How do you check the balance on your Electroneum paper wallet? Can you be sure that your ETN has reached it safely?
This is a surprisingly difficult task due to the privacy features of the Electroneum codebase.
In this article, we’ll take a look at a few ways of checking your paper wallet balance, starting with the easiest (but least versatile) method and increasing in complexity.
Make sure you have the 3 keys of your paper wallet handy.
ALSO READ: How to Create an Electroneum Paper Wallet
1. Using the Electroneum Block Explorer
The Electroneum Block Explorer is an online tool which lets you browse certain information on the Electroneum blockchain.
Due to the privacy features of Electroneum, it does not allow you to view the current balance of a specific wallet address like Bitcoin block explorers does. However, it does allow you to check if a transaction has indeed been processed.
And if you only want to know if sent ETN has successfully arrived in your paper wallet, this might work for you.
In order to check this, you’ll need the transaction ID as well as the public key and private view key of your offline paper wallet.
To check if the transaction was successful:
Visit blockexplorer.electroneum.com.
Type the transaction hash (sometimes called the transaction ID or TxHash) into the search box at the top of the page. If you sent ETN from the online app wallet you’ll be able to find the transaction hash by clicking on the specific transaction in the list. If you sent it from an exchange like Cryptopia, you’ll be able to find the transaction hash in your withdrawal history.
You’ll now see several details of the transaction, including the block it was mined in and the fee that was paid. In the second table on the page, you’ll see a list of outputs (amounts that were spent in the transaction) associated with various stealth addresses.
Scroll down to the tab that reads Decode Outputs. We’ll now use the public key and the private view key of your offline paper wallet to decode which outputs in the list above were sent to YOUR wallet.
Type your public key and private view key into the boxes provided and hit Decode Outputs. Note: These two keys will now be sent to Electroneum’s servers for processing, meaning that they’ll be sent over the internet. However, should someone get a hold of these two keys, the worse they could do is to view the output balances like you’re doing now.
You’ll now see a screen showing confirming the specific outputs of the transaction that went to your paper wallet.
Note that this method only shows the funds going into your wallet in the specific transaction under question. It does not show incoming funds from other transactions and also does not show any outgoing transactions.
For the total wallet balance, you’ll need to keep track of all the transaction hashes in which funds were sent to your wallet and punch them in one by one. Add the matching outputs together to find the total funds that have entered your wallet.
2. Using a View-Only Wallet in the Command Line
The Electroneum computer mining software allows one to load a view-only wallet and determine the value of all incoming transactions (without the need for transaction IDs).
This gets a bit technical since it requires working on the command line, but it’s really not that difficult if you follow the steps closely.
Before you begin, make sure you have enough hard disk space and data transfer allowance to download the entire Electroneum blockchain (nearly 7.5GB at the time of writing).
We will now download the Electroneum blockchain to your computer, then load your paper wallet, and then scan the blockchain for any incoming ETN related to the paper wallet.
Downloading the Electroneum Blockchain
Download the direct mining software for the operating system you are using (available for Windows, Mac, and Linux) from the Electroneum download page. Click on the ZIP link to download it. Be sure to scroll down to Direct Mining Software heading, and not the Beginner’s software.
Unzip the downloaded file to a folder on your computer.
Inside the folder, double-click the electroneumd file. This will start syncing the entire Electroneum blockchain to your computer. This might take a few hours, depending on your download speed.
You’ll be able to see the progress by looking at the last numbers on each line. For instance, 41000/87000 means that 41,000 out of 87,000 blocks have been synced.
When synchronization is complete, you’ll get a message saying that you can now run the electroneum-wallet-cli file.
Leave the electroneumd file running in the background for the rest of the process. This will ensure new blocks are synced as they become available.
Loading Your Paper Wallet
While leaving the electroneumd file running, open the command prompt (on Windows, click on Start and type in cmd).
Once inside the command prompt, navigate to the download folder you extracted above. Navigate by typing cd [Directory] and replacing [Directory] with the directory of the download folder. So if the download folder is located at C:/Documents/Electroneum, type cd C:/Documents/Electroneum
To load your paper wallet, type the following at the command line:
electroneum-wallet-cli --generate-from-view-key NEWWALLET
…and replace NEWWALLET with any name you would like to call your wallet (this will store the wallet in a password-protected file with the same name for easy access later).
