Move from one wallet to another with 12-word seed?

[AnotherCryptoNoob]

Hi,

The following experiment with the desktop wallets "Atomic Wallet" and "Exodus":

• Created a new wallet with Atomic Wallet, noted down the 12-word seed, chose password etc.
• Then launched Exodus, right at the beginning chose "Restore from Backup", then typed in the 12 words under "Restore Wallet" and proceeded through some other dialogues

I would have expected that in both wallets, all keys (public and private) e.g. for BTC and ETH are exactly the same because both wallets derive all keys from the seed based on BIP39 and BIP44. I used the functions "Show private keys" or similar to display them in both apps. But most of the keys are not identical:

• BTC:
  
  • Atomic Wallet shows one key pair
  • Exodus shows two key paris, one of which is identical to the one from Atomic indeed, but the other one is different
• ETC:
  
  • Both wallets show one key pair each, but different ones
  • What I wonder about the one in Exodus: It shows a column "Path" with value "m/0/0". I thought the path always has the format "m/44'/0'/0'/0/0"?

Why doesn't it work? Why are the keys not identical? If I wanted to switch from Atomic to Exodus with some active currencies, it would not work like this. Is any of my expectations wrong?

Kind regards

[Charles-Tim]

First of all, it is better to import your seed phrase to the same wallet. Secondly, I will not recommend you exodus wallet because it is close source. Thirdly, I will not recommend you atomic wallet because the wallet do not support nested segwit and native segwit addresses, and also it has only one address, although, it generated BIP39 seed phrase which can be used with some tools to generate the nested segwit and native segwit if need be.

BTC:
Atomic Wallet shows one key pair
Exodus shows two key paris, one of which is identical to the one from Atomic indeed, but the other one is different

So far you see one of the key pair identical, that means it worked for btc. I hate atomic also because it do not generate more than one address, but if you input the atomic wallet seed phrase on iamcoleman tool, it will generate as many as possible addresses for you, the second key pair will be the second address on the iancoleman too while many more addresses are also generated.

ETC:
Both wallets show one key pair each, but different ones
What I wonder about the one in Exodus: It shows a column "Path" with value "m/0/0". I thought the path always has the format "m/44'/0'/0'/0/0"?

I think you can move this to altcoin discussion.

Why doesn't it work? Why are the keys not identical? If I wanted to switch from Atomic to Exodus with some active currencies, it would not work like this. Is any of my expectations wrong?

It worked for Bitcoin while though I will not recommend using atomic and exodus wallets. For altcoin, move it to altcoin discussion.

[HCP]

Why doesn't it work? Why are the keys not identical? If I wanted to switch from Atomic to Exodus with some active currencies, it would not work like this. Is any of my expectations wrong?

Because wallet developers are free to use literally any derivation path that they want... unfortunately, while we have BIP44, BIP49 and BIP84... not all wallet developers follow them...

For the "bad news"™ check here: https://walletsrecovery.org/

You can see how a lot of wallets have all sorts of weird and wonderful ways of using derivation paths   Even worse is when they don't actually document the derivation paths used anywhere

And as for Atomic and it's ETH keys:

Non-Standard derivation path for non-BTC coins, [EXTERNAL RECOVERY NOT DOCUMENTED].

However, the "good news"™ is that you are actually thinking about this stuff and investigating your backup/recovery options... BEFORE you actually need them. So, Kudos to you. I hope you manage to find some wallets that work the way you want them to!

[AnotherCryptoNoob]

Thank you a lot Charles-Tim and HCP for the fast replies! Okay, got it; For BTC, 1 to <n> addresses can be derived deterministically, and Atomic derives one, Exodus two, at least with the same derivation paths apparently, so key pair #1 is identical. But I understood that even this is not always granted. Too sad, thwarts the whole deterministic principle somehow . It would be better if such details (# of key derived key pairs, derivation path) could be controlled by the user, right?

Charles-Tim, so you recommend neither Atomic nor Exodus; any other Desktop wallet then (which preferably runs on Debian Linux)?

[HCP]

any other Desktop wallet then (which preferably runs on Debian Linux)?

Personally... I would recommend Electrum. It's a solid wallet, popular and well proven and compatible with a lot of hardware wallets should you want to go that way in the future. It also provides a number of "advanced" options (like full customisation of fees, PayToMany, RBF, coin control, "freezing" of specific UTXOs or addresses etc)

However, it should be noted that while Electrum can import BIP39 seeds from other wallets (and lets you specify custom derivation paths etc), the seeds that Electrum actually generates are not BIP39 compatible. So, your options for moving to another wallet because a lot smaller (I'm aware of maybe 2 wallets that can either import an Electrum wallet seed or wallet file - BlueWallet and Sparrow Wallet)

It's one of the big downsides to Electrum, but at least they're open about it: https://electrum.readthedocs.io/en/latest/seedphrase.html

And there are open-source tools for deriving the private keys from Electrum seeds, should Electrum not be available for whatever reason: https://github.com/FarCanary/ElectrumSeedTester

[Charles-Tim]

Charles-Tim, so you recommend neither Atomic nor Exodus; any other Desktop wallet then (which preferably runs on Debian Linux)?

HCP has clarified this enough, and I hope you will get it rightly. The best recommendable is electrum wallet, it is open source wallet and have many features other wallet do not have, features like

1. Open source
2. Can be used to sign a message
3. Use of coin control
4. Multisig support
5. Noncustodial Multiparty computation (2fa)
6. Creating watch-only and cold wallets used together for tracking and transaction signing.
7. Fee customization

All these can not be found on many wallets, while many wallets that are online are close source which should be discouraged to be used because you do not know the source codes such wallets are using. For safety purposes, electrum wallet is the best choice out there, it support only bitcoin but it is really worth it having it as your bitcoin wallet on desktop.

It's one of the big downsides to Electrum, but at least they're open about it: https://electrum.readthedocs.io/en/latest/seedphrase.html

I do not see this as an issue because electrum wallet is just the best online wallet that can be used in cold form too, it is support by strong developers while everything about them is open to the public. What should be the big issue is if electrum wallet can not support BIP39 seed phrase from other wallets, but it does.

[bob123]

The following experiment with the desktop wallets "Atomic Wallet" and "Exodus":

Yea... no.
Don't use any of those two wallets.

You should consider using proper wallets, no extreme garbage like exodus, atomic, coinomi, jaxx, etc..
All of them have their downsides which shouldn't be ignored.

If you stay with trustworthy and reliable wallets, you'll save yourself some headache later on.

[hosseinimr93]

....For BTC, 1 to <n> addresses can be derived deterministically, and Atomic derives one, Exodus two, at least with the same derivation paths apparently, so key pair #1 is identical........

I just imported a BIP39 seed into Exodus wallet just to see how it works.
Exodus generates a legacy address and a native segwit address.

The legacy address is on m/44'/0'/0'/0/0.
The native segwit address in on m/84'/0'/0'/0/0.

And as recommended in previous posts, never use exodus wallet.