Back up your phrase
Your 20 words are your node. They sign you in to your wallet, and they bring your node and its money back on another machine. Keep them well, and keep them to yourself.
On this page
What to keep
Keep the 20 words, in order, with their numbers. That is all: every key your node has comes from them, and the node keeps no copy. Nobody, the Dassie project included, can make them again for you.
- The first four letters are enough. No two words on the list share them. The wallet shows them in bold, and a metal backup plate made for 24 words holds all 20.
- The date is not part of it. The wallet shows the day the phrase was made, and the phrase records it too, so you need not write it down.
- It is not a BIP-39 phrase, though its words come from the same list. Other wallets cannot read it, and Dassie does not take their 12- or 24-word phrases.
Where to keep it
Anyone who knows the words controls your node and everything it holds. Write them on paper or stamp them on metal, and keep that somewhere safe and private, away from the computer the node runs on. A second copy in another place protects you from a fire or a flood.
One exception is a node set up without a browser, with
dassie setup: it reads the phrase from a file on the
node's own host, so that file needs the same care.
Headless setup says how to keep it.
Signing in with it
The wallet asks for your phrase whenever a browser has no session with your node: a new browser, a new device, or after you log out. It reads the words as setup does, so the first four letters of each are enough, and the phrase never leaves your browser. A wrong phrase gets "That passphrase does not belong to this node."
An owner app on your phone needs no phrase: you pair it with a code instead.
Bring your node back
On a new machine, install Dassie, open its setup page, and choose Recover an existing wallet, as in Set up your wallet. Your node comes back with the same node ID.
What comes back
- The node ID, so peers and registrars know your node again, and the names it holds.
- Its accounts on the XRP Ledger and in settlement hubs, and what they hold: once you add their ledgers again, the node finds them.
- The key other wallets know your node by, when it pays them through Open Payments.
What you set up again
Everything else lives in the node's database, not in the phrase: the ledgers you added, your peers, your payment history, connected apps, API keys, paired devices and settings. Add your ledgers again first. To keep all of it, move the database with the node instead: Back up and move a node says how.
A phrase from 0.2
The testnet was reset for 0.3.0, and nothing from 0.2 or earlier comes along. Those phrases had 12 or 24 words, which a node no longer reads, and a database from 0.2 doesn't work either. Set the node up again from a fresh database, with a new phrase, and back that one up. The 0.3.0 release notes say what changed.
When a word is wrong
Six of the 20 words are there to check the others, so the phrase can put itself right. It restores up to:
- five words you mark as unreadable,
- one wrong word and up to three unreadable ones, or
- two wrong words and one unreadable one.
When a word on your plate is bent or smudged, type ? in its place, or tap it to mark it. That is worth more than a guess: the wallet knows where an unreadable word is, but has to find a wrong one.
The wallet never uses a restored phrase quietly. It shows you all 20
words with the ones it changed marked, and uses them only once you
choose Use these words. If your copy was wrong, fix
it then. dassie setup has no one to ask, so it refuses a
phrase that needs a correction, and names the positions of the words.
One phrase, one network
A phrase names the network it belongs to. Yours is a testnet phrase, and it opens only testnet nodes. A phrase for the live network would be a different phrase, and it would make a different node.
A phrase also records when it was made. A device whose clock is more than a day behind that refuses it, and says the date it found: set the clock right, and try again.
Why it works this way: the phrase's format, its corrections and its network. Your recovery phrase explains it in plain words.