It will now ask you for the Standard Key – which is your paper wallet’s public wallet key. Copy the key from your paper wallet, paste it in a text file, and remove the spaces. Then copy the entire key, move back to the command prompt, right-click anywhere and select Paste. Press Enter to move to the next step.
NOTE: Make sure to remove all spaces from these keys. If you don’t, the program will end and you’ll need to start again.
It will now ask you for the View key – which is your paper wallet’s private view key. Perform the same steps as above, copying the private view key of your paper wallet and pasting it into the command prompt without spaces.
You’ll now be prompted to create a password. Type in any password and press Enter. Confirm the password by typing it a second time and pressing Enter. Make sure to remember the password if you want to reload the wallet later.
It will now ask you from which block height you wish to restore the wallet, or otherwise a specific date. This might be useful to save you a lot of syncing time. If you’ve just created the wallet a few days ago, there’s no need to run through the entire blockchain from the start. Simply specify a date one or two days before you created the wallet.
If you’re not sure what to do, simply press Enter to load the wallet from the beginning of the blockchain.
The software will now run through the blockchain on your computer and check every transaction to determine if it belongs to your wallet. This is called “restoring” your wallet. You’ll see the progress as it goes.
When it has finished restoring your wallet, the software might inform you that your blockchain has become outdated since the time you started the restoring process. It will ask you permission to download the newest blocks and process them as well.
Finally, it will show you a message with your paper wallet’s balance (the true amount of ETN in the wallet) and unlocked balance (the amount of ETN that can be spent at the moment).
Note that your unlocked balance might be less than the normal balance (or even zero) for a short while after you’ve sent a transaction. This helps to “lock in” some funds to prevent double spending while the transaction is busy processing. It should return to normal soon.
The first time I ran this, my wallet balance did not reflect the 5 ETN I transferred to the wallet a few minutes before, since the blockchain has not synced entirely to my computer. In that case, it was necessary to refresh the wallet.
You might need to type “refresh” at the command line to refresh the wallet.
To see the balance of your wallet once again, type “balance” at the command line.
Note that this method is also only good for showing incoming transactions. It does not take into account any ETN that was spent. This is because the privacy controls allow only the owner of the private spend key to know the transactions that were spent.
To see the actual balance of your wallet, taking into account both incoming and outgoing transactions, you’ll need to load a full wallet into the command line.
Hello guys, please I tried importing my etn from offline wallet to Mobile wallet and after several hours it showed import failed but the coins has arrived in my mobile wallet but its not in my available balance for more than 4days now and I can’t send it out of the mobile wallet .. Please I need help
Hi,
I have transferred some of my balance from my online wallet to my offline wallet. I can see after almost a week that the transaction has been completed in my online wallet. But I have checked my offline wallet using the steps you mentioned, and I can see that there is no amount transferred also, I can see that from the command line as well. I used my public key for the transfer. Did I miss anything?
Could be that the online system is not reporting correctly. Can you see a transaction hash in the completed entry on your online wallet? You can search for that transaction hash on blockexplorer.electroneum.com to query the blockchain directly and see if it has truly been processed.
Hi,
Thanks for your reply.
It seems it was not refreshed yet. I can see it now in the blockexplorer while I couldn’t see it two days ago.
Thank you.
Hi guys, I could do with some help here. I’ve transferred my offline ETN to my online wallet yesterday at 3:45 and still no joy. Transaction hash still pending. What can I do? Today I’ve tried doing all the searching through and followed “How to Check Your Electroneum Paper Wallet Balance” but I am finding it hard trying to get my head around it. Please help. Much appreciated.
Hi Alan,
How did you transfer it? Did you use the “Import https://electroneum101.com/files/etn form paper wallet” button in the app? Also, is your app up to date? I know you need to update the app (since instant payments were launched) to make sure paper wallet imports can come through easily.
“To see the actual balance of your wallet, taking into account both incoming and outgoing transactions, you’ll need to load a full wallet into the command line.”
How can I load a full wallet or set the private spend key? I need to see the outgoing transaction of my wallet.
I’ll create a tutorial for this within the week and let you know when it’s done.
