Bitcoin Forum

Not all wallets are passphrase-based only.

This is what happened to one of my friends who used Wasabi wallet for the first time he stored $5 worth of Bitcoin a few months ago he kept his passphrase but not the password associated with that wallet, so when he tried to create a new wallet on Wasabi and Electrum the balance and the transactions did not show up, unfortunately, he did not record the only transaction and he has no contact to the guy who sends him that $5

I am not familiar with Wasabi and all his efforts to recover the wallet with the transaction and balance did not yield a result until we checked the documentation and saw this.

I decided to post it here for all newbies and I guess who are unfamiliar with Wasabi, to check read, and understand the documentation associated with any wallet I guess it is not only wallets but anything that has documentation or better use a wallet that you are more familiar.

https://docs.wasabiwallet.io/using-wasabi/WalletGeneration.html#generating-the-wallet-step-by-step

I read through the link you shared and the meaning of that password was actually a passphrase and it is known that once you add a passphrase to your recovery seed then it means you cannot recover this wallet on any other wallet: should you recover without a the passphrase you will have an empty wallet because the real wallet with the right balance is with passphrase, this is what I think happen to your friend. If you check that address on any block explorer you will be able to see the balance of that 5$ but it is not showing on the wallet because that’s not the right wallet you recovered.

https://talkimg.com/images/2023/10/22/TnOdd.jpeg

I have just tested this and you are right, but it is written that the password should be backed up for the purpose of recovering back the wallet. If you have finish setting up the wallet, no password would be require to open the wallet. But that can confused some people and it would have been better if Wasabi refer to is as passphrase because it is BIP39 passphrase and not a password.

I tried to omit the passphrase that Wasabi called password, to open a wallet without the passphrase, but it displayed that it is downloading and processing bitcoin network data, which is taking longer time.

The recommendable wallets that I am using are Electrum, Sparrow and Bluewallet.

---

Edit: It is worth mentioning that you can use Wasabi wallet without additing the passphrase which Wasabi called password. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5471188.msg63035230#msg63035230

But I will still mention that Wasabi needs to change that to passphrase for it not to confuse people.

If your friend had followed every instructions I believe he would have no problem recovering the wallet. They have outlined the process of creating a wallet and the importance of password as the last security measure against any malicious act. It was also stated their , that paraphrase should be saved separately from the password. Loosing the wallet is due to his negligence , maybe he is new to crypto, and that will just be an experience.

The good news is that the money is not much.

Newbies can make dumb mistakes and with $5, it is a very small cost to pay for valuable lesson. Your friend is still very lucky by paying a $5 cost to learn it by himself.

It is mistake from careless person because if he is careful, he will search to find documents like
How to create a wallet?
How to back up a wallet?
How to recover a wallet?

Official documents from Wasabi wallet like the link you shared above and the one I found.
https://docs.wasabiwallet.io/using-wasabi/WalletRecovery.html#mnemonic-recovery-words-and-password
Searching can give me that guide and it takes me some seconds to search.

Anyone can make that mistake. I think someone that know much about wallet that know the difference about password and passphrase can make the mistake because he may not read that it would be used to recover back the wallet and thinking it is normal password but a newbie might read all of that. It is better for Wasabi to name it passphrase instead of password. The wallet coinjoin which is no more recommended has been the reason I do not use this wallet, but this naming of passphrase to be password has been the second reason now.

Actually, your friend forgot the passphrase which is termed as a password by Wasabi wallet so even if your friend has the 12-word recovery seed it is not possible to import the wallet into another wallet like Electrum or any wallet that supports it because without the passphrase the wallet will create different master key means entirely different wallet.

Bruteforcing the passphrase is possible if your friend remembers part of the words but since $5 dollar I would just leave that and learn this as a lesson.

Exactly, even me I had to find out that it is actually a passphrase when I checked the GitHub link, although they had indicted the password as passphrase by putting it in parenthesis but it will still look cocky. Moreover I don’t get why it is a must to set it up when creating a wallet. The other wallet do ask where you want to include it or not but wasabi here is making it compulsory when creating a wallet which is not right although it add another layer of security to the seed phrase

 
What your friend kept was the seed phrase which was the 12 words, the passphrase would be the 13th word you added 

@everyone I gave her $10 for her lost funds and told her to forget about it, maybe in the future it can be brute force if Bitcoin is worth $1 million  :D this is a lesson learned for her and for us to be aware of that even if you read all the other wallet's setup instructions or documentation it takes 5 to minutes at the most to read the instructions if you're using a new wallet, many of us are accustomed to just kept the passphrase.

 

This is  such a great help, that $5 might mean a lot to her base on where she is from and the kind of economy they have there. Giving her double of what she lost is a great encouragement to keep her not loosing hope.

This was what I was complaining about before if I leave the passphrase empty while setting up the wallet:

https://www.talkimg.com/images/2023/10/22/TCQDN.jpeg


The frustration (image above) did not occur when I added the passphrase (wallet 1).

I uninstalled the wallet and installed it back. It has a default backup directory and all the wallet I created was seen after I installed back the wallet.

Wallet 1, has the passphrase
Wallet 2, did not have the passphrase as I omitted it (wallet 1 seed phrase without passphrase)
Wallet 3, new wallet seed phrase with no passphrase added.

