Wallet Recovery Issues

English Community Technical Support
1

Good day to all on this forum and in this community. Due to a Trojan attack that I think occurred from the first Daedalus wallet install I had to wipe clean my lap top. I then reinstalled the Daedalus wallet to the desk top (Windows 10). When I attempted to recover my old wallet, it requested the wallet name, which I cannot remember. I do have the 12 word seed recovery phrase, but not the wallet name. I was under the impression that all one needed to recover the wallet was that seed recovery phrase and nothing else. So without knowing what the wallet name was, how can I recover that wallet name and or recover the wallet with the 12 word seed recovery phrase? Thanks

Since I have tried to recover the wallet, I have not been able to connect the wallet application back to the internet so any advice on that would also be highly appreciated too - many thanks again!

2

You can set any wallet name you want. That’s just how your wallet will be called in the Daedalus interface.

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3

Thanks very much for the quick reply - it is very much appreciated, but do I not need the original name that was used during the creation of the wallet to recover the wallet? This is how I read it. In any case, the wallet is not connecting to the internet since I tried to recover that wallet so I need to obviously sort that out and then try to recover the wallet! So any thoughts on that would be helpful too!

4

As @vantuz-subhuman said you can give the wallet any name. As for the connection issue, there is a great deal of information on https://daedaluswallet.io/faq and in other threads here. Good luck!

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You don’t need the same name. You can put there anything you want.

Please read thru the “Community Technical Support” category - most of the possible problems were already solved many many times for other users.

6

Got it thanks. I think I created the connectivity problem now after reading through some threads. I closed the wallet application down prior to it recovering the wallet, so will uninstall and rinse and repeat and keep it open.

Thanks again for the quick and useful replies.

Best

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7

Thanks. Having a trawl through it all now.

Best

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8

Hi RobJF,
You seems very helpful. I have read the content about Phrases recovery issue. I have similar problem. But I have 2 words missing which is not into the option. Example:

47%20PM
Screen Shot 2018-04-26 at 3.33.47 PM.png818×613 21.2 KB
!

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Cardano uses mnemonics from BIP39 as it can be seen in the Mneomnics.h in the source.

So, it seems that you wrongly recorded them. Try to figure out those two words as you would need 2048^2 = (2^11)^2 = 2^22 = ~4.2million tries. That’s a lot. Also, the order is important either, and you cannot mismatch the order as it will generate different root SK.

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10

Yep, @Evelins, maybe it’s one of these words?

"auction", "audit", "august", "aunt", "author", "auto", "autumn"

The problem here, is that if you get a wrong word - Daedalus will not tell you something like “You have wrong key”, since your 12 words, with any one word replaced - is just a valid set of keys for some other wallet. So if you get a word wrong - it will restore you a wallet (few hours; also don’t close Daedalus in process), but it just might be a wrong empty one :slightly_frowning_face:

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This is so stressful. I have written this 12 seed phrases in my book and i have picture too. 2 words… I wanna cry… now… 4 months not able to see the 1000 coins and now able to sync the wallet but this is another issue…

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Read until the end of the message first!

Do you have a screenshot of Daedalus showing you these words? If so - could you post it here?
BUT first make sure to paint out all the other words! You can use MS Paint or any other software, to just paint-over 10 out of 12 words. A screenshot like this would be really interesting to see, since Daedalus should not do this.

Please try to keep calm. There’s still some hope. Since you have 10 correct words - you need to find out only two remaining ones.

First of all - you have something that looks like those words, so you literally can select some similar looking words from this list and try them in a row. Each try will take few hours - that is correct, but at least there’s still hope. Please remember to never close Daedalus while a wallet is restoring. Might also be useful to turn-off sleep mode on the computer.

Second - there’s a program in development right now, that will allow to check if a certain address (where you sent the coins) is related to a specific key (12 words). This check is fast and does not take hours, so once this program is available - you will be able to literally just automatically check out every possible word (starting with those that look alike, of course). With just 2 words it might work out, as @_ilap mentioned - there’re only like 4 million tries (max) :slight_smile: Any more than two would already be super hard, maybe too hard to try. All 12 words - impossible.

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Hi Eve. Thank you, but I’m not as good on these issues as the people you’re now in discussion with… good luck!