Hi Benjamin,
As I am holding ETN for the moment I don’t use the electroneumd.exe/wallet CLI a lot. Just to check my balance. But after all the steps taken above and I see my balance, if I would want to see it again the next day isn’t there a quicker way? I’ve tried it directly by opening the .exe file first and then the CLI wallet and type in my password and wallet name, but the window just closes. If I do all the steps again and load it with the wallet name, it says it already exists. So what am I doing wrong?
Yes, Ben..
Thanks for your explanation, but I still wonder why do I have to move my ETN to the paper wallet in order to get ETNX as a result of the Electroneum fork?
In addition, they have said that the fork has nothing to do with ETN’s Developer, they even have no discussion with Richard Ells about this issue!
Does Electronero Developer only the opportunistic one merely to get benefits from the popularity of Electroneum?
In BLOCKCHAIN technology and cryptocurrency space, if any new coin such as Electronero want to implemented hard fork, does it need consent from Electroneum as well?
Here’s a link to the post I wrote about the ETNX fork.
You need to move your ETN to a paper wallet since you need control over the private keys in which the ETN is stored. Keeping your ETN in the app wallet or an exchange won’t work since the platform then controls your private keys, and you won’t be able to use them to claim ETNX after the fork.
Richard has publicly distanced himself from the project. The Electronero team has no involvement with Electroneum, other than using their codebase and blockchain. This is perfectly legal to do, since Electroneum’s code base is open source (you can view the whole thing on their Github page). They don’t need consent from the team to do this.
Keep in mind that they can only copy the blockchain and the software used to mine it. Things that they can’t copy are the mobile miner app. They also won’t be listed on exchanges like Electroneum (until they arrange their own listings with the exchanges), and they also won’t have the partnerships that Electroneum has made with many businesses. So in this sense, Electroneum is light-years ahead of them.
You could say that the Electronero team is opportunistic in trying to create this new coin and pre-mining a couple of coins for themselves. But they will still need to put in a great amount of work before they get any benefit from the project. For example, they won’t be able to sell their coins if ETNX is not listed on an exchange. And this takes a lot of hard work to do.
Forks are quite a common thing in cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin Gold are both forks of the original Bitcoin blockchain, and there are many others like them as well. But usually, the new coin ends up at only a fraction of the value of the original coin.
Dear Benjamin,
As we know there is a coin named Electronero as a result of Electroneum fork that will happen at 307,000 block height on May 29, 2018.
Could you please to tell us step by step on how to get Electronero when the fork has come? Thank you.
I’m putting the finishing touches on an article I’ve written about just that. Will publish it in the next day or two.
The short and the long of it… In order to claim your Electronero after the fork, you need to move your Electroneum to a paper wallet BEFORE the fork happens at block 307,000 (around 29 May). Don’t wait until the last minute since the blockchain might be congested at that time when everybody tries to capitalize on the fork, and you might not get your coins over to the paper wallet in time.
Hi
Is the blockchain still busy? I have transferred ETN from my offline wallet to my online wallet and it says complete, but ETN is still pending and been doing so for over 2 days? Is this normal?
Also, I have the mobile miner as well and although I’ve mined over 10 ETN this is not going into my wallet.
Ideas?
Blockchain is not as busy these days. What do you mean? Did the ETN not show up in your online wallet, even though the transaction shows successful?
The coins in your pending balance on the mobile miner might not pay out at exactly 10. The team is working through the backlog and paying people in batches. Be patient, it will come. I’ve heard some people have success by logging out of the app and logging back in.
I am receiving “cryptonote protocol stopped successfully” message when I start the electroneumd.exe. It worked for some time and I had to shut down my laptop to continue later but I am receiving the above message and it closes the electroneumd window now. Can’t continue to synchronize the blocks.
Hi. I’ve sent ETN from my online wallet to my offline wallet 10 days ago. It created the transaction ID and withdrew the ETN from my wallet. After some time the transaction detail was erased from the log and the ETN returned to my online wallet.
But 2 days ago the amount I have sent dissappeared again and I have thought it went to my offline wallet.
I have tried to import my offline wallet to my mining wallet again but the transaction has failed. I’m sure I have scanned in the correct order from my offline wallet. Because the transaction is deleted from my transaction list on the miner, I can’t see its TX Hash, etc. So I can’t check my offline wallet’s balance without it. Do you think my ETN has disappeared? It was about 50.04 ETN.
