XVG in "watching only" Electrum Wallet

[pride86]

Hi guys,

I transferred some XVG from Binance to my OSX Electrum Wallet (v4.0) from https://vergecurrency.com/wallets/ back in March. When creating the wallet, I made a note of the seed and used the generated address to successfully send the XVG to. I now have the currency in my wallet, but it’s saying “watching only” on the top bar and I can’t transfer my XVG to any other wallet.

I fear that I generated a different wallet for the address I sent the XVG to as when I try to restore the wallet using the seed I have, it successfully restores a wallet, but shows a balance of 0 XVG. I’m fairly certain that the wallet is fully sychronized as well, as it’s showing the green dot on the bottom left. I don’t have any other record of seeds or private keys unfortunately.

Not sure if this is relevant, but the “watching only” wallet is the default wallet that opens when I launch the app on my Mac. This happens even after restoring the other wallet using my only seed phrase, and closing it afterwards.

As a last, desperate attempt before admitting loss of my funds, is there anything else I could do which anyone could suggest to transfer these funds out of this “watching only” wallet?

[jackg]

Possibly your coins are gone.

I would ask if you could take a look at the data directory just in case the wallet file isn't completely deleted.
Could you take a screenshot of both wallets. Is the watching only wallet just one address? Did you try increasing the gap limit?

[pooya87]

Not sure if this is relevant, but the “watching only” wallet is the default wallet that opens when I launch the app on my Mac. This happens even after restoring the other wallet using my only seed phrase, and closing it afterwards.

unless there is a bug, your wallet always opens the last closed wallet. it is written in your config file under "gui_last_wallet".
to determine whether you can recover your funds or not, you first have to determine how that watch only wallet was created on your  computer.
was it you who created a watch only wallet from another wallet that you have access to its keys?
or was it a malware, or is it a fake Electrum-XVG wallet that you have installed?
or...?

[HCP]

My advice would be to select "File -> Open" and see how many wallet files are listed in your "Wallets" directory...

If you have files other than "default_wallet", then chances are that you created a separate "standard" wallet file which is the one your seed belongs to... you have then unfortunately copied an address from this "watching only" wallet (created by importing either an address or an xpub)... and sent your XVG to that wallet instead.

Did you "experiment" with Electrum-XVG when you first installed it? perhaps trying different features or wallet types?

[pride86]

Possibly your coins are gone.

I would ask if you could take a look at the data directory just in case the wallet file isn't completely deleted.
Could you take a screenshot of both wallets. Is the watching only wallet just one address? Did you try increasing the gap limit?

Thanks for everyone's responses. Appreciate the insight and the help.

jackg - I've taken screenshots of everything you asked for here:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/m72nbgmdq962du6/AAAjVw1nUkyZDXbA0LkJa5aKa?dl=0

It turns out that I have three wallets:

• 'default_wallet' and 'XVG Wallet' are both the same in that they're both 'watching only' and both contain the same, single address and XVG amount.(
• 'wallet_1' is the only wallet that I generated/recorded a seed for and it's showing a balance of 0XVG 

[pride86]

Not sure if this is relevant, but the “watching only” wallet is the default wallet that opens when I launch the app on my Mac. This happens even after restoring the other wallet using my only seed phrase, and closing it afterwards.

unless there is a bug, your wallet always opens the last closed wallet. it is written in your config file under "gui_last_wallet".
to determine whether you can recover your funds or not, you first have to determine how that watch only wallet was created on your  computer.
was it you who created a watch only wallet from another wallet that you have access to its keys?
or was it a malware, or is it a fake Electrum-XVG wallet that you have installed?
or...?

I don't remember creating any additional wallets tbh. I created one wallet when I first installed the OSX wallet from https://vergecurrency.com/wallets/, so don't think it's a fake wallet. I only recorded one seed as I thought I only had one wallet. The 'wallet_1' in my previous post was only created recently to see if the seed I had corresponded with my wallet which has my XVG in. That 'wallet 1' comes from the only seed I have recorded. I don't have any other records of any other private keys or seeds for any other wallets.

[Xynerise]

If wallet_1 gives you other addresses apart from

Code:

DBEutBSzYUzyjDSA1zDWtofPDVJXuepbC3

then you have the wrong seed (either a word is wrong/different or the order is wrong)

It's impossible for a wallet to be watch only when you create it with a seed phrase so my guess is that you pasted the address instead in the first place.

Go to the console (menu -> console) then paste

Code:

ismine("DBEutBSzYUzyjDSA1zDWtofPDVJXuepbC3")

and see if it shows true or false.
If it shows false then you definitely have a wrong seed.

[HCP]

Curious to know where you originally got that "DBEutBSzYUzyjDSA1zDWtofPDVJXuepbC3" address from?

As your default_wallet and "wallet XVG" only contain ONE address, they have not been created from a seed, but have been created by importing just the "DBEutBSzYUzyjDSA1zDWtofPDVJXuepbC3" address (or it's public key), generating a "watch only" wallet.

If you then sent coins to this address, then you currently have no way to retrieve them, as it would appear that you don't have the private key required to be able to sign a transaction that spends from that address.

[pride86]

If wallet_1 gives you other addresses apart from

Code:

DBEutBSzYUzyjDSA1zDWtofPDVJXuepbC3

then you have the wrong seed (either a word is wrong/different or the order is wrong)

It's impossible for a wallet to be watch only when you create it with a seed phrase so my guess is that you pasted the address instead in the first place.

Go to the console (menu -> console) then paste

Code:

ismine("DBEutBSzYUzyjDSA1zDWtofPDVJXuepbC3")

and see if it shows true or false.
If it shows false then you definitely have a wrong seed.

I'm guessing that must be the case. Unfortunately, wallet_1 did show up as 'false' after pasting in that code

I obviously wasn't careful enough when setting this up and am unfortunately paying the consequences of it!

Thanks everyone for you help - appreciate everyone's time and insight with this one. Just a shame there won't be a happy ending!

[bob123]

I obviously wasn't careful enough when setting this up and am unfortunately paying the consequences of it!

Not just that you were not careful enough, it is also pretty confusing where the initial address (DBEutBSzYUzyjDSA1zDWtofPDVJXuepbC3) came from.
Did you run an anti-virus check (just to be sure) ?

Maybe there exists some kind of XVG clipping malware Did you try to copy/paste addresses? Does this work as intended?

While it can't be ruled out it was your mistake, it is very suspicious that you have created an watch-only wallet with an unknown address