Spending password was never given... Need help!

Here’s my situation. When I downloaded the Daedalus wallet, all it asked for was the wallet password and 24 word wallet recovery phrase so I thought that was all I needed. After sending a significant amount of money to stake I realized I needed a spending password! Why was this not mentioned in the beginning? So, I am in a tough situation. Do I need to reinstall the program again and look for the spending password? How do I find this spending password? Is my Ada safe?

Im not sure what you exactly mean but i guess the “wallet password” is your spending password, because there is nothing like a wallet password. :stuck_out_tongue:

Tried it and it wasnt it. It was a different password

You can also set a new spending password by restoring your wallet with your seed.

Yes, your ADA is safe.

It works like this …

When you create an account with your wallet software for the first time, your wallet generates a large random seed, from which your private key is derived. From your private key, the wallet derives your public key, which is also your public address. Most (modern) wallets can derive an infinitely large address space (like a very large tree) from a single random seed. Read about hierarchical deterministic wallets and BIP39 if you’d like to know more. That private seed is then encoded (not encrypted) in 24 words that come from a dictionary, because it easier to store/remember 24 words than a large random number.

Some wallets add an additional layer of security, that is sometimes called “wallet password” or “spending password” or something else. It has nothing to do with the private key that secures your ADA on the blockchain. The important piece of information is your 24-words - store it safely!

In Cardano we have the somewhat awkward and unfortunate situation that your random seed (i.e. your 24-words) are not portable across all available wallet implementations. When generated with Daedalus, you can use them in ADALite and Yoroi but not with Ledger and Trezor - actually on Trezo I’m not entirely sure.

“Your ADA is safe” is only true to the extend that you trust your software and your computer to be free of bugs that might compromise your private key. Not only now, but also for future updates of your software or its dependent libraries - the attack surface is massive. Do you know who/what is reading your screen, your clipboard, your keystrokes - at all times? What guarantees do you have, that this is not happening right now?

The latter is of course rhetorical, because there can’t be any guarantees like that. A practical answer to this dilemma is the use of a HW wallet (like Ledger). There you have the guarantee that your private key is generated on the device, stored in a special chip and will never leave the device. An attacker will have to press the buttons on your device, which no malware can do.

Let me therefore restate … “your ADA is safe for now”. However, you would not want to store more ADA in a software wallet than you’re happy to loose. When it becomes more than that, a HW wallet is essential IMHO.

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Hi @t3odo85,

If you still have your seed phrase (24 words), then just delete your wallet & restore it again using the seed phrase in Daedalus desktop app. Then you can enter new “spending password” during this process.

Hope it helps.

Thanks ill do that but now my issue is when i uninstall it and download a new file. It keeps restoring the old wallet smh. What a night.

I’ll try restarting my computer after uninstalling. Maybe that will help?

Hi @t3odo85,

Just go to adalite.io and create a new wallet and use your 24 word recovery phrase. Does it show you your funds?

Adalite is a light cardano wallet.

If you don’t see your funds, did you create multiple wallets in the past and maybe sent from the older to the newer?

Your wallets are in the Daedalus state directory. The path of which you can see via Help | Diagnostics

image

You can delete them too. For me they are in …

$ ls -l /Users/myname/Library/Application\ Support/Daedalus\ Mainnet/wallets*
total 998896
-rw-r--r--  1 tdiesler  staff     364544 May 28 10:57 she.3e327bc2765909977bcd8f3f1668506c17af01cc.sqlite
-rw-r--r--  1 tdiesler  staff      32768 May 31 19:53 she.3e327bc2765909977bcd8f3f1668506c17af01cc.sqlite-shm
-rw-r--r--  1 tdiesler  staff       4152 May 31 19:53 she.3e327bc2765909977bcd8f3f1668506c17af01cc.sqlite-wal
-rw-r--r--  1 tdiesler  staff     671744 May 28 10:57 she.c289e3e9b79b8965a27293114cabae42809d2c81.sqlite
-rw-r--r--  1 tdiesler  staff      32768 May 31 19:53 she.c289e3e9b79b8965a27293114cabae42809d2c81.sqlite-shm
-rw-r--r--  1 tdiesler  staff       8272 May 31 19:53 she.c289e3e9b79b8965a27293114cabae42809d2c81.sqlite-wal
-rw-r--r--  1 tdiesler  staff     356352 May 28 10:57 she.e76e91d7690ec5201748186d55034304e049f3e1.sqlite
-rw-r--r--  1 tdiesler  staff      32768 May 31 19:53 she.e76e91d7690ec5201748186d55034304e049f3e1.sqlite-shm
-rw-r--r--  1 tdiesler  staff       8272 May 31 19:53 she.e76e91d7690ec5201748186d55034304e049f3e1.sqlite-wal
-rw-r--r--  1 tdiesler  staff  503398400 May 31 19:53 stake-pools.sqlite
-rw-r--r--  1 tdiesler  staff      32768 May 31 19:53 stake-pools.sqlite-shm
-rw-r--r--  1 tdiesler  staff    4272472 May 31 19:53 stake-pools.sqlite-wal