I believe this issue can also crop up if you use the instawallet android app.
It seems that the app can display a Bitcoin address which is no longer associated with the wallet.
I think a new version of the instawallet app needs to be released. If there had been a new version, I would have updated prior to using it.
It didn't occur to me that the Bitcoin address might have shifted underneath me!
Topic: Instawallet maintenance (Read 2019 times)
This message is being sent to the people impacted by the address-change issue :
Quote
Dear Instawallet owner,
You're receiving this message because you are part of the users that got impacted by an unexpected side-effect of our recent maintenance.
- What was this maintenance about ?
This maintenance was about making Instawallet usable again, as you might have noticed Instawallet was until recently becoming extremely slow and sluggish.
The reason was that Instawallet is very popular, our users create a lot of wallets which ended up putting a lot of continuous strain on the Bitcoin daemon running behind the scenes. As a result it crashed often, and even if it was promptly resurrected by our monitoring tools it took a very long time to restart. To be precise it was taking more than an hour to simply load the wallet.
So this maintenance was about performance and availability, as you might have noticed Instawallet is now much faster and responsive.
- How was the maintenance conducted ?
The maintenance simply consisted in removing all wallets with a zero balance and importing all the remaining private keys into a brand new wallet file in order to reduce the load on the Bitcoin client.
- Why did the maintenance take so long ?
The maintenance took a very long time because all the private keys being imported into the new wallet had to be imported with a blank blockchain, the reason for that is that after importing a private key the client rescans the whole chain to find relevant transactions to add to the wallet, in our case it was not possible since it would have meant waiting for tens of thousands of rescans.
Instead we imported all the keys in a blank wallet, with a blank blockchain and then let the client download the blockchain from the network, this was the part that took a long time.
- I patiently waited until the end of the maintenance and tried to access my wallet, now my address has changed and my funds are gone ! What the hell ?
Fear not, your funds are safe.
You are among the unlucky that had their wallet pruned too aggressively, it was pruned because at the moment the migration started it had a zero balance. We could have done much better and save the wallets that were recently created instead of just the funded wallets.
Sorry about that, it's our fault, we'll learn from that mistake and hope you'll forgive us.
- Now how can this be fixed ?
We won't be able to give you the same wallet with the same address, because that would mean importing the relevant private key into the currently running Bitcoin daemon, which, as explained would take a very long time and block the whole daemon.
There are two options here :
- Either you only care about your funds, in which case we will send them to an address you will give us,
- or you care about your funds AND keeping your Instawallet address, in this case we will send you your funds and the private key for the address you wish to keep
In order for us to either send your funds, and optionally the private key we need you to send us three things :
- Your public wallet address (what it used to be),
- Whether you wish to only keep your funds or if you want to keep the address too,
- The first five characters of your private URL (we will be sending funds out so we need to ensure you are in control of the URL)
Again, we apologize for pruning your wallet and hope you'll concur that Instawallet needs to actually be "instant" to best serve the Bitcoin community.
Sincerely,
David (aka davout)
Paymium team
You're receiving this message because you are part of the users that got impacted by an unexpected side-effect of our recent maintenance.
- What was this maintenance about ?
This maintenance was about making Instawallet usable again, as you might have noticed Instawallet was until recently becoming extremely slow and sluggish.
The reason was that Instawallet is very popular, our users create a lot of wallets which ended up putting a lot of continuous strain on the Bitcoin daemon running behind the scenes. As a result it crashed often, and even if it was promptly resurrected by our monitoring tools it took a very long time to restart. To be precise it was taking more than an hour to simply load the wallet.
So this maintenance was about performance and availability, as you might have noticed Instawallet is now much faster and responsive.
- How was the maintenance conducted ?
The maintenance simply consisted in removing all wallets with a zero balance and importing all the remaining private keys into a brand new wallet file in order to reduce the load on the Bitcoin client.
- Why did the maintenance take so long ?
The maintenance took a very long time because all the private keys being imported into the new wallet had to be imported with a blank blockchain, the reason for that is that after importing a private key the client rescans the whole chain to find relevant transactions to add to the wallet, in our case it was not possible since it would have meant waiting for tens of thousands of rescans.
Instead we imported all the keys in a blank wallet, with a blank blockchain and then let the client download the blockchain from the network, this was the part that took a long time.
- I patiently waited until the end of the maintenance and tried to access my wallet, now my address has changed and my funds are gone ! What the hell ?
Fear not, your funds are safe.
You are among the unlucky that had their wallet pruned too aggressively, it was pruned because at the moment the migration started it had a zero balance. We could have done much better and save the wallets that were recently created instead of just the funded wallets.
