how to access missing balances at higher indexes

[minton980]

Electrum creates 20 addresses by default. I created an address at high index(about 50,000) by script and sent some bitcoin to the address.

The amount of bitcoin doesn't present in my account balance because electrum only searches for balance for the first 20 addresses(index 0-19).

I tried to change the gap_limit to 50000 to make electrum searching for more, but electrum got frozen for hours and unresponsive.

So how can I access the missing bitcoin? Than you in advance.

[ABCbits]

I tried to change the gap_limit to 50000 to make electrum searching for more, but electrum got frozen for hours and unresponsive.

Yeah, Electrum isn't exactly "scalable". I remember discussion which mention Electrum uses customer encrypted JSON format.

So how can I access the missing bitcoin? Than you in advance.

There are 2 approach i could think.
1. Export Electrum seed/recovery words to other wallet which support seed created by Electrum. I'm aware Sparrow Wallet support that, although i have no idea whether it'll run well if you manually increase gap to 50000.
2. Export Electrum master private key to Bitcoin Core. I've seen few people claim they have wallet.dat with million address without much problem. But it requires more RAM (since AFAIK Bitcoin Core load whole wallet.dat to RAM) and you need to deal with descriptor format to perform export.

[nc50lc]

So how can I access the missing bitcoin? Than you in advance.

You can manually derive it using HCP's fork of IanColeman's BIP39 tool that supports Electrum seed, use an "Air-Gap" PC if you wish to do it safely.
Link: https://github.com/HardCorePawn/electrumBIP39
Download it with: "Code->Download Zip", then extract and open "electrum-standalone.html" with your browser.

In the tool:

• Paste your Electrum seed in "BIP39 Mnemonic" field.
• Scroll-down and select "BIP32" tab.
• In the "BIP32 Derivation Path";
  keep the default m/0 if your address is legacy;
  but if it's native SegWit, go to: BIP141 tab, select P2WPKH and edit it to: m/0'/0
• Now to the important part: Scroll-down till you see "Show" 20 "More Rows", "starting from index";
  Edit "20" to "1000" and fill-in "starting from index" to something like "49995", then click "more rows".
  Of course, set this to a value that you think where your coins at. (the values are self-explanatory)
• After that, it will show your addresses and keys at index 49995 to 50995

Then you can either check those addresses' balance using a blockexplorer or import those to Electrum via "Import bitcoin addresses or private keys" new wallet option.
For the latter, use "p2wpkh:<your_prvKey>" if you're importing the private key and the address is SegWit; also, don't import more than 1000 addresses/prvKeys per wallet.

[pooya87]

I created an address at high index(about 50,000) by script and sent some bitcoin to the address.

What was that script and why can't you use that again?

Also why aren't you using another script to produce the keys? I'm assuming you know how to write basic code so:
1. Download a list of all bitcoin addresses with a balance from here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5254914.0
2. Write a script to derive child keys from your electrum mnemonic
3. Create as many addresses at as many indexes as you like and check them against the list in step 1.
4. Create a new Electrum wallet using WIF (private key) and import the key at the index you found in step 3 into that new wallet to gain access to your funds

[BitMaxz]

I think it would be easier if you had the master public key, either xpub, ypub, or zpub, of your wallet. Just try this one below to show all addresses with balances.

- https://www.blockchain.com/explorer/assets/btc/xpub/<your-xpub/zpub-goes-here>

If it doesn't work, try this one: https://blockpath.com/ Just paste your master public key if it shows used and addresses with balances, and it must also show you the missing addresses with balances; collect them and import it as a watch-only wallet to Electrum if it's not more than 1,000 addresses.

After you imported these addresses, you can see the total balance any time, and you can make an unsigned transaction if you want to and sign it with your current main wallet that controls the private key.

[nc50lc]

- https://www.blockchain.com/explorer/assets/btc/xpub/<your-xpub/zpub-goes-here>

This tool only derives 20 address_index per script type and will only derive 20 more addresses from the last used one.
With that, it will not work since he needs his key/address from around 50,000 address_index, it will only work in that specific case if the lower index with a gap of 20 addresses are all used.

