About electrum Wallet, same SEED, diferent transactions :/ [SOLVED: GAP LIMIT]

[canihojr]

hi everyone!

i have somes questions about electrum wallet...

Case StepByStep:
1- i did a new wallet, seed ex:"1234567890" if i go to another computer, make a wallet, say already have seed, add the same seed ex:"1234567890", then in theory both are the same, im right?
2- if i do transfers using the GUI of electrum, both wallets are sync, and both can see both transactions...
3- if i go to console, and ask about "getunusedaddress" he give me the next address without use. I do operation and both are the same....

Now come the thing i dont understand.
3A- if all the addresses from the first wallet are used, they give me a new address, but if i transfer to this address, the wallet where i get the address see the transactions, but the wallet we imported before no..... how can that happens??
3B- i tryed the same with the command "createnewaddress" and same case as before........ any idea??
4- if i import the public key just to watch, same case....

Basicly i need one wallet sync on both computer... before its works, so i dont knows whats happens now :// maybe last version of electrum wallet? (3.3.8 ) Linux

[1715533251]

1715533251

[1715533251]

1715533251

[TryNinja]

1- i did a new wallet, seed ex:"1234567890" if i go to another computer, make a wallet, say already have seed, add the same seed ex:"1234567890", then in theory both are the same, im right?

If you restore a wallet from its seed, it will be the same. Just keep in mind what is the seed since they look like a group of words and not a sequence of numbers/characters.

2- if i do transfers using the GUI of electrum, both wallets are sync, and both can see both transactions...
3- if i go to console, and ask about "getunusedaddress" he give me the next address without use. I do operation and both are the same....

Yes. Both are 1:1 the same.

Now come the thing i dont understand.
3A- if all the addresses from the first wallet are used, they give me a new address, but if i transfer to this address, the wallet where i get the address see the transactions, but the wallet we imported before no..... how can that happens??
3B- i tryed the same with the command "createnewaddress" and same case as before........ any idea??
4- if i import the public key just to watch, same case....

Basicly i need one wallet sync on both computer... before its works, so i dont knows whats happens now :// maybe last version of electrum wallet? (3.3.8 ) Linux

It doesn’t matter. Just go to the “Addresses” tab (View -> Show Addresses) and pick an unused address. In all cases, reusing an address is possible. New addresses are given for privacy purposes but you can use them as many times as you want.

[canihojr]

well that was what i was thinking, but looks like dont work like that... i found on electrum documentation this explain exacly whats happens, and i checked and its true, all that new addresses are with the background RED, that ones are what dont works in the other wallet :/

How can I pre-generate new addresses?
Electrum will generate new addresses as you use them, until it hits the gap limit.

If you need to pre-generate more addresses, you can do so by typing wallet.create_new_address(False) in the console. This command will generate one new address. Note that the address will be shown with a red background in the address tab to indicate that it is beyond the gap limit. The red color will remain until the gap is filled.

WARNING: Addresses beyond the gap limit will not automatically be recovered from the seed. To recover them will require either increasing the client’s gap limit or generating new addresses until the used addresses are found.

If you wish to generate more than one address, you can use a “for” loop. For example, if you wanted to generate 50 addresses, you could do this:

REF: https://electrum.readthedocs.io/en/latest/faq.html#gap-limit

[TryNinja]

Oh, sorry. It looks like I misunderstood your question. Looks like your issue is that your first address reaches the addresses gap limit (the initial ones were used already) and generated more, but when you recover a wallet from the seed, this info isn’t stored anywhere so it could not be searching for transactions in addresses “far away” from the initial ones.

Try increasing the address gap limit on the wallet which txs aren’t showing up.

Run on console:

Code:

wallet.change_gap_limit(100)

Or a higher number.

[canihojr]

woohooo! that exactly!!! you are my hero!

then, now, i can generate all the addresses on the first wallet as i need without to be scary to loose someone, in the worst case, i limit the gap to 100000 and everything should appears like now, i guess

[Abdussamad]

Electrum can't handle wallets with that many addresses. Use the receive tab to get new addresses. By default you have 20 unused addresses. Is that not enough? More will be created automatically as you start receiving funds to the existing ones.

[Chikito]

..and everything should appears like now, i guess

WARNING: Addresses beyond the gap limit will not automatically be recovered from the seed. To recover them will require either increasing the client’s gap limit or generating new addresses until the used addresses are found.

You have to export private key [to avoid when something happens] and save it.





I am not sure are safe or not, it's your choice, dwyor

[HCP]

No, they don't need to export private keys... That's terrible advice.

Exporting private keys is very risky and should not be done unless you have a VERY good reason to!

As long as OP has their seed, they'll be able to recover their wallet and ALL the private keys/addresses.

It's just that if you are using addresses out past the normal gap limit, they won't be automatically shown after restoring. You'll need to change the gap limit manually or generate addresses until you find the one(s) missing.

[TryNinja]

WARNING: Addresses beyond the gap limit will not automatically be recovered from the seed. To recover them will require either increasing the client’s gap limit or generating new addresses until the used addresses are found.

You have to export private key [to avoid when something happens] and save it.

The seed holds all his private-keys beyond the gap limit. He doesn’t need to export anything because all the article you quoted says is that the keys aren’t generated automatically. However, they can be generated (“manually”) without any issues.