Is it important to update an Electrum cold wallet?

[Minosse]

I've been using Electrum 2.5.4 since December 2015. Electrum is "my first" wallet, as I had been using Blockchain.info which, as a web based wallet, I can't really consider mine.

I've built a cold wallet using an old laptop and, since I plan to keep my stash for the long haul, I don't really want to touch my wallet very often. All I do is have an Electrum installation on my primary PC in watching mode.

Now let's go to the very reason I'm writing.

1) In the case I never updated my cold wallet version for, let's say, a few years, what would happen? Could I simply download the new version and recover my money by using the seed generated with my n-year-old version of Electrum?

2) If I regularly update my Electrum version, is the seed always valid? My concern is that, at some point, the old seed wouldn't be recognized and the wallet would get compromised.

[pooya87]

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1) In the case I never updated my cold wallet version for, let's say, a few years, what would happen? Could I simply download the new version and recover my money by using the seed generated with my n-year-old version of Electrum?

as far as i know you don't have to update every single time they release a new update you can always check the change log (release notes) here on github:
https://github.com/spesmilo/electrum/blob/master/RELEASE-NOTES
to see what has changed in the new releases.

but in case of a big change for example from 1.9.8 to 2.0 it is better to update because of the changes they make.

but again you are able to use the old version as cold storage because it can make you private keys and that is enough to have access to the balance no matter what changes, you can import those into any bitcoin wallet and use bitcoin.

and to answer your question you can always down the old versions here: https://download.electrum.org/ and use your seed from that version to recover your wallet

2) If I regularly update my Electrum version, is the seed always valid? My concern is that, at some point, the old seed wouldn't be recognized and the wallet would get compromised.

as for seed, you should read the documentation and the RELEASE-NOTES to see what has changed in the new versions.

again as an example from 1.9.8 to 2.0 how seed works has changed so the new wallet is not compatible with the old but you can upgrade the wallet and still use the seed.

see the documentation and also this for upgrade: http://docs.electrum.org/en/latest/faq.html#how-to-upgrade-electrum


important p.s.
* always make sure to keep a copy of your wallet and seed in someplace safe just in case something went wrong with the upgrade.
** also as i said it is good to know that with private keys you can do anything you want so you can even export the private keys and then mess with the wallet and even if you ruin something you still have access to your funds.
*** keep seed, copy of wallet, private keys in safe place!

[Minosse]

Thanks for your detailed response. That helped a lot!

So, if at a certain point (let's say in 10 years) a new version of Electrum uses a completely different algo to generate the seed and I input my old seed, will my wallet not get compromised?

Hope Thomas can confirm this.

[racezefi]

Thanks for your detailed response. That helped a lot!

So, if at a certain point (let's say in 10 years) a new version of Electrum uses a completely different algo to generate the seed and I input my old seed, will my wallet not get compromised?

Hope Thomas can confirm this.

10 years from now, assuming you have perfect backups of your wallet file and the Electrum software you can dump bitcoin's private keys from the software itself and import them into most bitcoin wallets.

Worst case scenario, with the wallet file and the password (no software), you could get the master private key and derive the private keys with your money.

So, as long as you have at least the seed or wallet + password, you can recover forever and ever and don't need to worry about upgrading.
At worst, you won't be able to create a transaction, but you won't lose access to your funds, as long as the bitcoin network doesn't change fundamentally.

[pooya87]

Thanks for your detailed response. That helped a lot!

So, if at a certain point (let's say in 10 years) a new version of Electrum uses a completely different algo to generate the seed and I input my old seed, will my wallet not get compromised?

Hope Thomas can confirm this.

when developers release a new version of a software they should consider all the users that may have older versions so that they can still use the new version if they had an old one by updating or using the same seed.

although 10 years is a long time that a lot of things can happen with bitcoin itself (a lot of changes).

just to be 100% sure you can always keep the installation files for the wallet that you have initially so that you can always do the recovery with that.

[bitcoinslave]

is possible to sign a transaction from cold storage 1.9.8 n still broadcast it or need upgrade cold? I would hate to bring it online or make a brand new system for it upgrade so it would be a pain in the ass to spend safely.

[ColderThanIce]

is possible to sign a transaction from cold storage 1.9.8 n still broadcast it or need upgrade cold? I would hate to bring it online or make a brand new system for it upgrade so it would be a pain in the ass to spend safely.

As long as your cold storage system has up-to-date balances on your addresses you should be able to still broadcast transactions generated by older versions of Electrum without issue. If it doesn't have up-to-date balances, it may not work. For example, if an address has a zero balance, but your cold storage system says the address still has a 0.01 BTC balance, that transaction won't broadcast because it's invalid (trying to spend funds that are no longer there).