Sorry about that, it's our fault, we'll learn from that mistake and hope you'll forgive us.
- Now how can this be fixed ?
We won't be able to give you the same wallet with the same address, because that would mean importing the relevant private key into the currently running Bitcoin daemon, which, as explained would take a very long time and block the whole daemon.
There are two options here :
- Either you only care about your funds, in which case we will send them to an address you will give us,
- or you care about your funds AND keeping your Instawallet address, in this case we will send you your funds and the private key for the address you wish to keep
In order for us to either send your funds, and optionally the private key we need you to send us three things :
- Your public wallet address (what it used to be),
- Whether you wish to only keep your funds or if you want to keep the address too,
- The first five characters of your private URL (we will be sending funds out so we need to ensure you are in control of the URL)
Again, we apologize for pruning your wallet and hope you'll concur that Instawallet needs to actually be "instant" to best serve the Bitcoin community.
Sincerely,
David (aka davout)
Paymium team
Thanks for the response. So long as you keep the private key for the pruned address, I think that's fine. There is no need to import them at your end. I will make sure the pruned addresses be abandone.
Though I worried a bit previously because I had received payment unexpectedly thru that address before. Obviously, the person that send me the payment (without asking me first) did not know that it's an Instawallet address, and assume that I will always have access to that address via my wallet/privatekey.
Though I worried a bit previously because I had received payment unexpectedly thru that address before. Obviously, the person that send me the payment (without asking me first) did not know that it's an Instawallet address, and assume that I will always have access to that address via my wallet/privatekey.
I was just going to ask something like this. I eagerly clicked on the shortcut/link to Instawallet to make some transfer, since the maintenance has taken so long. I notice right away that with the same URL link, some of the Bitcoin addresses have completely changed! Fortunately, one of the link with funds in it is still working and all incoming payment during last 48 hours showed up .
So did you just prune wallet with 0 balances? I did quite a bit of transaction with the address that got pruned. Fortunately I did not have a balance remaining in that address during last 48 hours. Though people that did business with me still know that payment address by default. So should I just abandon that address now?
So did you just prune wallet with 0 balances? I did quite a bit of transaction with the address that got pruned. Fortunately I did not have a balance remaining in that address during last 48 hours. Though people that did business with me still know that payment address by default. So should I just abandon that address now?
What will happen with wallets that got pruned a bit aggressively is that we won't be able to import the private keys and reinstate them, that is because for each import, bitcoind would trigger a full chain rescan. What will happen instead is one of the following, depending on what works best for you :
- Either we move the funds to another wallet with another address,
- or we give you the private key for the address so that you can keep using it as is
I was just going to ask something like this. I eagerly clicked on the shortcut/link to Instawallet to make some transfer, since the maintenance has taken so long. I notice right away that with the same URL link, some of the Bitcoin addresses have completely changed! Fortunately, one of the link with funds in it is still working and all incoming payment during last 48 hours showed up .
So did you just prune wallet with 0 balances? I did quite a bit of transaction with the address that got pruned. Fortunately I did not have a balance remaining in that address during last 48 hours. Though people that did business with me still know that payment address by default. So should I just abandon that address now?
So did you just prune wallet with 0 balances? I did quite a bit of transaction with the address that got pruned. Fortunately I did not have a balance remaining in that address during last 48 hours. Though people that did business with me still know that payment address by default. So should I just abandon that address now?
We're having a few cases where the wallet was pruned where it should not have been.
If you are in this case just e-mail the details to the support and we'll have it fixed today.
If you are in this case just e-mail the details to the support and we'll have it fixed today.
Thank you for the upgrade, the site now runs much faster.
Instawallet underwent a maintenance operation yesterday that completed this morning, for a number of technical reasons it took a long time to complete.
The maintenance was successful and Instawallet should now be much faster.
We apologize for not properly scheduling this maintenance, it however had to be done as the load on our servers was becoming too large and was leading to general unresponsiveness.
Should you encounter any kind of issue do not hesitate to contact the support ([email protected]) stating all relevant information and data (public wallet address, transaction IDs if relevant etc).
The support does not need your private wallet URL and will *never* ask for it.
The maintenance was successful and Instawallet should now be much faster.
We apologize for not properly scheduling this maintenance, it however had to be done as the load on our servers was becoming too large and was leading to general unresponsiveness.
Should you encounter any kind of issue do not hesitate to contact the support ([email protected]) stating all relevant information and data (public wallet address, transaction IDs if relevant etc).
The support does not need your private wallet URL and will *never* ask for it.
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