Other tools may have higher gap limit but I'm pretty sure that nothing will set it to more than 50,000 by default.
So it has to be derived from a specific range like the example in my previous reply.

The problem here is he didn't shared the code of that "script" that he mentioned.
Because it could be (un)intentionally using a different derivation path that Electrum uses.

[Forsyth Jones]

There are 2 approach i could think.
1. Export Electrum seed/recovery words to other wallet which support seed created by Electrum. I'm aware Sparrow Wallet support that, although i have no idea whether it'll run well if you manually increase gap to 50000.
2. Export Electrum master private key to Bitcoin Core. I've seen few people claim they have wallet.dat with million address without much problem. But it requires more RAM (since AFAIK Bitcoin Core load whole wallet.dat to RAM) and you need to deal with descriptor format to perform export.

It would be great if someone tested importing into Sparrow by setting a range starting from 50000 in the gap_limit.

Bitcoin Core would be very useful in this case, as it allows setting an initial and final value for the gap_limit when importing an extended public or private key descriptor, as long as your RAM can handle it.

If the OP wants to try, here’s a step by step guide:

Download and install bitcoin core (preferably the GUI).

Decide whether to enable pruning (keeping or not the full blockchain on internal/external storage).

Import the extended public or private key (xpub/xpriv) using the following command (below):

By coincidence, I found an old post of mine explaining exactly how to set a gap_limit of "0 - 5000." In your case, OP, just replace these values with "50000 - 51000" or any other range you prefer. I'll quote my post:

To understand how output descriptors work and an example of how to use them, you can access this topic: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5483885.msg63603357#msg63603357

Optionally, to better suit your case, you can define a "range" variable in the descriptor to generate, for example, 5000 addresses, e.g.: ..."range:"[0,5000]... this must be added in the descriptor to be imported, for example:

Importing a BIP32 Extended Private Key:

Code:

importdescriptors '[{"desc":"wpkh(xprv9s21ZrQH143K3QSWqukfLKQDxVUPmk2WuS7etkznSZcRVBZcKhV4m7MhEnrHKW3Dq5vjHXXSoyS13K4JqmRuKRquH3bV9eNU9p781DMeyC3/84h/0h/0h/0/*)#4qqw9c4q","timestamp":"now","active":true,"range":[0,5000]},{"desc":"wpkh(xprv9s21ZrQH143K3QSWqukfLKQDxVUPmk2WuS7etkznSZcRVBZcKhV4m7MhEnrHKW3Dq5vjHXXSoyS13K4JqmRuKRquH3bV9eNU9p781DMeyC3/84h/0h/0h/1/*)#y590cd9c","timestamp":"now","active":true,"internal":true,"range":[0,5000]}]'

{
      "desc": "wpkh([c90d8a1f/84h/0h/0h]xpub6Cyu9toACShWh9YdQTcwquoyGByEnUZCGWiywsvzzvKfQipjdbyLJzCWxBjspyiu18DhZ6hp2hxTmxDuZvR1GuXEVd28CuTUKcA9nYQwKuw/0/*)#tyyve29j",
      "timestamp": 1729633211,
      "active": true,
      "internal": false,
      "range": [
        0,
        5000
      ],
      "next": 0,
      "next_index": 0
    },
    {
      "desc": "wpkh([c90d8a1f/84h/0h/0h]xpub6Cyu9toACShWh9YdQTcwquoyGByEnUZCGWiywsvzzvKfQipjdbyLJzCWxBjspyiu18DhZ6hp2hxTmxDuZvR1GuXEVd28CuTUKcA9nYQwKuw/1/*)#6spdyl42",
      "timestamp": 1729633211,
      "active": true,
      "internal": true,
      "range": [
        0,
        5000
      ],
      "next": 0,
      "next_index": 0
    }
  ]
}

Obviously, replace the values ​​with your public/private key (xpriv or xpub), read the cited link if you don't know how descriptors and the descriptor import command works in bitcoin core.

