How can I restore wallet from secret.key file?

[yuelipeng]

when i heard 0.12 version has low disk usage, i just copy my secret.key out, i thought it is the keystore like ethereum. then i delete the old 0.11.2 version's daedalus folder。 when i finished sync of 0.12, i copy secret.key into Secrets-1.0 folder, it can't identify.

i lost my 12 words phase unfortunately。so how can i restore wallet from secret.key file, please.

[no1ninja1973]

If this could be made urgent, I know there are a lot of users in the same boat as me. I have been searching for methods to get my funds recognized and found tons of users in the same predicament. People keep saying why is it that you do not have a seed. I am sure I did at some point, but the paper got misplaces or lost... and the Daedalus worked just fine and the funds were still of very low value so it was not a big deal at the time.

I remember downloading updates and it always showed me my funds... till one day it just failed to connect to the net, was told to download the latest version as changes were made and when I installed it was as if I never had a wallet on the system. I know I am not the only one in this predicament. I would of easily gone back to the old version to get a seed, but all it showed was "Trying to connect"

Which also give me another path for a solution for some of us.... if whatever server it was trying to connect to, could be put temporarily online so that we can get our old version working, I am sure we can recover the seed and start new wallets. Maybe that is an easier approach... I still have the executable files from that version and can gladly upload them to one of the devs... maybe just spoofing the server temporarily so that we can get into the wallet will allow us to recover our seeds.

Anyway, I know that I watched this conversation silent for a long time,... and I have been waiting for a solution, I know I am not the only one... for everyone of us that speaks out, there are 10 that are reading this and waiting in silence. Getting this fixed, will get a lot of users trading and using the currency... I know I have stopped using it because my funds got locked and I am sure others are in the same boat. please who ever is in charge of this, its been over a year now, if not longer... and the feature worked for a short while and then it got taken out.... even if this can be released just for those of us who funds are stuck. Doesn't have to go mainstream, even a step by step procedure that we can follow will be greatly appreciated!

Thank you, and please help... we are waiting on this and waiting. It breaks my heart to hear the code is out there but it just need a party to review it.

Saturnin Kepa Port Rowan, Ontario, Canada

[nikolaglumac]

@no1ninja1973 please understand that we can not do anything on the Daedalus side without a support from the cardano-wallet Adrestia team. This is not a "code is ready and needs to be reviewd" case... The best we can do now is what @KtorZ mentioned in his comment: https://github.com/input-output-hk/daedalus/issues/1234#issuecomment-762074500

[srdjan]

Hi @nikolaglumac - thanks for being supportive and providing feedback. Just one comment: when you say "...we can not do anything on the Daedalus side without a support from the cardano-wallet Adrestia team..." - it is really hard to understand from outside. This problem is Cardano / ADA wallet problem for a regular user.

[KtorZ]

What people have to understand here is that:

a) There's no "server". This is a decentralized software, the "server" is the node on each user machine. After many announcements and warnings for months, the previous node was discontinued and the network re-spinned with a completely new, not compatible node (a.k.a Byron-reboot).

b) The recovery phrase is the one thing users were told to not forget or lose. This is the most important piece of information in users' possession. That sole phrase literally the wallet. Lose it, lose all your funds. Give it away, give away all your funds. If there's one piece of information to protect and preserve, it is the recovery phrase. We cannot stress that enough.

Every single user in possession of their recovery phrase has been able to restore their wallet on a the new node and operate on the new network. Our roadmap is huge and our time is running fast, we simply cannot dedicate any resources yet to building more tools that would help those who forgot / lost the one thing that should not be lost. I hope there are some volunteers in the Cardano community who can help with this in an immediate future. Otherwise, you guys will have to be a little more patient. Delivering the next updates for Multi-Assets and Smart-Contracts has a higher priority.

[nikolaglumac]

Hi @nikolaglumac - thanks for being supportive and providing feedback. Just one comment: when you say "...we can not do anything on the Daedalus side without a support from the cardano-wallet Adrestia team..." - it is really hard to understand from outside. This problem is Cardano / ADA wallet problem for a regular user.

@srdjan please note that we are doing all we can to help you and all the other users in your situation. Still, we have limited manpower and, as @KtorZ mentioned, a very tightly packed schedule with a lot of things to deliver.

Regarding the confusion, you mentioned in your comment - Daedalus as an application consists of multiple components. Three main ones are cardano-node, cardano-wallet and Daedalus-frontend. You can see how the architecture in the following scheme: All these components are developed separately by different teams and then integrated by the Daedalus team.

The wallet-import feature is currently missing in the cardano-wallet component as the original (pre-Byron-reboot) module was a part of cardano-sl component which was replaced by cardano-wallet and no longer maintained.

