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Legacy
  • Welcome to Sia!
  • Get Started with Sia
    • Introduction to these docs
    • Sia 101
    • What are Siacoins?
    • How to buy Siacoins
    • What is the Siacoin total supply?
  • Your Sia Wallet
    • Wallet overview
    • The importance of your seed
    • How to make a Sia address
    • How to send Siacoins
    • How do I change my Sia wallet password?
    • Back up your Sia wallet
    • Wallet troubleshooting
      • Delete your seed and make a new one
      • Find or fix your seed
      • I lost my seed. What do I do?
      • My deposit or withdrawal didn't go through
      • Why does Sia take so long to sync?
      • What are these deductions in my wallet?
      • Why does Sia-UI give me a new address each time I click Receive Siacoin?
    • Sia-UI FAQs
      • How to download and install Sia-UI
      • How to make a new wallet in Sia-UI
      • How to restore a wallet from a seed in Sia-UI
      • How to perform a clean install in Sia-UI
      • How do I uninstall Sia-UI?
    • For Advanced Users
      • Verify the Sia release signature
      • Using Sia on a remote node
      • Using Sia on multiple computers
      • How to bootstrap the Sia blockchain
      • How to automatically restart and unlock Sia
      • How to set an environment variable
    • 🚧walletd
      • Wallet overview
  • Renting
    • About renting on Sia
    • Managing your files
    • How to rent storage on Sia
    • How to back up and restore your files
    • Renter troubleshooting
    • Is my data secure?
    • 🚧renterd
      • About renting on Sia
      • renterd Workshop
  • Hosting
    • About hosting on Sia
    • Hosting with the Sia-UI GUI
    • Hosting with the siad CLI on Linux
    • Hosting FAQ
    • 🚧hostd
      • About hosting on Sia
      • Setup Guides
        • Linux
        • macOS
        • Windows
      • Dynamic DNS
        • DuckDNS
        • Cloudflare (Advanced)
  • Mining
    • About mining on Sia
    • Sia mining pools
  • Contributing
    • How can I contribute to Sia?
    • Where can I learn more about Sia?
  • Siafunds
    • What are Siafunds?
    • How do I buy Siafunds?
    • How to cash out Siafunds
    • SEC Settlement FAQ
  • Sia Integrations
    • Listing Siacoin on your exchange
    • Using the Sia Ledger app with Sia Central
    • Using the Sia Ledger Nano app with CLI
    • Brand guidelines for Sia in your project or site
  • Testnet
    • What is Zen?
  • Forks
    • Using the wrong chain after a fork
    • Navigating the 2021 Sia hardfork
    • So, you didn't update in time for the fork
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On this page
  • About the seed
  • Loss
  • Theft
  • Keep it safe
  • Make sure it's right
  • Unlock your wallet
  • Using your seed as your password
  • Using a custom password

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  1. Your Sia Wallet

The importance of your seed

Your Sia seed is your key to your Siacoin balance, and in the future, it will be the key to your files as well. It’s the most important piece of information in your Sia experience.

About the seed

  • It’s 29 words... most of the time. There's a small chance you'll get a 28-word seed.

  • It's generated when you first make your Siacoin wallet

  • It will also be your wallet password unless you set a custom password

  • If you have your correct seed, you can always recover your Siacoin balance.

Loss

If you lose your seed, your Siacoin balance will be permanently inaccessible. Because Sia is truly decentralized, the Sia dev team can’t access your seed at any time, for any reason.

Theft

If someone steals your seed, they can easily steal your Siacoin balance. Be wary of giving any untrusted third party your seed.

Keep it safe

Because your seed is so important, you should have physical and digital methods of storing it safely. As with any piece of digital information that you care about, you shouldn't consider it safe unless you have multiple independent backups.

  • Store it the same way it's given to you: all lower-case letters, with a space between each word.

  • Make sure there is no space at the beginning or end of the seed.

Physically Safe

Keep a laminated paper copy stored in a locked safe or a bank safe deposit box.

Digitally Safe

Keep your seed in a password or biometric (e.g. fingerprint) secured app like 1Password or LastPass.

Make sure it's right

Once you write it down, copy and paste it, or re-type it, make sure you've done so correctly. A single miswritten word or mistyped letter means the entire seed is incorrect, and can no longer be used to unlock your wallet or recover your Siacoin.

Unlock your wallet

Your seed is your private key to your Siacoin balance, and it can also be used to unlock your wallet. The default setting is for your seed to double as your wallet password, but you also have the ability to set a custom password if you’d like. Because your seed is so long, it can function as an effective line of defense against someone gaining unauthorized access to your wallet. This isn’t the whole picture though, and there are other things you should consider before deciding whether to use your seed or a custom password to get in and out of your Siacoin wallet.

Using your seed as your password

It would take modern technology trillions upon trillions of years to figure out a 20+ word phrase from scratch. This makes your seed a powerful deterrent against intruders if it doubles as your wallet password. But frequently typing your seed also makes you vulnerable to malicious software that might be installed on your computer. Let’s look at the pros and cons of each.

Pro: Your seed is long. This offers great protection against someone trying to “brute force” it, or someone peeking over your shoulder as you type it.

Pro: Since you'll be typing it in fairly often, you'll know it's correct.

Con: Typing your seed in repeatedly makes you vulnerable to keylogging. Keylogging is when your keyboard input is recorded using malware or a physical device and then sent to a malicious party. If someone gets your seed, they can easily steal your Siacoin, as we noted earlier.

Using a custom password

During wallet creation, you have an option to create a custom password for getting in and out of your wallet. You can also set this afterward at any point. This allows you to use something familiar instead of the wallet seed.

Pro: You don’t have to type in a ton of words every time you want to unlock your wallet.

Pro: It reduces the exposure of your seed. If keylogging software were to steal your custom password, there’s nothing they can do with it unless the person also has access to your computer.

Con: It might make accessing your wallet easier for those who have physical or remote access to your computer.

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Last updated 1 year ago

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