I’m 100% confident the 15 words are correct, yet I’m not able to recover. I created the wallet yesterday.
I tried swapping a single word with another and I was able to create a wallet, but it was empty.
Is there anything I can do?
Here’s what I have:
The 15 words ordered (but possibly misordered a couple of words)
The address of the wallet
Created using yoroi
Is there a way to generate an address from brute-forcing the 15 words combinations to see if the address matches what I have? I realize that 15 is still a big number, but if I generate the words in almost the same order I have written them, I think it’s possible to get it back.
By reducing drastically the amount of combinations in your space it should be feasible, yes.
If you really want to brute-force it, you should automate the process transforming a mnemonic into a private key by following the Cardano algorithm for that. Then, you’ll have to generate addresses for common derivation paths and find one of the receiving addresses of your wallet.
It won’t be that easy but it’s feasible if you are sure the 15 words are the right ones. Because your hypothesis is that you’ve messed with the order while writing them down, you should start by listing small permutations (a word at different places around its current) and test each of them by hands first. You should also add some “human-error” hypothesis: try opening a new wallet with the same software you’ve used and imagine what a mistake could have been when writing the mnemonic down: have you done it with a pencil on a paper? have you copied them one by one with your mouse? is it possible you’ve mixed two lines? etc.
The best idea would be to go from the quick and dirty manual tests towards the big and complexe automated one.
Thanks, is there any software that does that you’d recommend or can point me to?
I already have the permutation generated, and I have filtered out any combination that is not mnemonic valid. It’s the step of transforming the phrase to a private key and generating the shelley addresses that I’m struggling with.
I don’t know any software that does all of it off the shelf. I’ve always done this kind of softwares myself, in Python because I don’t trust this kind of softwares. But in the case of Cardano, I think a lot of official tools can be used to help you in the very task you want to implement. Like this: GitHub - IntersectMBO/cardano-addresses: Addresses and mnemonic manipulation & derivations. It seems to me that the recovery steps you need to generate a lot of address from a mnemonic are already implemented by this tool. Check the source, don’t take my word for it but I think that’s the way.
This module provides mnemonic (backup phrase) creation, and conversion of a mnemonic to seed for wallet restoration, and address derivation functionalities.