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Unexpected wallet behavior switching from encrypted wallet during update

Sub-Ether

Well-known member
Ok, maybe you've covered this already and its obvious, but I'll post it out anyway as a warning not to switch between encrypted and unencrypted wallets.
So, I decided to encrypt a 45 week old wallet about 3 weeks ago, the primary machine wallet accidently got corrupted(thru testnet), so I decided to try an experiment, I put an August unencrypted version into a fresh copy of the latest stable version (0.10.16.16) onto a secondary machine.
I updated it, and it was all going fine until I got to (yes you guessed it) around 3 weeks ago ..
after the encrypted period started there where no more deposits (I was waiting for about another 200!).
The wallet finished synchronizing and it ticked off ok but still the 200 short.
That was that-left short,dissappeared but hopefully not gone forever, I tried encrypting the unencrypted wallet with the same encryption key as used 3 weeks ago in the long shot attempt (at being clever lol) and retriving all of the balance but this didn't work (after I clicked it I released it might conflict with the working encryption during future blocks and take the wallet out altogether in an unexpected manner and it was probably not such a bright idea after all)

To end, I pasted the new encrypted 3 weeks previous wallet and all came back balance wise as normal.
Moral of the story, don't get your (un)encrypted wallet keys mixed up and expect them to come back at a later date.
 
Well, wallet encryption has nothing to do with blockchain actually
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Wallet_encryption

Are you sure you didn't mixed/anonymyzed/created_new_deposit_address_and_sent_funds_there between August and "3 weeks ago"? Cause if you did it means that August wallet simply doesn't has private keys for new addresses.
 
Agreed; only the private keys are encrypted. There is no issue between sending an encrypted wallets balance to a new non-encrypted one. Even if you encrypt a fresh wallet with addresses that have balances, the addresses will remain in the wallet and only purge the unused keys for new encrypted ones.

It sounds like you restored a wallet that was missing an address that you sent funds to either through darksend mixing or by generating a new address.
 
Ok, maybe you've covered this already and its obvious, but I'll post it out anyway as a warning not to switch between encrypted and unencrypted wallets.
So, I decided to encrypt a 45 week old wallet about 3 weeks ago, the primary machine wallet accidently got corrupted(thru testnet), .
How did your wallet get corrupted "thru testnet"? because I've used testnet a lot and have not gotten any file corrupted thru it. Testnet has a different block chain so I'm kinda puzzled by this.

I have a wallet with real DRKs that were anonymized with darkcoin v10.15.21, then I didn't use the wallet until today I loaded it up with v.10.16.16 (from this version on there are no more denom fees 0.0125.) Half way through the block chain it crashed, I restarted the wallet, it's fine, the money is there (But I'm thinking I might have to create a fresh wallet and send all my coins there soon.) Not sure because of the wallet or my windows. But Darkcoin wallets are known for backwards incompatibility, unless it has been improved that i'm not aware of. I've learned the best way is to upgrade your wallet as soon as the new version comes out and send the coins from the old version to the new version wallet.
 
Well, wallet encryption has nothing to do with blockchain actually
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Wallet_encryption

Are you sure you didn't mixed/anonymyzed/created_new_deposit_address_and_sent_funds_there between August and "3 weeks ago"? Cause if you did it means that August wallet simply doesn't has private keys for new addresses.

How did your wallet get corrupted "thru testnet"? because I've used testnet a lot and have not gotten any file corrupted thru it. Testnet has a different block chain so I'm kinda puzzled by this.

I have a wallet with real DRKs that were anonymized with darkcoin v10.15.21, then I didn't use the wallet until today I loaded it up with v.10.16.16 (from this version on there are no more denom fees 0.0125.) Half way through the block chain it crashed, I restarted the wallet, it's fine, the money is there (But I'm thinking I might have to create a fresh wallet and send all my coins there soon.) Not sure because of the wallet or my windows. But Darkcoin wallets are known for backwards incompatibility, unless it has been improved that i'm not aware of. I've learned the best way is to upgrade your wallet as soon as the new version comes out and send the coins from the old version to the new version wallet.
To clarify, the wallet was not corrupted after all, I checked the debug log, it was having trouble getting an external ip and peers (I'd messed with router and file permissions trying to get testnet master node working although all other wallets where working).
I didn't reply until now because I wanted to empty the 'august' wallet' of all darkcoin apart from 1, and then create a new machine environment for a copy of the most recent and encrypted wallet and this would allow me to complete the test.
The results are, I have 2 exactly the same hot wallets from different dates, 1 with a balance of 1 darkcoin and 1 with .2 darkcoin, so basically that invisiable 200 darkcoin that I mentioned stayed invisible and when I emptied the wallet from the other higher balance wallet, it did NOT correct the balance at the end of the transactions updating as I expected it to. strange eh.
I checked the chainz exployer to see if it shows 1 or .2 darkcoin, but I don't think its updated properly yet...
 
