Topic: Remove 2FA in Electrum and use Standard Wallet instead. (Read 353 times)

Thank you all for the detailed explanations. It's starting to make more sense now. I appreciate your patience in helping me understand the intricacies of Bitcoin transactions. You clarified the concepts, and hopefully, this will help me better understand my future Bitcoin transactions. If I have any more questions, I'll be sure to reach out. Thanks again!

I feel you don't know how a multi-signature wallet works.

The standard wallet you create on electrum is a single-signature wallet which means that there's one private key for each of your addresses.

In a m of n multi-signature wallet, there are n private keys for each of your addresses and m of them are required for signing a transaction.
As I already said, Electrum 2FA wallet is a 2 of 3 multi-signature address. This means that for spending from each of your addresses, two private keys are required.

Since your private keys are derived from master private keys, two out of three master private keys are required for spending fund from your wallet.

Let's say the master private keys are MPK1, MPK2 and MPK3

MPK1 is kept is stored in the wallet file.
MPK2 is owned by trustedcoin.
Your seed phrase can generate MPK1 and MPK3.

When 2FA is enabled, you sign your transaction using private key(s) dervied from MPK1 and with entering the 2FA code, you ask trustedcoin to cosign the transaction using the private keys(s) derived from MPK2.
When 2FA is disabled, your wallet file contains MPK1 and MPK3. You have two master private keys in your wallet file and you no longer rely on trustedcoin for making transactions.


Yes.

Bitcoin isn't stored as just a "sum" number like cash in your bank account... it's stored in "chunks" called UTXO's (Unspent Transaction Outputs). So, every time you receive some Bitcoin, you get another chunk added to your collection. When you want to send someone some Bitcoin, unless you have a chunk that is exactly the right size to cover the amount you're sending + fee, then there will be leftovers... this is called "change" and is simply put back in your wallet as a new (smaller) chunk.

Let's say you have chunks worth 0.1, 0.2 and 0.3 BTC... you decide you need to send 0.15 to someone. You don't have a chunk that is exactly 0.15... so your wallet will use either the 0.2 or 0.3 chunk (depending on what sort of UTXO selection algorithm your wallet uses).

Let's assume your wallet uses the 0.2 chunk. Your wallet will create the transaction and says please send 0.15 to AddressA... and put the remaining 0.5 back in my ChangeAddressY (we'll ignore fees for now).

More reading here: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Change
and here: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Coin_analogy

Basically, unless you spend the exact amount of some combination of chunks, you're most likely going to have 1 extra output on any given transaction (which is simply the "change" going back to your wallet).
 

Note: The number of Outputs has a very minimal effect on the data size of a transaction compared with the number of Inputs which will have a much greater impact on the data size of transaction (and hence will affect the total fee more).

The reason for this is that an Input typically has 2-3 times the data size of an output. For instance, with transactions using older bitcoin addresses (P2PKH) an input would be around 148 bytes... and an output would be about 34 bytes. Newer addresses are slightly less.

Unless you're sending to multiple people in 1 transaction (like an exchange doing a batched send), chances are that the data size of your inputs is going to be far greater than the data size of your outputs.

This is why receiving a lot of small BTC amounts ends up costing a lot in fees to move... if you have 10x chunks of 0.01... and you want to send 0.1 BTC, you suddenly have 10 inputs and your transaction data size is going to be quite large and require a very large fee.


Correct, send the maximum amount in 1 transaction. If you use the max button in Electrum (or set the amount value to ! ) it will automatically calculate that "max" value for you based on the total amount in your wallet - minus the transaction fee.

Your addresses are hashes of a small computer program called a script. That script outlines a condition for spending coins sent to the corresponding address. The condition states that you have to prove control over 2 out of 3 private keys. The two master private keys can be used to generate 2 out of the 3 private keys behind each address and using those private keys you can generate digital signatures proving control over them.

Assuming you have 1 BTC sent to one address on your wallet. If you want to spend 0.2 BTC, the remaining 0.8 BTC would be sent to your change address (an address on your wallet). If you send the coin and track it on an explorer, you will noticed that you sent the coin to two addresses. 0.2 BTC that you sent, and 0.8 BTC sent to an address on your wallet. So if you send all the coins on your wallet at ones, you will have no change, which means no coin sent to change address and that makes the transaction to have 1 output.

If you are sending to 1 address and the transaction has change, that is 2 outputs
If you are sending to 1 address and the transaction has no change, that is 1 outputs

If you are sending to 2 addresses and the transaction has change, that is 3 outputs
If you are sending to 2 addresses and the transaction has no change, that is 2 outputs

If you are sending to 3 addresses and the transaction has change, that is 4 outputs
If you are sending to 3 addresses and the transaction has no change, that is 3 outputs and so on.

I can't understand the part that is in bold. I'm confused, sorry.

Of the 2 master private keys, one of them is for my receiving wallet address, is that correct? and the other one is?

So what I need to do is just send the maximum amount of the current multi-signature wallet to a standard wallet, right?

Thanks again for the help.

Electrum 2FA wallet is a 2 of 3 multi-signature wallet and there is no way to turn a multi-signature address to a single-signature address.

As long as 2FA is enabled, your wallet file contains one master private key and if you want to make a transaction, you should ask trustedcoin to cosign your transaction.
If you disable 2FA, your wallet would be still a 2 of 3 multi-signature wallet, but with two master private keys.

As mentioned by Charles-Tim above, if you want your fund to be in a singles-signature wallet, you have to make a new transaction and send the fund to your new wallet.


If you want your transaction to include only 1 output, you should spend the entire balance of selected UTXOs, so that your transaction doesn't have any change.

You have to create a new wallet which would be a standard (single signature) wallet and send your coins to the one or more of the addresses generated there. You should know that the more addresses you send to, the more the fee required.

