One of the reasons why cryptocurrencies are so powerful is that users have total ownership of their assets if kept off an exchange.
A crypto wallet in reality only points to the record of the blockchain ledger that shows the coins and tokens owned by a person or user, and the wallet itself does not hold the crypto assets.
Of course, this means each user is responsible for managing and securing their own cryptocurrencies.
To do so, many crypto wallets use a recovery key phrase, which is a series of random words that can be used to recover the private key of a wallet.
In some cases, a user forgets his/her spending password (separate from a recovery key phrase) and is locked out of their wallet, or needs to regenerate their wallet for another reason.
This is when knowing how to recover your crypto using a recovery key phrase is important.
In this blog, we will explain how to use the recovery key phrase to restore your funds on Yoroi Wallet – a light wallet for Cardano ADA users.
Best ways to secure a crypto wallet recovery key phrase
Since many recovery key phrases tend to be between 12 and 24 words, memorizing all of them can be a challenge.
Especially since the words need to be in the original order to work as a recovery mechanism.
As a reminder, do not:
- Do not keep the recovery key phrase online.
- Do not upload it to a cloud storage service, send it as an email to your account, or take a picture of it with a cellphone.
Instead, offline is the best way to do it:
- Write it on paper: the cheapest way to store it is to just write it down on a piece of paper and safely store it somewhere only you can access.
- Save it on an external storage device: a USB drive or external HDD drive is a good idea. But it is better if the document itself is encrypted.
- Chisel the phrase: unexpected, but companies offer steel plates for users to engrave their key phrases.
- Use a hardware wallet that stores the recovery key phrase in the device itself. Yoroi is fully capable of linking with a hardware wallet, and users can even stake to the network using Yoroi and a hardware wallet.
How to recover your Yoroi Wallet
EMURGO – a founding entity of the Cardano blockchain and developer of Yoroi Wallet – receives many user questions on how to recover a Yoroi Wallet and has laid out the basic steps here to assist users.
- You need to have your recovery key phrase on hand. Then, you need to choose the option of “Restore Wallet” as shown below.
- Yoroi is a wallet that supports Cardano ADA. We’ll restore a Cardano wallet in this guide.
- Choose from the options offered. Cardano key phrases can have 15 or 24 words. Also, you can restore a paper wallet. We’ll choose 15 words in our example:
- Next, you’ll be asked to choose the era in which the wallet was created. Byron was the previous era in Cardano, but all wallets created after July 29th, 2020 are “standard” Shelley era wallets. We’ll use a standard Shelley wallet example here:
- Next you have the Restore Wallet menu:
The name and passwords do not have to be the same as the ones used before. If you have forgotten your password, this is the method to create a new one. In the recovery phrase square, you need to type each of the 15 or 24 words in the same order as shown the first time you created the wallet.
- Once the process is completed, press “Restore Wallet.” Your wallet will be completely restored after this point.
Again, it’s important to mention that Yoroi Wallet doesn’t store crypto assets. It only points to the record in the Cardano blockchain network that associates those assets with the wallet address. Only the distributed ledger of a blockchain records the ownership of the assets themselves. Yoroi only displays the key phrase when first creating the crypto wallet.
It is very important to keep it safe because if lost, there is no way to recover your wallet.
Download Yoroi Wallet to join the Cardano Web3 ecosystem
The time is now to integrate Yoroi with your preferred desktop web browser or mobile device.
Yoroi is an open-source light wallet for the Cardano community and ada holders. Through Yoroi, ada users can connect to the Cardano dApp ecosystem including Cardano NFTs, Cardano DeFi, and the $USDA stablecoin upon launch.
Click the link below to download Yoroi and begin your journey to the Cardano ecosystem.
About Yoroi Wallet
- Yoroi Twitter: @YoroiWallet
- Yoroi Homepage: https://yoroi-wallet.com/
About EMURGO
- Official Homepage: dev.emurgo.io
- Twitter (Global): @EMURGO_io
- YouTube: EMURGO channel
- Discord: EMURGO Community
- Facebook: @EMURGO.io
- Instagram: @EMURGO_io
- LinkedIn: @EMURGO_io