Agreed; only the private keys are encrypted. There is no issue between sending an encrypted wallets balance to a new non-encrypted one. Even if you encrypt a fresh wallet with addresses that have balances, the addresses will remain in the wallet and only purge the unused keys for new encrypted ones.

It sounds like you restored a wallet that was missing an address that you sent funds to either through darksend mixing or by generating a new address.
would missing addresses result in unmatched wallet balances from the 2 same hot wallets? sounds iffy if you got multiple wallets from different time periods installed in various places, where is my .8 of a darkcoin hiding then?
 
Well, wallet encryption has nothing to do with blockchain actually
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Wallet_encryption

Are you sure you didn't mixed/anonymyzed/created_new_deposit_address_and_sent_funds_there between August and "3 weeks ago"? Cause if you did it means that August wallet simply doesn't has private keys for new addresses.
The darksend was stuck on 24% when saved in the august wallet, very little was actually mixed.
 
I have 2 exactly the same hot wallets from different dates, 1 with a balance of 1 darkcoin and 1 with .2 darkcoin
I'm not sure what are trying to do by running this experiment but either "2 exactly same wallets" statement is wrong or they should have same balance...

The darksend was stuck on 24% when saved in the august wallet, very little was actually mixed.
If you continued mixing after you saved your wallet then it doesn't matter did it finished or not - every little step of DS mixing means that it takes some funds and send them to new addresses. So you might have 0 anonymized funds still but your funds are already moved once you have some progress change.
 
I'm not sure what are trying to do by running this experiment but either "2 exactly same wallets" statement is wrong or they should have same balance...


If you continued mixing after you saved your wallet then it doesn't matter did it finished or not - every little step of DS mixing means that it takes some funds and send them to new addresses. So you might have 0 anonymized funds still but your funds are already moved once you have some progress change.
Not the same wallets as in, were not saved at the same time and were from different versions but source was same, I am running both hot at the same time, 1 shows 1 darkcoin and 1 shows .2 darkcoin . I can provide screen shots, am gonna check chainz again, see if that shows whats going on..
 
Not the same wallets as in, were not saved at the same time and were from different versions but source was same, I am running both hot at the same time, 1 shows 1 darkcoin and 1 shows .2 darkcoin . I can provide screen shots, am gonna check chainz again, see if that shows whats going on..

What do you mean by "source"? So you had one wallet.dat, then you saved it and made a copy and now you are running 2 different qt-wallets with these 2 wallet.dat's, right?

wallet.dat is a small database containing your privatekeys for addresses that you own. If you had ANY new address in either qt-wallet this address will NOT appear in another qt-wallet even if they are copies of the same original wallet.dat. When you running 2 qt-wallets copied from one AND you created_new_address/mixing then you should treat them as 2 NEW wallet.dat's that share OLD keys (that's why you still see some balance) but they do not share any new keys that were made after copying (that's why there will be difference).
 
What do you mean by "source"? So you had one wallet.dat, then you saved it and made a copy and now you are running 2 different qt-wallets with these 2 wallet.dat's, right?

wallet.dat is a small database containing your privatekeys for addresses that you own. If you had ANY new address in either qt-wallet this address will NOT appear in another qt-wallet even if they are copies of the same original wallet.dat. When you running 2 qt-wallets copied from one AND you created_new_address/mixing then you should treat them as 2 NEW wallet.dat's that share OLD keys (that's why you still see some balance) but they do not share any new keys that were made after copying (that's why there will be difference).
So different private keys show different end balances, thanks for explaining, because I always thought (any) keys to the wallet meant all of the wallet balance and not a selective some of it dependant on history. I'll leave it at that then. Have a nice evening :)
 
Yep, the total balance is shown from all available keys in the wallet. Which currently is 1000 for Darkcoin and 100 for other cryptocurrencies.

UdjinM6 is absolutely spot on. If you backed up the wallet and then continued to use the wallet to mix, eventually you'll start creating new addresses that aren't in the backed up wallet.

What probably happened was the wallet that was originally backed up generated a new address from darksend mixing that isn't in the original backed up file.

So none of the issues arise from encryption. Also the backwards compatibility of the wallets lies in the berkeley database version not the daemon/qt version.

You can create a wallet with any version of QT/daemon and use it in whatever daemon as long as it was compiled using the same berkeley db.
 
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