Electrum HD Wallet Balance

[RustyNomad]

When working with a single key it is easy to import the key (without the private key) into basically any client and make it a watch only key and by doing so be able to monitor its balance.

Can the same be done with a HD wallet?

Let me explain: I have two wallets on Electrum. One is my old wallet which is no longer in use. I do however still get payments made to it from people who have not changed my address. In order to see whether any payments came through I have to open the wallet every now and then or when looking for a 'lost' payment. Is there a way in which one can import that entire 'old' wallet into a new wallet as a kind of watch only so that one can monitor its balance?

Related to this, if one needs to provide say proof of balance how do you do that with a HD wallet? Must you sign every single key with a balance on it or is there a way to sign 'the wallet' showing the total balance of the wallet?

[1715493497]

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[1715493497]

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[1715493497]

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[dabura667]

Currently there are no easy watch-only solutions for deterministic wallets. (Note: Pre-2.0 Electrum is not HD, as there is no Hierarchy)

It would be easy to make, but to be honest, Electrum isn't an always-open solution anyways... so if you can spare the 10 seconds to own your main wallet, just make another shortcut on your desktop to open a second instance of Electrum to your wallet you want to watch.

You can open as many Electrum windows as you want, and they will share the daemon in the background. So if you set a shortcut that points to the second wallet using the -w argument, it shouldn't add any more than 2 seconds to the user experience.


Signing balances: Currently there are no programs to sign/verify for MPK balances. However, it would be easy to make... The signature would be telling them your MPK though, so they would be able to follow your balance for the rest of time... this is probably why no one takes the time to make such a feature, a lot of privacy advocates in the space.

[RustyNomad]

Thanks for the reply and explanation.

I understand what you are saying and have to agree that yes, it is very easy to just add another shortcut and little effort to just open and watch so I will go that route.

One question on this though in regards to Android. How/can one switch between wallets on Android? I looked but see no such option.

In regards to the verification of balances I have to agree. Never thought of it that way. Way better to just move the required funds to a new address and only sign that single address should you need to provide proof of funds than to 'expose' ones whole wallet.

[dabura667]

One question on this though in regards to Android. How/can one switch between wallets on Android? I looked but see no such option.

The current Android version is deprecated since 1.8.3... meaning that it will no longer be updated. (you can try compiling it using 1.9.8, but it will be super buggy)

2.0 will have a newer Android version that will come out on the Android Google Play Store and the UI will be 100x better.

However, with 1.8.3 Android (the crappy one) the way you do this is as follows:
1. You create your main wallet. Then exit Electrum.
2. You use a file explorer app to go into the sd card and change the name of wallet.dat to wallet.dat.old or something else.
3. Open Electrum again and it will ask to create a new wallet.
4. Click restore. Then click QR code. Then scan the QR code of the Master Public Key from your wallet you want to watch.
5. Now to switch between wallets, just make sure the one you want to open is named "wallet.dat" It might help to name the one that is not wallet.dat whatever it is... so if you see "wallet.dat.watch" you know the main wallet is wallet.dat and "wallet.dat.main" would let you know the watch only wallet is wallet.dat... etc.

Android for 2.0 will have multiple wallet access from the main menu screen, as well as access to multi-sig that can work together with your PC etc. for 2FA

[RustyNomad]

Once again, thanks for the detailed reply

[Abdussamad]

You can add individual addresses as watch only addresses using the console tab. First make a backup of your wallet file and then try this:

Code:

imported_keys = wallet.storage.get(  'imported_keys'  )
watch_only_addresses = { '1address1..' : '',  '1address2': '',  '1address3..' : '' }
imported_keys.update( watch_only_addresses )
wallet.storage.put( 'imported_keys', imported_keys )

Replace 1address1, 1address2 etc. with the most used addresses from your old wallet.

Then restart electrum and you'll find the watch only addresses listed under imported on the receive tab. Right click on each of them and select freeze so that electrum does not try to spend from these addresses (it can't anyway cause it doesn't have the priv keys)

The above is all for 1.9.8 and earlier wallets. If you are using the in-development version of electrum from the git repo then don't try this with that.