[MichalPietrzok]

In our community in Poland we have a lot of people that are in the same situation. I know that seed are the most important thing but when somebody install official sofware, he trust all keys are safe in the machine (secrets folder ect. ) and wallet is able to restore. I know also you are busy but tell me please, is any chance you can enable this feuture or all ADA in thouse wallets are permanently lost ? I have to say something my people in community, bz many of them are in totaly panic.Thanks!

[rdlrt]

@MichalPietrzok - If they're technically good, You can ask them to refer to manual using instructions here and here.

he trust all keys are safe in the machine (secrets folder ect. ) and wallet is able to restore.

To be fair, the wallet does clearly tell that the recovery phrase are the ONLY way to get access to funds, and our message needs to be consistent towards community.

is any chance you can enable this feuture

Yes, it will be enabled in future as devs confirmed above (atleast you'd have instructions in a more structured method), but there is no ETA yet.

[nikolaglumac]

Thanks for the support @rdlrt 🙏

Please note that both @KtorZ's Adrestia team and the Daedalus team will put additional overtime hours and efforts into enabling this feature again. We will do all we can to help all affected users. We will inform you of our progress in this thread so please keep tracking it. Thank you for your patience!

[automaticprofits]

Hello.

Does anybody know what version is attached? And do you know if this version has the secret.key as I couldn't find it?

Just like others here, I lost the seed words. What will be the best course of action with the version of Daedalus that is currently installed? Would downloading the following version recognize the contents of my Daedalus and overwrite it and give me access to the ADA: macOS - https://ci-output-sink.s3.amazonaws.com/csl-daedalus/daedalus-0.13.0-cardano-sl-3.0.0-mainnet-macos-5014.pkg

Thanks for your help.

[nikolaglumac]

@automaticprofits you should not download nor install any old versions of Daedalus as that will not resolve the problem. The version you are using is definitely an old one which was using secret.key file. This file can be found in the state directory:

Windows: C:\Users[your user name]\AppData\Daedalus\Secrets-1.0\secret.key macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Daedalus/Secrets-1.0/secret.key Linux: ~/.local/share/Daedalus/mainnet/Secrets/secret.key

Make sure you keep it there as you will need it once we re-enable the import feature.

[automaticprofits]

Thank you Nikola for your response.

In this video https://youtu.be/eNUwie_45E8?t=259 at minute 4:24 it appears that the Import feature is active and should work in version 1.0.0#12653 as Darko explains. Should I try this? And where may I download that version?

[nikolaglumac]

@automaticprofits that feature was indeed available in that version of Daedalus, but that one no longer works (It win't be able to connect to the network) and there is no point in installing it.

[bravo3453]

I found my seed!

All is well. I feel so much calmer knowing my wallet is back

All those months I thought I had lost the seed and was stressing. Now I have restored my wallet.

[nikolaglumac]

Glad to hear that @bravo3453! Keep it safe :-)

[jsindy]

any timeframe for import reenablement?

[nikolaglumac]

any timeframe for import reenablement?

@jsindy no firm ETA at the moment. The team is fully focused on delivering Daedalus Catalyst for Fund3 and native tokens support on Daedalus Mainnet. Thanks for the patience!

[chmieleslav]

Oh sorry didn't see that:

@automaticprofits you should not download nor install any old versions of Daedalus as that will not resolve the problem. The version you are using is definitely an old one which was using secret.key file. This file can be found in the state directory:

Windows: C:\Users[your user name]\AppData\Daedalus\Secrets-1.0\secret.key macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Daedalus/Secrets-1.0/secret.key Linux: ~/.local/share/Daedalus/mainnet/Secrets/secret.key

Make sure you keep it there as you will need it once we re-enable the import feature.

Please let us know when the import feature is re-enabled, fingers crossed!

[nikolaglumac]

@chmieleslav those old builds no longer work. You have to wait for the new ones. There is no clear ETA on them yet. Please be patient, keep your secret.key file safe, and keep an eye on this thread.

[lpkitch]

@nikolaglumac Hi pal, firstly thanks for consistently and patiently providing information on this subject, like others I'm locked out of an old version of Daedalus as it's not longer supported. I noticed it states "may not work on very old versions" and just want to clarify what is classed as very old? My wallet is Version 0.13.1.

[nikolaglumac]

Hi @lpkitch! Sorry to hear about your trouble :-( Version 0.13.1 will indeed be supported. So, please hang on in there - save your secret.key file and follow this thread for updates. I hope I will have some good news to share by the end of this week, or at the beginning of the following one 🙏 Thank you for your patience!

