“You don’t have a backup, unless you’ve verified that it works”
Having a backup of your wallet is a crucial part of keeping your crypto safe. It is equally important to ensure that your backup is correct, otherwise it might be completely useless if you ever need it.
You can easily test your backup without having any funds in your wallet, simply by comparing the addresses. If an imported backup generates the same addresses as your original wallet, you can be 100% sure it is correct.
How do you verify your backup?
To test your backup, you should restore your wallet from your backup and verify that it is the same wallet. An obvious way of doing this is by putting a small amount of funds in the wallet first, and then check that the balance is still there after you restore your backup.
But this way, you put those funds at risk in case you made a mistake in your backup.
You can avoid this risk and test your backup with an empty wallet, simply by comparing the addresses. In Hierarchical Deterministic (HD) wallets, all addresses are derived from your private key. If you restore your backup and see that it generates the same addresses as your original, you can be 100% sure that it is the same wallet.
Practical steps to test your backup
- Set up your ZERO, add some coins to the dashboard and synchronize with the LIQUID app.
See Demo: Create an NGRAVE wallet with a "Perfect Key" and Demo: Create a mnemonic wallet - For now, make a note of your backup. You can stamp it in the GRAPHENE metal plates after you’ve verified that it’s correct.
- Wipe the wallet on your ZERO , but keep the LIQUID app so you can still see the addresses.
See How can I wipe the device? - Set up your ZERO again, but this time import your backup.
See Demo: Import an NGRAVE wallet with a "Perfect Key" or Demo: Import a mnemonic seed phrase of another wallet
Then add the same coins again to your ZERO’s dashboard.
Don’t synchronize the imported wallet with the LIQUID app just yet. - Now compare the addresses of the imported wallet on your ZERO with the addresses from the original wallet you can still see in LIQUID. They should be the same.
If they are not the same, then there must be a mistake in your backup.
After verifying this way, you’ll need to ‘unsync’ the LIQUID app via the settings. Then you can synchronize again.