After I opened the wallet after I reinstall the wallet
Wallet 1 that has the passphrase, displayed the frustration downloading and processing network date (above image). When I first set it up, there was nothing like that.
Wallet 2 also displayed the image above as usual
Wallet 3 surprisingly did not displayed the image, although which was the first that I opened without data network on after I reinstalled the wallet. I on the data and it synchronized.

I confirmed wallet 3 on incoleman BIP39 tool and it was correct (and without passphrase).

So this leaves me with the conclusion that you can use the wallet without the passphrase. I mean if you omit to use passphrase and not include it while setting up the wallet.

But the wallet was frustrating for me as that downloading and processing takes a longer time.

After more than 30 minutes, wallet 2 without passphrase is also working now.

This highlights one of the bigger problems with bitcoin wallets and that is the lack of standard verbiage for some things. In this case, Wasabi is talking about a BIP 39 Passphrase but they call it a "password".

Other wallets, like Sparrow Wallet, would call this a passphrase. A wallet password should just be something that encrypts the local wallet file but you can still recover your wallet if you have the seed phrase. Wasabi seems to have named their passphrase a password. That is not only bad for their user experience (since your friend lost their $5 of sats) but it's bad for wallet interoperability and the bitcoin ecosystem overall.

I don't know much about Wasabi as I haven't used them in a few years and I don't want to just dump on them because so many others do but I would probably avoid using it if this is their user experience. I think you will find that Sparrow wallet is a much more feature rich wallet anyway.

Food for thought. 

The UX of the Wasabi wallet is bad but this is more like a warning that we should be cautious of the wallets documentation of any wallet or any other application we use especially when it involves our finance, even if you are using a similar application or an older version it's better to read and understand the documentation of such application to avoid any issues

We continue learning on a daily basis and this is one good example. The truth is that Wasabi makes things complicated despite that it was stated in the instructions. But this would have been averted if she read through or ask questions. We are all acquainted with normal custom of keeping hold of the passphrase. Honestly, it's funny how we skip the manual and instructions on certain things and end up complaining when we encounter problems. Most of the problem will be avoided if we can take our time to be reading the instructions carefully. On behalf of her, thank you for the generosity.  ;D

This is one of the reasons why wasabi wallet is not a good recommendation anymore for privacy and other loopholes found with using this wallet, before now, wasabi is one of the top rated wallets together with ledger hardware wallet but this two have same way of data leak which is not producing the expected result for the safety of users anymore with their use, when you're using a password, it should only encrypt the access to that particular device and not your coins on the blockchain, your seeds phrase should protect your coins on the blockchain, technology this is one of the things using wasabi couldn't fulfill anymore.

I don't think that there's connection about the loophole and privacy matters of Wasabi to his friend's negligence of keeping the passphrase and forgetting about it.

That's so kind of you, remind her that she should always keep a back up of a wallet that she uses and also the actual password that she might make.

Other people may be able to avoid this but there are some people who will make mistakes like this and you sharing this situation will help other especially newbies. I am not familiar with that wallet but I did come across where I have to save the password to be able to access my wallet. Although it may not be Bitcoin wallet but it is similar to this one and this will help avoid losing funds especially decent amount of Bitcoin.

In any wallet you use in crypto you shouldn't forget how to back up the password and the private key because that's very important.
I didn't use this Wasabi wallet even how many times I heard this wallet on this forum.  For a Bitcoin wallet?  I prefer to use Electrum than this.

I tend to agree, that it's not about the Wasabi wallet, it's his friend who didn't back up very well the password.
Though I'm not using this wallet it's a rare case I hear that this wallet scamming its users, the reputation of this wallet still good than the web wallets out there.

Thank you for sharing this information. I had a similar challenge while trying to set up the wallet. I could not comprehend it as it was a bit complicated for me to handle, so I had to opt for electrum and a blue wallet as that was easier for me to catch because of their easy adaptive features compared to wasabi.

I think Wasabi should look into the security and privacy aspects of their wallet, as many are beginning to complain about it. They should make the installation process feasible so that everybody, including newbies can use it freely without encountering any challenges while installing it.

We learn the lessons here about wasabi, any wallet and why it is very important for us to back up the wallets that we create and we download.

When a newbie is too excited about the funds that they're about to receive. They ignore the important things that they need to remember like backing up the wallet or the keys or even remembering the passwords.

Anyway, the good consolation here is that it's not that much to understand the lesson from this incident.

Am still learning about how the wallet functions and how I can safely store BTC or any cryptocurrency within and not be at the mercy of hackers or scammers.

I always try to advice my friends about taking time to study the terms and conditions of joining a new app or program because majority of the problems encountered along the way is that of failing to adhere to the guiding rules or terms set in place.
This is indeed a very nice post and I read and understand better than I did before.

I am sure no one gives a F about the terms and conditions and anything that is given to read out while creating an account or using any service as most of the time, it's just a simple sentence written in red color text. However, in this case, it's something important and I think this actually changes from service to service. I usually get 3-5 company's mail when their terms and conditions are changed or there is a change to their policy. That means, they all are using a similar set of policies.