[stewartie4]

I have been away from Crypto since 2018 and am on Daedalus version 1.0.3769 Although I still have the full wallet installation on my laptop, including secret.key, the app is old and no longer connects to the network. Unfortunately having moved house twice since then, I have lost my wallet seed/phrase so am completely dependant on the local installation on my machine.

It seems strange to me that the old wallet would be deprecated with no way to transfer an existing installation to the new wallet outside of a full delete and recovery. I understand the seed phrase is the only way to recover your wallet, but one would expect 'recovery' to be something required in the event of a disaster, not when moving from one version of the official client to another.

Thanks to everyone looking into this though, a solution being developed too late is better than none at all!

[lpkitch]

@nikolaglumac well that does sound promising! I did accidentally remove my Daedalus (read the beginning of this thread prematurely) but had the secret.file saved and luckily with OS you can just reinstall applications from the trash, so I went into the library and popped back in the saved secret.file! Again your patience and work with everyone who's had an issue is massively appreciated.

Sorry just to add my version is actually 0.13.0 not 0.13.1 but I hope this won't make a massive difference to the import ability.

[nikolaglumac]

@stewartie4 this is indeed a very unfortunate chain of events. I am sorry to hear about your trouble...

It seems strange to me that the old wallet would be deprecated with no way to transfer an existing installation to the new wallet outside of a full delete and recovery.

There was a 6 months period during which you could have upgraded Daedalus and your wallet would have been automatically migrated into the new version - the process was fully seamless... Daedalus and Cardano went through an incredibly intense and fast development phase in the last year. Old versions of Daedalus have been deprecated because they can not sync past the Shelley Hard-Fork which happened in 2020. Even though we tried hard to "build the bridge" between the old and the new, sometimes is just not possible to close the gap.

I understand the seed phrase is the only way to recover your wallet, but one would expect 'recovery' to be something required in the event of a disaster, not when moving from one version of the official client to another.

I can not agree with this. The wallet recovery phrase is your wallet. Your wallet recovery phrase is the most important piece of information you should always keep in a safe place. You should never rely on a piece of software or hardware as it could have also easily happened that your laptop gets broken and you can no longer get to the data on the hard drive.

Thanks to everyone looking into this though, a solution being developed too late is better than none at all!

I promise we will do all that we can to help all the affected users. No one will be left behind!

[nikolaglumac]

@nikolaglumac well that does sound promising! I did accidentally remove my Daedalus (read the beginning of this thread prematurely) but had the secret.file saved and luckily with OS you can just reinstall applications from the trash, so I went into the library and popped back in the saved secret.file! Again your patience and work with everyone who's had an issue is massively appreciated.

@lpkitch thanks for the understanding! We are working very hard on making the wallet-import functional again. We will do all in our power to help everyone - no one will be left behind!

This sounds like a good moment to remind all of you that uninstalling Daedalus does not remove your state directory data (including your secret.key) from the machine: https://iohk.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/900005345103

Sorry just to add my version is actually 0.13.0 not 0.13.1 but I hope this won't make a massive difference to the import ability.

That one will work too - no worries!

[lpkitch]

@nikolaglumac You're a tech whizz and forum godsend! Thankyou!

[MichalPietrzok]

Hi @lpkitch! Sorry to hear about your trouble :-( Version 0.13.1 will indeed be supported. So, please hang on in there - save your secret.key file and follow this thread for updates. I hope I will have some good news to share by the end of this week, or at the beginning of the following one 🙏 Thank you for your patience!

This is amazing news! Thank you @nikolaglumac

[jsindy]

excellent!

[Elaniobro]

EDIT: 🤦🏽‍♂️ right click open worked.

EDIT2: Unable to connect to the node. Application opens, but just says Connecting to network.....

@nikolaglumac unable to download/install the uninstaller do you have a timeline/launch date for when daedalus 3.0 will be released? Like others in this thread, I too do not have my seed recovery phrase but do have the secrets.key etc.. files still on my machine.

Thanks!

[rdlrt]

@Elaniobro - As mentioned multiple times in this thread, please do not use older versions (0.13.0 is historic and is not supposed to sync at all), and kindly wait for updated release. There might be some news early next week about estimates for next Daedalus update as mentioned above

[nikolaglumac]

@nikolaglumac unable to download/install the uninstaller do you have a timeline/launch date for when daedalus 3.0 will be released? Like others in this thread, I too do not have my seed recovery phrase but do have the secrets.key etc.. files still on my machine.

@Elaniobro you will have to wait for us to enable the wallet-import feature again. We are working very hard on this at the moment. As I promised earlier, we will do all in our power to help everyone and make sure no one is left behind! Thank you for your patience!

[Elaniobro]

@rdlrt & @nikolaglumac I saw ADA 🚀 🌕 and skimmed through this in haste. Understood and thank you both. Looking forward to the new release.