The more the inputs and outputs, the more the fee. The second output will likely be the change address (the address you will receive your change). The difference in the fee will be minimal.

The output is the number of addresses that you are sending to. If your coin has change, it would be sent to the change address.

Yup, correct.

Is there a way to make this disabled 2FA wallet to a standard wallet besides sending bitcoins to a standard wallet?

And also coming back to the comment of Sunderland on my first post, he mentioned that "The fees are not affected by the amount of BTC you send, but it depends on the outputs of that transaction.
e.g: Sending 3 outputs of $20 will be more expensive in fees than sending 1 output of $20."

So since there is no extra fee covering that 1 output, there are now only 2 outputs. What is the basis of the outputs? How can it be to be 1 output only?

Like on this screenshot below:

About the arrow, if you back it once, you will see your wallet details.

Also that the wallet synchronized with the blockchain, so you are able to spend your coins.

This is also the prompt error that I encountered on my second attempt.


Thank you very much for the help, I appreciate it.

I have already disabled the 2FA, but when I checked the wallet details, this is what appeared on the screen:


When I click "show report contents," this appears:


I confirm that there's no longer any extra fee when I send.

@Text

I tried what hosseinimr93 posted and it worked. If you do not have any other wallet on the wallet app, you can just reinstall the wallet or delete the wallet storage data, that will make your wallet new as if you have just downloaded it. To do that, long press on the wallet app and select app info which is represented with i within a circle on Android 14. Or just go to phone settings, select and click on app management to look for Electrum app and go to its wallet information. I tried it and it worked.

I also tried to import a 2FA seed phrase into the android version of electrum to see how it works and got the following error.
 


I cleated electrum's cache to see if it solves the problem. It didn't and I got the same error again.
After that, I cleared all electrum's data from my device and then imported a 2FA wallet. It worked.

It seems that once you create your first wallet in electrum, it no longer allows you to import a 2FA wallet.

In other way round, if you put pin before, you can click on the green button at the right top on the android Electrum wallet and click on references then you will see pin protection payment then you modify it.

@Husna QA

I was unable to recover the 2FA on Android just as Text posted. The error I got was different but it was an error. I tried it the first and second time with the same error. Test is using a mobile phone for it.

It works perfectly on desktop as it should be, but there was an error on Android Electrum.

Here is a translation of a post I wrote about 2FA Electrum wallet recovery on a local Indonesian board:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.60890555

2FA Electrum Wallet Recovery

I have just created a sample Electrum wallet with 2FA first (see the current cosigning fee charged by TrustedCoin):



Here's how to recover your 2FA wallet when you lose your authenticator or forget your password:

- Create New Wallet





- Select the Wallet with two-factor authentication option. Click Next.



- In the Create or restore, select I already have a seed.



- Enter the seed phrase of the 2FA wallet you want to restore.
  If you previously used Options by adding custom words, select those Options.



- In the Restore 2FA wallet option, select Keep if you want to use 2FA again or Disable not to use 2FA.
  In this example, I chose Disable.



- Create a new password for the Wallet recovery.



- Here are the results. When reopening the wallet, 2FA will not be requested again because it has been turned off.
  And when you disable 2FA, no cosigning fee will be charged to the transaction.

---

The following are some examples of screenshots from Electrum Android, where some of the recovery steps are almost the same as the desktop version of Electrum as above;

I was unable to proceed as well, you are not wrong. Report this on  https://github.com/spesmilo/electrum

It is a bug.

I tried it on Desktop Electum and it worked. But not working on Android. Maybe a lower version may work on Android. But best is to report it so that it can be solved in the next update, or use desktop version of Electrum.

I followed this step but after clicking the next button, I got this error

Please see the attached screenshot below:

I guess you selected "Standard wallet" when creating the new wallet.
As stated above by Charles-Tim, you should select "Wallet with two factor authentication".

In the desktop version of electrum, you can import your 2FA seed phrase even if you select "Standard wallet", but in the android version, you have to select "Wallet with two factor authentication".

This is what to do:

Yes. You can use the existing wallet app. Click on your wallet name at the upper right corner -> other wallets -> create wallet-> name your wallet or go by the default name -> wallet with two-factor authentication -> I already have a seed -> input the seed phrase -> disable 2FA and proceed.

Hi, thanks for your prompt reply.
Can I do that using the existing Electrum Android wallet app?
I tried earlier, but after entering the 12-seed phrase, the finish button is not clickable.
Is there a step-by-step guide to follow?

Yes, you can disable the 2FA. While importing the seed phrase on Electrum, you will see where you will disable the 2FA.

Electrum 2FA wallet is a 2-of-3 multisig wallet. You will not pay the Trustedcoin fee which you are talking about, but the fee will still be a bit higher if compared with a single signature wallet.

Need your help. I'm using Electrum on Android. I transferred my Bitcoin from my Trust Wallet to Electrum, setting up a wallet with 2FA. I didn't realize that there's a fee for using 2FA on Electrum at the time I did it, probably because I was eager to transfer the satoshis, fearing that my Trust Wallet might have been compromised.

I transferred it from Trust Wallet to Electrum last December, and on January 28, I attempted to make the first transaction. However, I was surprised to see an extra fee aside from the mining fee, so I inquired about it.

Here's the post I made in a thread:

and this was replied by Sunderland:

I still don't have an Electrum wallet on my laptop, as I am worried that my machine might not be safe since I already had other compromised wallets before.

I hope that the experts here can answer and help me with some of my questions.

Is it possible to disable 2FA on my current wallet address? If yes, how? If not, what should be my first step? How can I restore it using the seed phrase to remove the 2FA? I followed the instructions on the TrustedCoin FAQ page but I need more guidance. Do I need to restore it on a new or different device?

Thank you