Bitcoin Forum

Hello,


I am trying to recover the funds of an old wallet from 2015 (Ninki) that is now defunct. I have the private and public phrases (12 words), as well as the master public key. Based on the emails I have from transactions, the value is roughly a little more than $2,500 USD. I am offering 10% of the value of the wallet to any solutions that help me recover this wallet. I have already attempted the existing recovery tool from Ninky as well as a modified version of the tool with an updated API.


Thanks!

First, I think that this topic should be in services section, please move to https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=52.0

Regarding your problem, I think you are referring to the seed of the wallet you currently own, right? If you can still download any version of that wallet, I think you can enter the seed above to get it back. Also, I don't think there is any other way if you don't own the Private Key (Maybe I don't know  :D)

I've never tried importing the seeds of one wallet into another to see the results, so I don't know how it will work. You can try with Electrum, if it does, it's great, if not, no problem, it takes less time than you think  ;)

Try importing the 12 word phrase to electrum wallet

1. Download Electrum from the Official site (https://electrum.org) and verify the GPG signatures (https://bitzuma.com/posts/how-to-verify-an-electrum-download-on-windows/) depending on your Operating System before installing it just to be sure you installed the right wallet.

2. Once you have installed it, Open Electrum, Select New and then enter your desired account name and click next to create.

3. Select Standard wallet and among the options select "I already have a seed"

4. Enter your 12 word seed and under the seed options button check BIP39 and click on next.

5.  I believe your script type for Ninki wallet was legacy as the default, so you select Legacy (p2pkh) and the derivation Path stays as m/44'/0'/0'

8. Enter your desired wallet password, click next to create the wallet. You should be able to see your bitcoins and spend them. If are not able to see your bitcoins, check the addresses in the wallet to see if one of them was the addresses you used back then in Ninki wallet

Please keep us updated if you are successful or not so that we can help you out further

Thank you for the responses so far, I forgot to mention that I have attempted various wallets including electrum and coinomi in an attempt to recover the wallet with no success.

I tend to agree with the comment above, used Electrum in importing your Bitcoin wallet.  But FIRST, it might now, there's someone who will PM you, don't disclose with anyone your private keys to them, always ask publicly.

Any kind of wallet that has BIP39 like Electrum or Coinomi, you can able to import there your wallet.  Most of them just used standard derivation paths upon recovering, if you don't understand here is the Youtube video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_SJKiff5Ng) of what is crypto wallet derivation paths.

Now, here is another video Youtube tutorial on how to recover a standard wallet using Electrum. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6b3i0uMB75M)
Just research your own first, everything is on the internet on how to recover Bitcoin wallets.

It seems this thread (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3138334.0) related to your problem.

You should recover your wallet through Electrum as suggested above but if it shows no balance after you recovered the wallet may be one of your wallets is in a different derivation path?

Since you have a master public key can you try to use this tool below

- https://blockpath.com/wallets/new?action=appxpub

Then paste your masterpublic key to scan the right derivation path of your wallet.

After you found the right derivation path use this tool below
- https://iancoleman.io/bip39/

Run this offline and use the derivation path to find the private key of your wallet(Use the information that you scan from the tool above)

Once you have the right private key now use that private key to recover your wallet. Use Electrum and import the private keys. It should show your wallet balance.


Take note your wallet must have some fork coins use this link how to redeem those fork coins https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2836875.0

I've tried scanning my masterpublic key and following scan resulted in no addresses found. I think this may have something to do with the wallet being discontinued.  :(

Even the ninki wallet service shutdown, as long as it follows the creation of HD wallet and as long as you have the recovery phrase then you can still recover your funds, only if you still have the balance/funds on your addresses.

Now if you think that it's still there, I bet this is a derivation path issue, and you should try all the available path in ale to recover your funds.

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Also you can try this recovery tool they made for ninki wallets https://github.com/Ninkip2p/ninki-recover
What you need on that tool is your 12-word offline and online keys since ninki is a multi-signature wallet, and your xpub.. which you received to your email when you created your account. That's why using electrum and existing wallets will not work due to its a multi-signature wallet.

EDIT: Though the recovery tool will not work due to using of non-existing api already on that recovery.js, you may need some help from a developer here.

EDIT 2: I guess electrum would work on its multi signature wallet.

Are you sure you are remembering the exact seed of the wallet?But according to the instructions above, if you remember the correct seeds, you can get this money back easily. There are a few instructions for getting your Ninki wallet back, meaning you are not the only one facing this problem. So, why can others do it?

I think so, but he said it couldn't be, weird  ::)

Just an update, I've modified the original recovery tool with a working API, it finally picks up my BTC but fails to transfer. It seems like SoChain (API) denies my request.

https://github.com/Sycorax21/ninki-recover

Hopefully someone can help correct the issue, or make use of it themselves if they are in a similar predicament.

What do you mean? Guys here have shown you how to restore your wallet with seeds. If you have found your money, it makes no sense that you cannot move it elsewhere. I don't think I understand what you mean above, how can we experience it for ourselves? Also, it is dangerous for us to download the files you linked there  ???

However, I have a recommendation like this. If you can find your money. I believe you can know the address that owns that BTC. You can export the Private Key of that address. Then download Electrum and import that private key. I think you understand this process, right? Not sure, but I believe any wallet allows you to export private keys from a address  ;) Let's try!