Not sure why this happened, but the blockchain was under extremely high load when you sent the transaction. The app probably tried to send the transaction again and succeeded. The import would not go through because of the high number of transactions in the blockchain. You should try this again now since the high load has been reduced.
I have mined 10 ETN but they never went to my wallet, and it’s been two weeks now. Why are they not appearing in my balance? I mined 20 ETN and it is still not in my wallet. What is wrong with the management?
Please be patient. The blockchain was under heavy load at the time and some transactions failed to complete. The problem has since subsided and they have started resending those transactions. You should receive your ETN shortly (if you haven’t already).
Twice in a row, I have initiated an “Import https://electroneum101.com/files/from offline wallet”. Now, one day after each transaction, the status is being shown as “Failed”. I have my full amount of ETN coins in the offline wallet. I don’t understand what is happening. Please help me out with this.
What should I do now ?
Hi. I’ll try to put this as simple as I can:
1 – I transferred 10 ETN from online wallet to offline wallet/paper wallet
2 – It shows “transaction pending”
3 – The 10 ETN are gone from my online wallet and the transaction has disappeared from my “recent transaction” list
4 – I imported full balance from offline wallet to online wallet, to see if it works and if I can bring my 10 ETN back
5 – transaction pending
6 – transaction failed
Can someone explain this? What is wrong? Why has my first transaction vanished? Why has the import from offline wallet has failed?
Your transactions were performed during a time of high blockchain traffic. If there are too many transactions, some transactions don’t get mined and subsequently disappear from the transaction pool due to taking too long. In this case, the funds will be returned to your online wallet. It won’t just disappear. So I guess you should have the funds back in your online wallet by now.
I already reach 10 ETN on mobile mining but still it doesn’t go to my wallet. The payout limit is already reached but its not transferring. What to do?
The blockchain is currently flooded with transactions, and yours are probably among the many. The team is working on a solution to allow for faster processing of transactions. Please be patient.
I exported some of my ETN to an offline paper wallet and after a couple of days I transferred it back to my online wallet, but the transaction shows PENDING. Already passed more than 4 days and it is still in pending…
This is not ok at all. I am wondering if my money is really there and if I will get it back!
4 days sounds a bit long. Perhaps you could try importing it again. If that fails, you might want to set up a node and load your paper wallet into the node, so that you can check the balance and see if the money has left the paper wallet.
Hi, is it possible to use for mining the same wallet address that I’ve created when started mining on my smartphone? Thanks.
Yes, you can mine to your online wallet’s public address.
Hi,
Can I use my online wallet public wallet ID on mining. Mining straight to my wallet not offline wallet.
Yes. The mining reward is paid out to the wallet address you specify. And since your wallet is just a normal wallet of which Electroneum controls the keys, you can mine to it.
Hello,
I’ve been mining for close to 2 weeks and I have accumulated many ETN shares but when I check the balance I still see 0 ETN and don’t see all my outputs as well. I did check my balance on https://blockexplorer.electroneum.com/ by selecting one of the transaction pools. I’m checking at the correct place. Please let me know why I’m not able to see my balance.
You won’t find any information about your pool mining stats on the block explorer. That only shows information pertaining to your wallet. You will only see something there when your pool pays out to your wallet. You need to go the pool website to find the information you’re looking for. Which pool are you mining with?
I would like to ask if it is still possible that I can get my ETN coins from Cryptopia. I sent ETN to my paper wallet but I accidentally changed my payment ID while in the process. The transaction is in the blockchain explorer but I can’t see my coins in my wallet using electroneum-wallet-cli.exe
Please give me some advice on how I can retrieve my ETN…
When sending to a paper wallet, the payment ID should not be a problem. You can use any payment ID and it will still work fine.
How did you check your wallet balance? Have you tried importing the paper wallet to your online wallet?
Hi Benjamin
Greg here. Had a few posts below on being unable to find the original paper wallet that I sent coins to from Cryptopia.
No help from support and it’s been weeks waiting for Cryptopia. Have you had any chance to think about my issue?
Thanks, Greg.
What do you mean? Did you lose the paper wallet that contains your coins?
