Terra Station recovery design

Terra Station recovery design should be possible with seed phrase only

In setting up a new Terra Station wallet and transferring a minimal amount of LUNA to the wallet, a momentary malfunction led to loss of password.

On going to “Terra Station: Wallet: Recover existing wallet” I found it requires not only the Seed phrase, but also the password.

This seems contrary to Terra guidelines – and industry practice.

In “Wallet: New wallet: What if I lost my seed phrase?” the warning offered is:

“We cannot recover your information for you. If you lose your seed phrase it’s GONE FOREVER. Terra Station does not store your mnemonic.”

The implied message is:

“If you keep your seed phrase you can restore your wallet” and

“only your seed phrase is required to restore your wallet”.

My understanding of standard crypto wallet practice is precisely that: the seed phrase will restore a wallet, even if you lose everything. Keep a paper seed phrase somewhere safe. It’s a guarantee of access to your funds.

Suggestion: a minor design change to “Wallet: Recover existing wallet” – Eliminate need for Password.

Also: Eliminate need for Wallet Name.

I haven’t checked industry practice, but I can envisage situations where the “Wallet name” might also be lost. I assume ‘best practice’ is that “Seed phrase” is the only information required – thus the mantra: “keep it safe”.

Nevertheless, I can understand the argument that greater security might call for “Wallet name” (and conceivably, “Password”) to be required. However, this should absolutely be specified in the warning “Wallet: New wallet: What if I lost my seed phrase?”

Can this message please be forwarded to the appropriate person(s) involved in Terra Station design.

When recovering a wallet, Password and Wallet Name don’t need to match your previous Password and Wallet Name. You only need your 24 words to recover a wallet. This could perhaps be clarified…

You just need the 24 words seed.
I think the word “Password” should be changed to “New Password” and better add “Confirm New Password” to make sure user typed it right two times like when creating new wallet.
“Wallet Name” should be named as “New Wallet Name” also.

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“Unable to recover wallet without password”

Thanks for the suggestions, however I’m still unable to recover a wallet using the seed phrase but without the correct password. In my case, the recovery process produced a new (empty) wallet (also) based on the original seed phrase (two wallets with same seed phrase?).

Has anyone actually lost their password and succeeded in restoring their Terra Station wallet? Based on my experience, this seems not to be possible and would indicate a problem with the underlying code for Terra Station.

If I’m missing something, please enlighten.

Are these posts read by Terra management? If not, how can this problem be made visible to Terra?

Details:

The “Recover existing wallet”:

a. will not allow recovery of “lost” wallet > “Wallet name already exists”, so I insert new name

b. accepts new password (original is lost, thus this whole problem)

c. accepts seed phrase for “lost” wallet

However, does not recover “lost” wallet, rather it makes a new wallet (with “you haven’t made any transaction” – original wallet had successfully received a LUNA transfer).

The problem would seem to be in “Recover existing wallet” > “Wallet name”: it should accept name of existing “lost” wallet, but it does not > ”Wallet name already exists”.

This seems to be the point in the code where a change needs to be made

Summary:

After attempted recovery, “History” (when disconnected) > “Connect” > “Select wallet” now gives a choice between the two wallets:

old still to be recovered with coins

new result of recovery using original seed phrase but no coins

Without correct password, “Recover” does not allow recovery, any coins are “lost”.

The recovery process does not recover, it creates a new wallet with no coins.

The public key of the new wallet is different to the public key of the original “lost” wallet; I don’t have a copy of the “lost” private key to compare.

Request:

Can anyone suggest where to submit this post so that it can be read by Terra management. If the reader is part of Terra, please pass this up the chain of command.

Inability to recover a lost wallet, using the seed phrase only, is a major fault in the design of Terra Station and needs to be addressed urgently.

Again: If I’m missing something, please enlighten.

2 Likes

I hear your concern but i can assure you that your password and wallet name don’t affect the contents of your wallet. Your address is mathematically derived from your 24 words, using a standardised format followed by most wallet apps in the crypto eco-system, including hardware wallets such as Ledger.

If you want to verify this you can generate a new wallet and send some dust to it, delete it and recover it with a different password/name. If you still aren’t convinced your address is derived properly, use a tool like cosmospy · PyPI and double check that you get the same address with the same seed, regardless of password and wallet name.

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I had same problem. Terra station app store you wallet info in cache. I reintalled it and “Wallet name already exists” problem got lost.

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My question was already answered in the Discord channel…

I have the same problem: When I want to connect Terra Station on my Laptop it tells me “incorrect password”. which is exactly the same password I use to sign transactions on my wallet on my mobile.

So I will try to reinstall the app now as you recommended. Thank you!

I have a similar problem. I inadvertently deleted my wallet and when I tried to recover it, I was given a new wallet address. My ledger will not point to the old address. From a Reddit discussion it sounds like others have had the same problem.

Hi,

I’m facing the same issue, did u resolve it by anychance?

@willy hello there.
What should i do?

@admins @Will is a scammer

Hi @erlendthuee ,

Please note that Agora is reserved for research and discussion purposes only.

For all user questions, please proceed to the #community-help channel on Discord. The official link is provided in the navigation bar above.

Do note that no admins will ever DM you or provide you with any other links for ‘support’.

Thank you.

My apologies, I’ll remove my post.

1 Like