[Dax-17]

@nikolaglumac - thanks for this massively helpful thread. I won't bore you with the details but I have "lost" my seed phrase and somehow missed the upgrade window last year so I am hugely relieved that we will be able to use the secretkey file to recover ur old wallets! Waiting patiently here for some good news!

[nikolaglumac]

Will post some good news soon! Hang on in there folks! We are almost there ⏳

[no1ninja1973]

Nice, eagerly awaiting.  I am sure I am not the only watching this thread like a hawk.  Sat On Thursday, February 11, 2021, 08:16:08 a.m. EST, Nikola Glumac notifications@github.com wrote:

Will post some good news soon! Hang on in there folks! We are almost there ⏳

— You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub, or unsubscribe.

[nikolaglumac]

I have some good news folks - the wallet import feature has just been merged: https://github.com/input-output-hk/daedalus/pull/2308

We plan to release it in scope of Daedalus Flight 3.3.0-FC1 tomorrow and then to Daedalus Mainnet 3.3.0 by the middle of next week! 🎉

I want to thank you all very much for being patient! 🙏 Also, I want to pay tribute to @KtorZ as without him this would not be possible ❤️

[no1ninja1973]

That is awesome thank you so much, is there a donation tab where I can send you guys champagne or wine, or funds to make it so?  I have been awaiting this for so long that I am giddy thinking about it.   That said, I have had so much bad luck with this, that part of me is not believing it till it actually happens and my wallet is recovered.  Will post if and when it does.   Thank you for the effort, especially to those who put this work to the forefront! 

Sat On Thursday, February 11, 2021, 10:11:55 a.m. EST, Nikola Glumac notifications@github.com wrote:

I have some good news folks - the wallet import feature has just been merged: #2308

We plan to release it in scope of Daedalus Flight 3.3.0-FC1 tomorrow and then to Daedalus Mainnet 3.3.0 by the middle of next week! 🎉

I want to thank you all very much for being patient! 🙏 Also, I want to pay tribute to @KtorZ as without him this would not be possible ❤️

— You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub, or unsubscribe.

[nikolaglumac]

Thank you kindly @no1ninja1973! All of you here being able to get the hold of your wallets is in itself a prize that makes all our efforts worth it!

[lpkitch]

@nikolaglumac @KtorZ

Absolutely incredible there are tons of people here that are hundreds and possibly thousands better off thanks to your work!

Thankyou!

[nikolaglumac]

Neither @KtorZ nor I would ever allow you guys to be left behind! :-)

[lpkitch]

@nikolaglumac

Just out of curiosity (and I know this is a push) once the wallet is imported, along with the balance will it show the transaction history?

Absolutely no issue if it doesn't, you guys have done a superb job already and this isn't a feature I'm asking for in any capacity nor will your answer discredit any of your work done!

[nikolaglumac]

@lpkitch the wallet's transaction history will be fully restored. You can not have the balance without it!

[chmieleslav]

I restored my wallet "the hard way" (https://github.com/input-output-hk/cardano-wallet/issues/2395#issuecomment-775014725) a couple of days ago and it shows the transaction history. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the transaction history is "written" on the blockchain, not in one's wallet, right? https://iohk.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360015304874-How-to-Read-Transaction-Details-in-the-Cardano-Block-Explorer

[nikolaglumac]

I restored my wallet "the hard way" a couple of days ago and it shows the transaction history. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the transaction history is "written" on the blockchain, not in one's wallet, right?

Indeed. Your wallet's balance is derived from all of the history of the blockchain. All transactions combined form your wallet's balance (UTXO).

[omjanu]

Just downloaded the new wallet but can't import my old wallet so is there any way to access my wallet and transfer the coins.

[nikolaglumac]

Just downloaded the new wallet but can't import my old wallet so is there any way to access my wallet and transfer the coins.

@omjanu the version which includes the wallet-import feature has not yet been released. Please see: https://github.com/input-output-hk/daedalus/issues/1234#issuecomment-777562620

[omjanu]

@nikolaglumac Just saw it so it will be release tomorrow. Any spefic time when it will be released? Thank you

[nikolaglumac]

@nikolaglumac Just saw it so it will be release tomorrow. Any spefic time when it will be released? Thank you

@omjanu if everything goes well, it should be released during the afternoon hours UTC.

[omjanu]

@nikolaglumac Thank you for the information. we only need the secret.key file correct

[nikolaglumac]

@omjanu correct!

[CGmoney]

@nikolaglumac thank you so much for all your hard work. It truly is much appreciated by this community. Just curious, will the wallet import function be supported for Version 1.0.3769.0 of Daedalus? Thanks again.