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hello guys, vantuz-subhuman I got it now… All good. Thanks for being here for me… God Bless you all

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15

Well that was probably the fastest support thread in terms: from the worst possible suggested problem to the resolution :smile:

Glad it worked out! :slightly_smiling_face::+1:

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16

Does this mean that it is ‘theoretically possible’ for someone to enter in your 12 word seed (highly unlikely I know) and they would have access to your ADA? The send password would not help secure it because that is reset. When the words are generated how many words are in the db that it picks from? If you enter in a bad seed phrase that is not associated with an existing wallet - what happens at the end of the process?

17

Yes, that’s how every real cryptocurrency works for now. It’s public\private keys cryptography. Anyone with a private key to your wallet has full access, even if he “guessed” this key.

“Sending password” does not exist on the blockchain, it only exists in your local Daedalus installation, to protect you from someone else stealing your computer (or gaining access to it) and sending all your coins. You may have Daedalus installed on multiple computers and have the same wallet restored on each of them but with different passwords.

Private keys (12 words) is the only thing, required to gain full access to a wallet.

2048 words. Which gives you 2048^12 = 2^132 possible keys. So the chance to get a key from existing wallet just by chance is 1/2^132.

It is more probable to win all the lotteries on the planet at once, and also to be stricken by lightning at the same moment :slight_smile:

Technically there’s no such thing as non-existing wallet. All wallets are like a field of possible values. Imagine each wallet to be just a number between 0 and 2^132 - they all already exist in the same way as all integer numbers exist :slight_smile:

All the wallets are already here, the question is - does someone already has keys from a specific wallet? For 99.99999999…% of wallets - no. There’s not a single person in the world that would have the key from it. But the wallet itself exists. Does a number that no one has ever written down exist? The same thing with a wallet that no one has keys from =)

Each wallet additionally has 2^64 possible addresses. If you take any single wallet - there’s 2^64 addresses related to it, and if you send coins to any one of those addresses - you will see these coins as balance for this wallet in Daedalus.

So at any point in time - there are (2^132 * 2^64) = 2^(132+62) = 2^194 Cardano addresses that do already exist. Each and every one of them may be watched in cardanoeplorer.com - and for 99.99999999999999999999999999999999999…% of them - there will be zero balance :slight_smile:

Every time you write down, or input in Daedalus, or just imagine 12 valid words (from those 2048) - you get potential access to one of those 2^132 wallets and to 2^62 of those 2^194 addresses. And if there are some coins on any of those 2^64 addresses - you may spend it.

Hope it helps )

UPD:

Some decimal numbers just to mess with the brain :slight_smile:

Number of all possible Cardano wallets = 5’444’517’900e+30

It is ~5,5 billions with additional 30 zeroes after it.

Number of addresses for each wallet = 1’844’674’400e+10

It is ~1.8 billions with additional 10 zeroes after it.

Number of total possible addresses = 25’108’407’000e+48

It is ~25 billions with additional 48 zeroes after it.

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18

This gives me the comfort I was looking for. :slight_smile:

So following that I assume the 12 word seed already exists as well relative to it’s associated wallet.

This is very useful for the layman to get a feel for the architecture. Thank you. I need to start collecting these nuggets for reference.

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19

Well, yeah, but it’s already a philosophical question, like if you have an english dictionary with all the words - does that mean that every possible phrase or a sentence already exist, even if no one has ever wrote it down or spoke it aloud? :slight_smile:

The main actual and relevant point here is that - there’s no operation on the blockchain that would “create a wallet”, like it didn’t exist before, and then everyone can see that someone has “created” it. No. All the wallets are kinda already are. The only thing that separates wallets is - whether there’s actually someone who has keys to this specific wallet (address).

And the fact that there’re some coins on an address - does not mean that someone actually own them (has keys to spend them). Since someone can just send coins to a random address for fun or by mistake.

The only thing that would actually prove that a specific address is “owned” by someone - is if there’s a spending transaction for this address, cuz you need keys to spend money.

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Got it. ty.

This would be a good metric to follow for the growth of the network. Maybe the guys at Adatracker will add that at some point. As I understand it, you can’t know the real number of users, as each user can have multiple wallets, with multiple addresses. So this is a good proxy for growth and momentum.