The OP could also try extracting the private key using the iancoleman script, as suggested by nc50lc. In this case, it’s up to the OP to decide which approach to take. If downloading a full node isn’t an option, the best alternative would be using the modified iancoleman script that works with Electrum.

We would also like to know which script the OP is referring to.

[Cricktor]

The amount of bitcoin doesn't present in my account balance because electrum only searches for balance for the first 20 addresses(index 0-19).

I tried to change the gap_limit to 50000 to make electrum searching for more, but electrum got frozen for hours and unresponsive.

More accurately, Electrum monitors activity of all used wallet addresses starting from index 0 and "gap_limit amount" of unused wallet addresses.

If you raise the gap_limit  to such a high value, Electrum basically freezes because it has to ask the connected Electrum server for the address history of gap_limit  many addresses of your wallet. Likely the connected Electrum server will become unresponsive because it thinks it's a DoS attack with so many address history requests. Not a good idea...

I don't know what you wanted to achieve by sending coins to an address of index 50,000 and can only assume you didn't know about gap limit restrictions and possible consequences of large gap_limit  values.

A possible solution has been already presented above.

[BitMaxz]

This tool only derives 20 address_index per script type and will only derive 20 more addresses from the last used one.
With that, it will not work since he needs his key/address from around 50,000 address_index, it will only work in that specific case if the lower index with a gap of 20 addresses are all used.

Other tools may have higher gap limit but I'm pretty sure that nothing will set it to more than 50,000 by default.
So it has to be derived from a specific range like the example in my previous reply.

The problem here is he didn't shared the code of that "script" that he mentioned.
Because it could be (un)intentionally using a different derivation path that Electrum uses.

You're right, it only checks the 20 addresses I tested out.
I think the xpub-scanner from Ledger HQ can scan these 50k addresses; the only disadvantage is that it doesn't support the zPub master public key. However, the tool supports segwit and native segwit to be able to use this scanner, he needs to convert it using the "Bitcoin Extended Public Key Converter" from zPub to xPub to use it in the xPub scanner.

I tried this tool a few months ago with a free API with a limit of 1 million credits from Cryptoapis. You just need to downgrade the default API version from the newer to the oldest one because the new APIs from Cryptoapis do not work on this tool, but the old one works.

[nc50lc]

-snip-

You're right, it only checks the 20 addresses I tested out.
I think the xpub-scanner from Ledger HQ can scan these 50k addresses;

Its default is also 20 address index, here's the "gap_limit" in its code: github.com/LedgerHQ/xpub-scan/blob/main/src/configuration/settings.ts#L13
Means if the tool scanned 20 empty addresses in succession, it will stop checking the next.
Sure he can change it to 50,000 but that'll generate unnecessary number of keys.

It will be more efficient if he can skip all those low indexes like what I've suggested above.

but if it's native SegWit, edit it to: m/0'/0

I did a slight edit to this:
"but if it's native SegWit, go to: BIP141 tab, select P2WPKH and edit it to: m/0'/0"

[LoyceV]

I created an address at high index(about 50,000) by script and sent some bitcoin to the address.

What was that script and why can't you use that again?

That was going to be my first question too

If you can't use that script, this is what I would try:

• Take Electrum offline
• Increase the gap limit to 60,000
• Export the private keys (from the Wallet menu on top)
• Find your address in the list
• Import the private key in a new Electrum wallet

By taking it offline, you don't have to wait for the server (which will never process that many addresses). Exporting that many private keys will take a while, but it'll only be on your own computer.

[Abdussamad]

There is no need to export all the private keys. You can get an address specific private key using the getprivatekeys() command in the electrum console or via the command line.

edit: you can also just use the gui . bring the addresses tab into view via the view menu and then ctrl+f to search the list of addresses. Right click on the address you are looking for and choose 'private key' to view the private key.

