Bitcoin Forum

TLDR: write your wallet passphrase on a piece of paper, don't rely on only electronic means.

I'm very new to cryptos, and I've been buying a few altcoins to diversify my BTC and LTC holdings. I recently got interested in LISK, as it has quite a bit of potential, upcoming improvements, and a solid development team and fundamentals. So I went to look for a wallet. Their wallet software doesn't work on a Vista machine, so I was forced to use their online wallet.

I created a wallet, and copied the passphrase to my password manager. But I forgot to save it or write it down. Big mistake.

Then I converted some BTC to 54 LISK (equivalent to roughly $100) on Changelly, and transferred them to my LISK online wallet. While I was waiting, I realized I had not saved the passphrase. Holding my breath I clicked on save, and literally that second my laptop froze completely.

The window for the disaster was about five minutes, but that's all it took. In addition to saving the passphrase on my computer, I should have written it down on a piece of paper. Now the wallet is unrecoverable as far as I can tell :'(

Lesson learned. Hopefully you learned something as well.

Also note to those interested in LISK: the supply in circulation is now 54 units less ;D The transaction can be viewed on the blockchain explorer here (https://explorer.lisk.io/tx/6268694704553743641), forever in solitude, untouched.

Did you try already to search all files for the time, pc was frozen? Maybe you will find a tmp or txt file. On windows your chances could be good to find sth. Maybe also your password manager did archive your password somewhere.

If your computer hadn't frozen and instead browser tab crash happened, changes were high that you could access same pass phrase on accessing your password manager.

Password manager programs use some configuration or profile data to keep records of saved passwords, but in op's case, he didn't save the pass phrase.

For daily usage I recommend a password manager with cloud sync so you can use it on your other computers, or mobile devices. However, I try to avoid using password managers for financial transactions.

It's expensive lesson for you that you need to be very careful with your passphrase or private keys. Personally, I never write it down on a paper, because for me it's not safe place. Paper tend to loose or you may just throw it out with old documents. I'm saving my passphrases and private keys to cloud storage text document.

I grepped Firefox cache directory, and could find several files which mention the wallet URL login.lisk.io, my wallet address, and the word "passphrase". But there's no passphrase anywhere to be seen.

The files include a long string of random letters along with the metadata, which has a footer mentioning gzip. This suggests that some data has been gzipped, but this is where my technical knowhow ends. I doubt FF would be stupid enough to save a passphrase in a cached file in any case.

edit: I created a new wallet and looked through the cache files: passphrase is not in FF's cache directory in plaintext.

Which wallet were you using? I feel that's a critical part of your warning here. The reason is because every single hardware wallet explicitly recommends writing your passphrase down on something not electronic (except yours, apparently).

So if you want to keep people from committing the same mistake, please share which one wallet doesn't provide this explicit warning.

Good advice, computers are buggy as heck and, seriously, hw wallets definitely have bugs, too, and can also crash. Heck, Windows might just decide it's time to install some bug patch and reboot while you're trying to transfer keys.

Even just static shock could fry any electronics no matter how "tough".

I actually hate it that things like this are "good advice" now. Things like this should be common knowledge. Saving your passphrase on your computer or even your mobile device, especially saving them on Microsoft Word, Notepad, or similar un-encrypted programs are pretty much handing over your cryptocurrencies to hackers. I mean, it only takes a minute to write the seed on paper. How could people be so lazy? We're talking about money here. I couldn't count how much people I've seen on Facebook groups complaining that they got hacked and stuff.

Official LISK online wallet at https://login.lisk.io/

It doesn't explicitly tell to write it down, just to keep it safe. I should have known better, can only blame myself


I'm sure they are common knowlege. Even I knew better, and I've been only at this (cryptos) for a month. I forgot to write it down, and that five-minute window was all that was needed for a catastrophy. I missed it by literally a second.

Nevertheless, it takes quite a bit of research to learn how to buy and store your BTC. Just see how many threads there are on which type of wallet to use. If we expect cryptos to become mainstream, there have to be huge improvements in user experience.