Topic: Watch only wallet with Private key - page 4. (Read 829 times)

I kinda doubt it.
However, I've got an idea which I am not sure it was discussed:

Is there a chance that the wallet file cannot be properly written to HDD or get overwritten by an older version (by an antivirus or system protection), or something like that?
What I mean is the maybe you manage to try to restore your wallet on another computer (of course, make sure it's clean and that the Electrum is from electrum.org and verified). Or you can try for an 0.00000001 address even on your smartphone (although I don't have the same experience on smartphone) ; maybe you see whether it restores to the correct address and it's spendable or not. Or you can try sparrow wallet, which is pretty much compatible with Electrum and uses Electrum servers too, but it may get a bit more complicated to set up.

Maybe they're only crazy ideas, but if you have that time, it's only a bit of time to lose, isn't it?

Not to mention that the whole process of turning private keys in to address is done locally, and indeed can be done without an internet connection at all. There is no reason that Electrum would start generating incorrect addresses just because it has a slow connection or no connection at all. Even when you import a private key in to blockchain.com, the conversion to an address is done within your browser and does not require an internet connection.

I highly doubt it, Electrum will only require about 56MB of data once (first time it launched), then only a trickle of few bytes after that.
Unless you're running a few lightning channels without trampoline routing.

Much appreciated guys. I know you work with a lot of issues and accept it. Only wanted to mention again that we have an exceptionally bad line speed where I stay. Looks like it could contribute to all of this.

I will try your suggestions and if I discover what could be wrong I will post it here.

Thanks again

Because it is a balance of probabilities. It is exponentially more likely that you are getting confused between private keys and address or are opening the wrong wallet files compared to the alternative that you are the first person ever to have a standard Electrum wallet convert itself to a watching only wallet. If you honestly believe that this is what is happening, then yes, open an issue on Github because you have discovered a significant vulnerability. I doubt very much that this is the case, though.

It can be linked to different address types as Pmalek has said. It can also be linked to uncompressed and compressed public key (with different addresses), but pooya87 already excluded that possibility on the first page of replies. So unless you did something really abnormal with the private key, then the answer is going to be no.

Follow the GitHub link I posted in the previous post. You can register on GitHub and from the link, create a new issue. Anyone can then comment including the Electrum team if they want to.
ThomasV is an Electrum developer and a moderator of this sub. However, he hasn't been online since 2020. You can try and PM him and he might get an email notification and respond back. But I am not sure if it will work.

The same private key can recover a legacy, nested segwit, and native segwit address. It depends on what prefix you enter before it in Electrum or if you don't enter a prefix at all.

Everyone who has tried to help you is surely not unsympathetic and wishes you any harm. It's just that no one has ever seen a case in which you import a private key, it recovers a standard wallet but then changes it into a watch-only wallet. Honestly, I can't remember ever hearing about it either. That's why I suggested checking elsewhere, but I think you will get pretty much the same responses as you did here.

Sir thank you so much for your reply.

I am going to follow your advice. It started to feel as if no-one wants to give the scenario a different thought. What I didn't do was to get mistaken by addresses and private keys and also Electrum was the only platform that brought up my original addresses for those private keys without the addresses even near the app. So that means there is a link to them and even the transactions are 100% correct. Definitely not a coincidence.

Where do I get in contact with the developers? Here on the same forum?

Lastly, can a private key have or have had more than 1 address or linked to more than 1 address? Those are my keys and my original addresses. Why does other platforms give an address that I do not know when imported but Electrum gives my original addresses. Lastly since you are more sympathetic to my issue I just want to confirm that Electrum shows imported and after showing my coins turn to watching only itself with only my private key in use. No doubt about it. As if something make it turn to watching only as if there is doubt about the private key. Therefore I will contact the developers as suggested.

Do you have a different computer you consider safe and malware-free where you can download a genuine copy of Electrum and try it there? Maybe even using the mobile version of Electrum.
It's not recommended to use older versions, but at this stage, you might just try that as well. You can find older Electrum versions here. Maybe try with the 3.3.8 (don't use older versions than that) or the 4.0.1.

Besides that, you might want to try and get in touch with the Electrum developers and the community over GitHub. Maybe someone sees something we haven't. 

That's because they are different wallets. There is no link between different Electrum wallets. Just because you imported a private key in to the first wallet, it does not mean the address in the second watch only wallet is somehow linked to that private key.

The two images are not from the same wallet because I didn't have a screen-print for wallet after turning to watching only I agree. Fact is I dont even open the addresses file when I work with Electrum because I don't need them. The first image just shows that when a private key is imported it first give me an address with a private key from the system. After switching to watching only it gives me my old address that belongs to the private key

But thanks for the help oeloe. Much appreciated

Once again, wallets can not turn from standard wallets in to watching only wallets. This is simply not possible.

The wallets that you are showing in your images named Electrum1 and Electrum2 are two entirely different wallets. One is called "default_wallet" and the other is called "john 4". The former was created by importing a private key, while the latter was created by importing an address.