[nc50lc]

If you can't use that script, this is what I would try:

• Take Electrum offline
• Increase the gap limit to 60,000

Have anyone actually tested this?
Because increasing the Gap Limit to that amount would make Electrum unresponsive which is the very reason the OP was posted.
(at least in my multiple attempts to reproduce it)

Don't know if it's OP's machine but mine should have enough RAM and processing power to load all that,
It's just Electrum seem to stop processing to generate the rest of the keys at some point.

[LoyceV]

Have anyone actually tested this?
Because increasing the Gap Limit to that amount would make Electrum unresponsive which is the very reason the OP was posted.
(at least in my multiple attempts to reproduce it)

I tried to test it:

Code:

wallet.change_gap_limit(50000)

After I clicked the Addresses tab, Electrum got stuck. I killed it after eating 1 CPU core for 1.5 hours.

[Abdussamad]

Actually you don't have to change the gap limit at all. You can use the following command in the console to get the private key for a specific index:

Code:

getprivatekeyforpath("m/0'/50000")

[hosemary]

Actually you don't have to change the gap limit at all. You can use the following command in the console to get the private key for a specific index:

Code:

getprivatekeyforpath("m/0'/50000")

I didn't know about this command. Thanks for sharing that, but I think you should remove the apostrophe after the 0 and the command should be getprivatekeyforpath("m/0/50000"). Otherwise, you will get an incorrect private key.

Please correct me, if I am missing something.

[pooya87]

Code:

wallet.change_gap_limit(50000)

After I clicked the Addresses tab, Electrum got stuck. I killed it after eating 1 CPU core for 1.5 hours.

Your UI is basically generating 50000 objects and rendering them to have a "graphic representation" and UIs are not designed to render so many objects

Actually you don't have to change the gap limit at all. You can use the following command in the console to get the private key for a specific index:

Code:

getprivatekeyforpath("m/0'/50000")

I didn't know about this command. Thanks for sharing that, but I think you should remove the apostrophe after the 0 and the command should be getprivatekeyforpath("m/0/50000"). Otherwise, you will get an incorrect private key.

Please correct me, if I am missing something.

You are correct. Electrum seems to be deriving child keys from the child master key (an xprv/xpub derived from the original master key) to avoid the hardened path in the derivation path. I have to check the code to be sure but I'm guessing it is because they want to keep a global way of handling derivation when the wallet doesn't have the xprv or mnemonic (like in case of watch only wallets).

So the command should always be m/0/index for main keys or m/1/index for change keys.
So for OP's case the command for 50000th address should indeed be getprivatekeyforpath("m/0/50000")

I said "always" because for example to derive your second SegWit address you should use m/0/1 as its path instead of  m/0'/0/1.

But it is worth knowing that the actual derivation paths depends on the wallet/mnemonic type. This is its short list:

• Standard (legacy) wallets @ m/0/
• SegWit wallets @ m/0'/0/
• 2FA wallets (both legacy and SegWit) @ m/1'/0/

[Forsyth Jones]

Actually you don't have to change the gap limit at all. You can use the following command in the console to get the private key for a specific index:

Code:

getprivatekeyforpath("m/0'/50000")

I didn't know about this command. Thanks for sharing that, but I think you should remove the apostrophe after the 0 and the command should be getprivatekeyforpath("m/0/50000"). Otherwise, you will get an incorrect private key.

Please correct me, if I am missing something.

Thanks, I was surprised to discover this command in the console. Now the OP can easily get access to the address with idx 50000.

To check if the privkey will actually produce the exact address, without needing to create a keystore before, he could type the following command:

Code:

bitcoin.address_from_private_key('p2wpkh:KorLxxxx')
'bc1qxxxx'

*In 'p2wpkh:KouLxxxx', KouLxxxx should be replaced with the real private key and the console will return the exact address based on the prefix of the address type provided (in this example, I used p2wpkh).

It also works by changing the address script type, e.g. p2wpkh-p2sh (segwit compatible), p2pkh (no need, as it will generate the legacy address by default).

This command can be useful to check which address the private key produces before even importing the private key into the electrum's new import keystore.