Received payment enough to be found through address search

[Desmond1543]

Hi, I have been generating and checking some billions different seeds in search for mine with the BTCrecover-tool.
It works by generating addresses from a specific seed and then checking it against a database with all addresses found in the blockchain.

I wonder if it is enough that my address have received balance, and not sent any? I am 99.9% this is the case, but after searching through half of my possible seeds, I am getting a bit nervous.
Just want to make sure that I got everything right.

Br

[1715020046]

1715020046

[1715020046]

1715020046

[HCP]

As long as the address has "received" some coins... it will be recorded on the blockchain, so it should be included in the "btcrecover" database of known addresses.

It does not require that your address was used to send funds in a transaction.

However, do note that it only seems to find P2PKH addresses... it does not seem to look for P2SH, so if your address is a "3"-type address (Nested SegWit for instance), the script will not work.

                        # If this is a P2PKH script (OP_DUP OP_HASH160 PUSH(20) <20 address bytes> OP_EQUALVERIFY OP_CHECKSIG)
                        if pkscript_len == 25 and block[offset:offset+3] == b"\x76\xa9\x14" and block[offset+23:offset+25] == b"\x88\xac":
                            # Add the discovered address to the address set
                            address_set.add(block[offset+3:offset+23])

[BitMaxz]

Hi, I have been generating and checking some billions different seeds in search for mine with the BTCrecover-tool.
It works by generating addresses from a specific seed and then checking it against a database with all addresses found in the blockchain.

I wonder if it is enough that my address have received balance, and not sent any? I am 99.9% this is the case, but after searching through half of my possible seeds, I am getting a bit nervous.
Just want to make sure that I got everything right.

Br

What exactly are you trying to achieve here?
Do you mean that if it has a balance and not sending the bitcoin to other wallets?

If you are following carefully the methods from BTCrecovery tool receiving address is enough as a reference.
If you are following the methods from this link https://github.com/gurnec/btcrecover/blob/master/docs/Seedrecover_Quick_Start_Guide.md
From that link, you have 4 option to choose and you should only choose one.

Since you choose the 3rd option bitcoin address with balance is enough to add it in recovery tool and let it run.

Make sure that you know partial parts of your seed phrase if you just put randomly it won't work and there is no instant recovery it takes some hours or days or a week to recover.

[nc50lc]

-snip-

What exactly are you trying to achieve here?
Do you mean that if it has a balance and not sending the bitcoin to other wallets?

I think he's thinking that unused addresses are not valid and btcrecover wont be able to find invalid (unused) addresses.

@Desmond1543 As long as it's correctly derived from a private key, it is valid even unused.
If there's a problem, it's btcrecover's compatibility to different address type.

[HCP]

What exactly are you trying to achieve here?

OP has used this option: https://github.com/gurnec/btcrecover/blob/master/docs/Seedrecover_Quick_Start_Guide.md#recovery-with-an-address-database

That is to say, he has created the address database (using the create-address-db.py script that is packaged with btcrecover) from the Bitcoin Core block files... he was wanting to know if that database includes addresses that have received bitcoins... or if you also needed to actually do at least one send for an address to have been put in the database.

As far as I can tell, as noted above, the create-address-db.py script only includes P2PKH addresses, so SegWit addresses (nested or native) won't be included... it also seems to be looking at outputs when searching for addresses, so an address just needs to have received coins at least once for it to be found and added to the btcrecover address database.

This option (address database) is best used when you're unsure of your address(es). If you know what the address is, you're better off doing a direct search for that specific address using the address or MPK as per the instructions in the btcrecover docs. Refer:

One of these four, in order of preference:

i. for Electrum (1.x or 2.x), a copy of your wallet file (a wallet file using Electrum 2.8's new full-file encryption won't work here), or
ii. your master public key (sometimes called an xpub), or
iii. a receiving address that was generated by your wallet from your seed, along with a good estimate of how many addresses you created before the receiving address you'd like to use, or
iv. an "address database". If you don't have i., ii., or iii. from above, please see the Recovery with an Address Database section below.

As shown, MPK > single address > Address DB search. (excluding Electrum wallet option)

[Desmond1543]

-snip-

What exactly are you trying to achieve here?
Do you mean that if it has a balance and not sending the bitcoin to other wallets?

I think he's thinking that unused addresses are not valid and btcrecover wont be able to find invalid (unused) addresses.

@Desmond1543 As long as it's correctly derived from a private key, it is valid even unused.
If there's a problem, it's btcrecover's compatibility to different address type.

Yes, it would be valid, however it would not be found by the program as there would be no record of it in the blockchain.


Thanks for your answers! The first time I used the address was during fall 2017 generated in mycelium, from what I have read they didn't use segwit until late 2018.

I have 14 words to choose from and I am not sure about the order, so I have 43589145600 combinations to try. I have tried about 60% of them, hence my worries.

The last option I have, in order to figure out the correct address would be to crawl the blockchain and find the address that corresponds to properties I know about the wallet.
This is something I have no idea how to execute though.