You need to ignore the addresses you have copied down - importing them will achieve nothing in terms of accessing your coins and they are just causing you confusion as you keep creating watching only wallets. I also think you have likely copied down some addresses you do not have the private key for. Import the private keys you do have in to both Electrum and Blockchain. If the addresses they generate match and are empty, then there is nothing else you can do.

I agree with you there. Reason why I concentrated on this point is because without the addresses nowhere close to the Electrum platform it linked 100% the right addresses, with its transactions, when I only used the Private keys. I never even bothered to try and enter an address in Electrum ever. But these private keys come from 2011/2013. So I was surprised to find these Private keys brings up another address on another platform. You get my point there. Even if there were something wrong with the software. How did it arrive at my original addresses as I left it in 2013/14? Is there not another way to look at this issue?


You could try reddit or SE.

Thanks for the info

@nc50lc is right, the things you explain with certainty like importing the same exact key into different software and getting different addresses is not something that can happen under normal circumstances. One of the reasons why I initially asked you whether you had verified the Electrum file was this, you can't just get a different address from the same key if the software is legit.

You could try reddit or SE.

Thanks for your effort though. Much appreciated.

Okay...
I see the situation strange based from the available info and at this point, I have no idea what's happening in your client since none of it should happen under normal circumstances.
('Imported' into 'imported watch-only' | Imported the same prvKey  to other wallets and derived different address)
Sorry I can't help more.

Well what if I tell you it is impossible that I made a simple mistake like that. I also didn't make a mistake while posting it on blockchain?? I made pretty sure that it started with a K or L. I didn't even have the address on the same sheet. It happened by itself 100% sure. Is there really no one out there that might think of anything that can cause that result. It is just the way it happened. Is there some other forum where I can ask the same question?

It is not that unlikely to make a simple mistake while importing those keys one by one. You may have even made the mistake of pasting an address that you had copied for some other reason into your import window which is why you ended up with a watch only wallet in first place. It definitely doesn't happen while you are syncing.

Yes its true because I have 8 wallets and I didn't have an image for that particular combination so I posted a picture I took with my Phone.


We did check the signature. But how is it that my Electrum synchronization picks up all 8 my private keys' addresses 100% correctly. If it didn't belong to those private keys where did the information come from then. Is it not strange to you then? I mean they didn't come from my computer while syncing.

I think the information you need is about the nature of private keys and addresses.
It's not some sort of a backup that'll fetch an address from a server; just think of it as a "pair".
The Private key is actually a big number which a public key can be computed from, and the address is derived from that public key.

Better ELI5 explanation: https://learnmeabitcoin.com/beginners/keys_addresses

There can't be a network/server-side error which could lead to wrong address recovered from a private key, all is computed by the client/wallet, if there's an issue, it's the client.
With that, if Blockchain.com and Exodus both derive the same address (and test other clients), then there's something wrong with your Electrum or you've imported the wrong private key.
You said that you've verified its signature and it checks out?

BTW, your images: "Coin Control" and the alleged turned watch-only wallet "Electrum 2" doesn't fit the story because of the huge difference in the number of available (unspent) outputs and "TX" count in the history.

Good day Guys

Let me try and explain myself a little bit more. Hopefully someone might see my point and perhaps give some ideas to try and solve my problem.
I worked on this issue with my son that started with bitcoin mining in 2011 and stopped in 2015. When we say we loaded a private key and when we say we loaded an address we did it together and let’s assume we didn’t get confused.

We started with bitcoin core but we couldn’t get the private key to get the wallet to be spendable.

On 18/11/2021 I downloaded the Electrum setup file 4.1.5 (see image in folder). We have 8 wallets of which 3 have only 0.00000001 coins in it. The others are our primary wallet addresses. We had the addresses with their Private keys on paper on a sheet since 2015.

We loaded the private key (only) in Electrum after creating a new wallet and then choosing option 4 to import/restore wallet. With or without prepend doesn’t make a difference as we are using Legacy wallets. We didn’t encrypt it and it started syncing. At first it gave us a wallet that says imported and in the address line gave an address with the option of a private key (see image – Electrum1). It synchronized for around 30 hours and then gave us the total coins with the transaction history.  Besides that it turned to watching only and then in the address line it gives our old address.  (See image – Electrum2). At some point after that it gave a green line at the bottom that says Coin Control active and synchronized until the total 2022 was done (see image – coin control).

All this was done with only the private key. The wallet after turning to watching only gave us automatically our paper wallet addresses itself but stayed watching only. If we check the private key on another platform like Exodus or Blockchain it gives a different address. Our coins are in the Electrum given addresses as given correctly by Electrum (see images – Exodus or Blockchain)

We tried to but didn’t sweep any of the private keys. All coins are still in the same addresses as mentioned on top.

I know what you told me to start over and so on but if there are anybody reading this post that had a similar problem where it seems the address of the private key is different and that had a solution, please help.
It will be much appreciated.

All images are in the link below