Recovery

Use the process described here to recover your organization's private keys, independently of Fordefi.

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To recover its private keys, an organization must possess the following:

  • An encrypted copy of the organization’s private keys. This file should be in your email inbox.
  • Depending on the backup method you have used, either the recovery phrase of each designated admin or the private key that corresponds to the public key that you uploaded at backup time.

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Recommendation

Recovering private keys should be performed on an external, offline device.

Recover private keys

  1. Download the backup .zip file, and extract it.

  2. Download the recovery tool (MacOS Intel, MacOS Apple silicon, Linux, Windows).

  3. Open a terminal and navigate to the directory where you have downloaded the recovery tool.

  4. Depending on the backup method you have used, run one of the two following commands:

    Recovery Phrases:

    recovery-tool.exe key-share-recover -p ‘\path\to\backup.json' -o output_file.csv

    ./recovery-tool key-share-recover -p ‘/path/to/backup.json' -o output_file.csv

    Public Key Upload:

    recovery-tool.exe public-key-recover -p '\path\to\backup.json' -k my_file/private_key.pem -o output.csv

    ./recovery-tool public-key-recover -p '/path/to/backup.json' -k my_file/private_key.pem -o output.csv

    Options

    Here is the full list of options for the recovery tool:

    • -p specifies the path to the .json file that was generated during the backup process. Here, it is backup.json.
    • -b can be used instead of -p. It lets you input the contents of the .json file through stdin.
    • -o (optional) specifies the output file. In the example,output_file.csv contains the recovered private keys. If this option is not used, the output will be displayed in stdout.
    • -k
      -- When using the "public key upload" method, this option specifies the path to a file that lets you provide the private key in PEM format.
      -- When using the "recovery phrases" method, this options lets you provide the admins' recovery phrases. If this option is not used, you can enter the recovery phrases later, when prompted.
    • --export-electrum-dir (optional) A directory. If provided, Fordefi exports into this directory private keys that can be easily imported into an Electrum Bitcoin wallet. Fordefi creates one file per vault with all the vault's keys in both legacy and SegWit formats.

Use the recovery output file

For vaults of most types, the output consists of private keys for each of the vaults created in your Fordefi workspace. For example:

EVM vaults

You will need to import the private key represented as a hex value for each vault, separately, into MetaMask.

Cosmos vaults

You will need to import or recover an existing wallet.

Solana and Sui vaults

For Solana and Sui vaults, there is an additional procedure to perform. Once you have recovered the private keys using the procedures provided above, transfer funds to another wallet using the steps in:

Bitcoin vaults

For Bitcoin vaults, Fordefi recovers multiple keys per vault -- in Bitcoin, there is one key per address and each vault can have many addresses. In the following example, there are three keys from first_bitcoin_vault and one key from second_bitcoin_vault. In the main CSV file for Bitcoin vaults, Fordefi provides the private key in WIF format in the Wallet Import Private Key column.

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Notes

  • Fordefi backs up Bitcoin mainnet vaults only.
  • A backup email is sent upon the creation of every new Fordefi vault.
    Because you are able to manually add addresses for any Bitcoin vault, Fordefi does not send an email message each time an address is added.
    If your organization has Bitcoin vaults, we suggest you manually download the latest backup file with all the vault addresses before recovering and exporting the keys. You can do this through the Settings > Backup screen.

Import the keys into an Electrum Bitcoin wallet.

Updated 11 days ago