I'm just following this to (hopefully) add the solution to my Overview for recovering from old Bitcoin storage formats (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4959742.0). It's the first time I hear about Ninki wallet (so I can't really help you other than the usualy suggestions that have been mentioned already).

If it doesn't scan any addresses it means your wallet doesn't have balances and I think you should clarify this


Do you mean the 12 words backup doesn't work to any wallet you mention?
Can you clarify if what error do you see when importing the 12 words seed? Or importing is successful but it doesn't show any balances?

If importing 12 words seed is successful in Electrum try to check this go to wallet>information look at the image below.

https://i.imgur.com/GUYYMGj.png

And then it should show the master public key compare them with your backup copy of the master public key and check if they are the same if not it means they are different wallets.
In case if it's different try to use the master public key that you got from Electrum and use the scanner again. Let's see if it can find the right derivation path of your wallet.

I've made several attempts with Electrum so far with no success, however, the most progress I had made with Electrum previously was importing just the address and the balance still shows (Confirmation that it's still there).

As for the github link I've added, I would advise anyone downloading anything from the internet to inspect the code whenever possible (Github outlines the changes I have made in contrast to the original file). In sharing the link, I am simply looking for assistance in where my changes fail, no download is necessary (Possibly a combination of two points: jquery-1.10.2.js - Line # 8706 & recover.js - Line # 184).

The import is successful, but there is a balance of 0 in my case. The information tab displays the correct xpub keys (All 3 of them), despite having entered seeds for the first two signatures. I believe derivation path may be the issue here, as the Ninki tool is able to pull the correct addresses, but the Electrum one doesn't.

User wmredditor on Reddit (https://www.reddit.com/r/BitcoinBeginners/comments/hmsi7d/can_i_recover_bitcoin_from_a_wallet_that_is_no/) posted this:
Nobody confirmed it to work though.

From the source code,

https://github.com/Ninkip2p/NinkiWallet/blob/master/src/ninki-engine.js

It appears this software used P2PKH addresses, but generated the keys from a non-standard derivation path, instead of m/44'/0'/0' it looks like it might be m/0

See: https://github.com/Ninkip2p/NinkiWallet/blob/ca7245fa9251d0e9dfe24266b60758041687d485/src/ninki-engine.js#L2148 (which looks like it's going for change)

Create a new Wallet with Electrum, give it your seed phrase, stating that it's BIP 39, choose legacy (p2pkh) then in the derivation, try m/0

If that fails to find anything, try again with m/0/1 or even m/0/0

There is also the issue around compressed and uncompressed keys, if I remember correctly, they produce different end Bitcoin addresses despite the actual elliptic curve point being the same, everywhere by default in modern times uses Compressed Keys, of which Electrum is potentially totally oblivious to Uncompressed Keys.

I hope this helps you in some way.

I'd like to express how much I appreciate the suggestions so far.  :)


I saw that reddit post early in my recovery attempts, can confirm it did not work for me - similar to electrum, it loaded an empty wallet.


I was very hopeful on this one - I had tried m/0/1 before with no luck, but I attempted all three of these this time (m/0; m/0/0; m/0/1) but got a blank wallet again.

Hey hey, maybe this will make you sad. But I believe it is true. If you've entered the seed in your wallet, all it shows is an empty wallet. It means that your seed is incorrect, has been incorrectly supplied, or you have stored it incorrectly. Or it is the seed of an empty wallet  :-[

Also, having reread all of your post here, they seem to contradict each other. At times like this, at times like that, it was bad and it was difficult to help  ::)

Not necessarily: the derivation path could be the problem, a different path gives different addresses. It's not unlikely that "Ninki" used a different path than Electrum.

Hmm, you're right! I didn't think about it. I have found information that the Ninki wallet will be closed by December 31, 2015. Meanwhile, Electrum upgraded to version 2.0 and used a BIP32 derivative on March 2, 2015. Meaning Ninki may be using an older derivative, possibly BIP39?

Electrum doesn't accept seeds from incompatible wallets  :D Unfortunately for him  ::)

It's been 5 years since then, I'm afraid that no wallet will ever support that old derivative anymore  ::)

Ninki uses a 2 of 3 multi-sig, probably importing the seed on electrum will just show nothing.

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As I posted above, op should try to import its seed using the multisig wallet of electrum using his 12 offline keys, 12 online keys and its xpub as the requirements in ninki recovery tool.

As I don't have experience of using a multisig wallet, so I can't help much.

But I guess there's no harm of trying, right. Assuming you have 12 offline keys, 12 online keys and its xpub as the requirements in ninki, you may try to do it on electrum
-New/Restore
-Multi sig wallet
-choose 2 of 2 cosigners and signatures
-i already have a seed
-enter your offline 12 keys
-check if the xpub you have is the same that displayed on electrum

-enter cosigner seed, here enter you online 12 keys
-click options choose bip39 seed
-click the "detect existing account" if something shows, if none choose enter this derivation path m/0.

Check if it works, though I'm not sure. Correct me if there's something wrong though.

Still no luck.  :(

I think it's worth mentioning the xpub provided by Electrum upon entering the offline seed differs from the xpub key originally provided to me.

How about the online seed first if how it goes? The same steps just change the offline with online seed.

Unfortunately this didn't work either, I've even tried the various derivation paths suggested as well as m/0/1000 as I've read Ninki may have used this path.

Sorry to bump this, but this is unfortunate, the only thing you can do is to fix the recovery tool of ninki, either fix it by yourself or hire someone which only has api issues as most api used are out of service or uses different url already.