How to Recover a Wallet After Losing a Device

This guide covers what to do after losing or damaging a wallet device. It assumes you already have a backup recorded somewhere and just need a clear, calm sequence to follow rather than figuring it out under stress.

Recovery Steps

1. Pause before acting — rushing to recover a wallet is when mistakes, like grabbing the wrong backup or misreading a word, tend to happen.
2. Locate your backup, whether that's a written seed phrase, a metal plate copy, or a set of distributed key shares held in separate places.
3. Obtain a replacement device, or install compatible software, from a source you trust and can independently verify rather than the first result you find.
4. Restore using the backup: for a written seed phrase, enter it exactly as originally recorded, without guessing at word order, spelling, or capitalization; for a distributed key setup, coordinate with enough share-holders to meet the signing threshold — shares are never combined into a single key.
5. Verify that the restored addresses match your previous records before resuming normal use or moving anything through the wallet.

What to Watch For

If the restored addresses don't match what you expect, stop and double-check the backup before moving anything further. A mismatch usually means a transcription error somewhere in the backup, not a deeper problem, but it's worth resolving fully before you rely on the wallet again.

For how to prepare a backup before you ever need it, see Backup & Recovery, and for distributed setups specifically, see How to Back Up a Multi-Party Key Setup. Preparing this sequence in advance, before anything goes wrong, is what makes it straightforward to follow later.