Basic question: where wallet data is gathered from when restoring from seed?

Sonny

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Quote from: btcven on January 26, 2014, 09:44:07 AM

Quote from: Sonny on January 26, 2014, 02:50:42 AM

I know Electrum is a HD (hierarchical deterministic) wallet, and all of my addresses are derived solely from the initial seed.

So, my problem is, say if I have generated 2000 addresses and used them to receive and send bitcoin, when I use my seed to "restore" the wallet, will it know I have used 2000 addresses or do I need to manually "re-generate" the 2000 addresses?

Until 2.0 version arrives Electrum is not a HD (hierarchical deterministic) wallet.

Electrum has a gap limit that is used to stop looking for addresses in your deterministic seed. It looks for unused addresses, so if the first 1000 addresses you used haven't receive any bitcoin it will stop there, and you'll need to set a higher gap limit to look for all those you've created after that limit.

2.0 will introduce a better way for merchants that deal with that many addresses, but the number of addresses created will need to be recorded as no gap limit for that wallet will be set in advanced.

I see.
Thanks for your clarification Cheesy

btcven

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Bitcoin Venezuela

Quote from: Sonny on January 26, 2014, 02:50:42 AM

I know Electrum is a HD (hierarchical deterministic) wallet, and all of my addresses are derived solely from the initial seed.

So, my problem is, say if I have generated 2000 addresses and used them to receive and send bitcoin, when I use my seed to "restore" the wallet, will it know I have used 2000 addresses or do I need to manually "re-generate" the 2000 addresses?

Until 2.0 version arrives Electrum is not a HD (hierarchical deterministic) wallet.

Electrum has a gap limit that is used to stop looking for addresses in your deterministic seed. It looks for unused addresses, so if the first 1000 addresses you used haven't receive any bitcoin it will stop there, and you'll need to set a higher gap limit to look for all those you've created after that limit.

2.0 will introduce a better way for merchants that deal with that many addresses, but the number of addresses created will need to be recorded as no gap limit for that wallet will be set in advanced.

Sonny

hero member

Activity: 868

Merit: 1000

Quote from: Abdussamad on January 25, 2014, 02:00:16 PM

The seed is used to calculate your private keys. From your private keys they derive the public key and the address which is a hash of the public key. Bitcoin is a ledger based payment system. All transactions are stored in the ledger called the blockchain. Electrum does not require you to have a local copy of the blockchain. Instead it queries 3rd party electrum servers for transaction data using your addresses. You can find out which server you are connected to by clicking on the green icon in the bottom right or switching to the console tab of the electrum window.

I know Electrum is a HD (hierarchical deterministic) wallet, and all of my addresses are derived solely from the initial seed.

So, my problem is, say if I have generated 2000 addresses and used them to receive and send bitcoin, when I use my seed to "restore" the wallet, will it know I have used 2000 addresses or do I need to manually "re-generate" the 2000 addresses?

Abdussamad

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Activity: 3612

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The seed is used to calculate your private keys. From your private keys they derive the public key and the address which is a hash of the public key. Bitcoin is a ledger based payment system. All transactions are stored in the ledger called the blockchain. Electrum does not require you to have a local copy of the blockchain. Instead it queries 3rd party electrum servers for transaction data using your addresses. You can find out which server you are connected to by clicking on the green icon in the bottom right or switching to the console tab of the electrum window.

flatfly

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Activity: 1078

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760930

Quote from: manicminer on January 25, 2014, 11:52:52 AM

All I need to remember is my 12 words. So far so good. So if I install a new client and restore my wallet from where my wallet data with all my addresses are restored from?

The 'cloud', something inherent to the bitcoin network or something inherent to the Electrum network?

Electrum's official beginner's manual is too technical for me, thanks.

The 'cloud' is simply the regular blockchain.

btcbot

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Those 12 words 'determine' all the possible addresses for your wallet by being part of a cryptographic formula native to the Electrum client. There is no server-side access to your passwords or your seed words.

manicminer

sr. member

Activity: 302

Merit: 250

All I need to remember is my 12 words. So far so good. So if I install a new client and restore my wallet from where my wallet data with all my addresses are restored from?

The 'cloud', something inherent to the bitcoin network or something inherent to the Electrum network?

Electrum's official beginner's manual is too technical for me, thanks.

Topic: Basic question: where wallet data is gathered from when restoring from seed? (Read 752 times)