How to recover a wallet in Radiant
As I mentioned in the previous article, Radiant uses the Bitcoin standard called BIP39 which allows converting a BIP32 master private key to 12 or 24 words, which are much easier to store.
Currently all three Radiant wallets ( Samara, Electron and Chainbow) use this method and it is possible to use the same recovery words between them in a simple way.
Differences between wallets
Although it is true that the three we are going to talk about use the same system of words, each wallet uses them in a slightly different way.
Samara: By default it uses one address and does not load more addresses unless they are added manually. It reuses the same address when sending.
Electron: By default it loads several addresses and checks them. When sending, the change is saved in change addresses where Samara or Chainbow cannot see it.
Chainbow: By default uses other derivation parameters and it is necessary to specify how to load the generated words when retrieving a wallet.
Before recovering the wallet
The first thing is to choose in which wallet you want to retrieve and most importantly, where these coins have originated. If you have created the address in Electron and you have sent coins, you will have coins in the change addresses and if you recover it in Samara or Chainbow, these coins will not be seen.
My recommendation is to always have the addresses in Electron as the main wallet and use Chainbow or Samara as wallets for quick and friendly use, as Samara can be used in Chrome or Brave and Chainbow can be used on mobile.
I have the 12 words, how can I recover my funds?
To show how the recovery works, I will use 12 randomly created words.
illness hello kangaroo shock dove middle web anxiety stairs proud elder genre
Samara:
Address 1 = 1DUQruKiKiudm8bhx9R8s6Tk8HzBznXviL
Electron:
IMPORTANT: Radiant’s standard derivation is m/44'/0'/0'
Samara and Electron use the same derivation, but Chainbow defaults to m/0' and you would have to enter this if the wallet was generated in Chainbow. In Samara it is not possible to choose the derivation.
Address 1 = 1DUQruKiKiudm8bhx9R8s6Tk8HzBznXviL
Chainbow:
On the same screen, the ADVANCED option appears below.
If the wallet recovery is from a wallet created in Chainbow, it is necessary to leave this as the default.
If the wallet has been created in Samara or Electron, it must be changed to.
Address 1 = 1DUQruKiKiudm8bhx9R8s6Tk8HzBznXviL
Default derivations of each wallet
- Samara: m/44'/0'/0'
- Electron: m/44'/0'/0'
- Chainbow: m/0'
Recovery summary
- Samara > Electron = OK
- Samara > Chainbow = Need select in advanced options Samara/Electron preset
- Electron > Samara = Ok, but only the first address will be loaded and the change addresses will be missing.
- Electron > Chainbow = Need select in advanced options Samara/Electron preset and only the first address will be loaded and the change addresses will be missing.
- Chainbow > Samara = Not possible, Samara does not allow to customize the derivation
- Chainbow > Electron = It is necessary to specify the derivation manually during recovery.
Wallet links
- Samara (web): https://samara.app
- Chainbow (Android/iOS/MAC): http://chainbow.io
- Electron (Windows/MAC/Linux): https://github.com/RadiantBlockchain/electron-radiant/releases/tag/v0.1.4
Conclusion
Sometimes it can be a hassle to recover a wallet if you are not experienced enough. My recommendation is to create a wallet that you will not use and practice recovery on the different wallets to see how it works.
