.
Shelley wallets can be restored/imported into any Cardano wallet app ā https://cardano.org/what-is-ada/#wallets. They should show up immediately, without waiting days to synchronise and without using hundreds of GiB of disk space.
For Byron wallets, itās a little trickier, because they are ancient (move the funds to a Shelley wallet as soon as possible) and not supported by most modern wallet apps. adalite.io and adawallet.io can handle Byron wallets, though, and should be able to give you access to them.
The spending password is a purely local setting. If you have (or someone else has) the seed phrase, the spending password is not needed at all and a new one can be chosen at will while restoring/importing the wallet from the seed phrase. It is just used to encrypt the private key(s) (derived from the seed phrase), while they are stored on your computer.
Wow, thanks for the info; Iām working on getting a (better) grasp of ADA as well as other crypto working. Appreciate the feed back immensely. 