Hi,
I have tried to import from my offline paper wallet to the online wallet manager three times.
The first two times I received status: failed messages. On the third try I received status: pending.
However it has been pending for 7 days now. Do I need to wait longer, or should I try to import again. Please help!
I’m hearing a lot of people having problems with importing from the paper wallet in the last few days. Does the pending transaction show a transaction ID on the online wallet yet?
I’m having the same issue… Any solution to this yet? I still see the balance in the Explorer using my paper wallet address, but for some reason, it won’t transfer to the online wallet…
Take note that using your paper wallet address and private view key on the explorer will only show you the funds that came IN to your paper wallet. It won’t show transactions going OUT of the paper wallet, for privacy reasons. So you won’t be able to view outgoing transactions if you don’t have a transaction ID.
Thanks for you quick reply! No, there is no transaction ID.
Transaction Hash : PENDING
But it has been “pending” for 7 days now.
If there’s no transaction ID, my guess is that the transaction has not reached the blockchain yet. It could be that Electroneum’s servers somehow placed the transaction in a queue, or there could be an error with corrupted wallets as they had earlier.
If you’re up for it, I’d suggest trying to import it again (note that I’m not working with the team and don’t have access to customer service tools – I’m just providing a suggestion, so it might work or it might not). Remember that the problem is with the transaction, not with the wallets. The funds can only be in your paper wallet or your online wallet, both of which you control. So there’s not much risk involved. If those funds have already left your paper wallet, the blockchain won’t allow you to spend them again. And if they have already left and don’t show up in your online wallet, you could contact the team and provide them with transaction IDs so they can find the funds for you.
Let me know how it goes!
So I tried again, and the import worked this time! However the amount transferred was incorrect by a LARGE amount.
When I first transferred from Cryptopia to the offline paper wallet, as you have shown above, I confirmed each transfer via the Transaction Hash from my Cryptopia withdraw history utilizing blockexplorer.electroneum.com. So I know for sure the ETN hit the paper wallet, because all the output amounts from the block chain explorer added up.
However, when importing to the online wallet, the full amount did not appear.
I’m at a loss, please advise! Thanks!
Me also, similar problem. What is Electroneum support doing for the system problem?
I have tried to import from my offline paper wallet to the online wallet more than three times.
The first time I received the following status more than 2 days: “complete” with no transaction ID and my ETN zero. On the 2nd try, I received status: “pending” for more than 3 days. On the third time, it came out with 5 “pending” status…
However, it has been pending for 10 days now. Do I need to wait longer, or should I try to import again? Already contacted the support team. Still not able to solve my problem. They replied that I am still in the queue. Please help!
Do your transactions that show “pending” have transaction IDs? If so, you can try to track the transactions in the block explorer.
Success!! Everything FINALLY sorted itself out. I tried again to import and it worked, but the balance of ETN that imported was WAY less than I had in the paper wallet. I was starting to panic, but after checking this morning, the complete balance appeared! Thanks for your help!
Is anyone else having problems importing from an offline wallet? I have tried 6 times now using different methods (copy and paste/OR codes) and none of them go past the pending stage and actually generate a Transaction Hash. ETN support has been useless.
I’m hearing a couple such complaints on the Electroneum Facebook groups as well. Not sure what the problem is.
Have you tried searching for the transaction hash in the Electroneum block explorer?
Hi Benjamin,
I was hacked online and someone tried to steal my 17,000 ETN coins. Below is the transaction hash:
3ea1345cb1e6fc7c9f1a056ed75aa89acf2098c2cf3d92b2f03e34578239f487
The transaction status shows as Failed in my online account. Can you please help me by checking if the transaction failed, and if so, how many days it would take for the coins to show up in my online account.
The Electroneum team does not respond and turns a blind eye, giving canned responses. I just want to know if there is any hope of getting my coins.
Thanks in advance, and God bless you.
Hi Atul,
I’m so sorry to hear about your loss. When looking at the transaction hash on blockexplorer.electroneum.com, it seems as if the transaction has indeed gone through. There are two amounts in the list (one for 10,000 ETN and one for 7,000 ETN) that add up to your 17,000 ETN loss.
There are other transactions that get bundled with yours for privacy reasons, so that nobody can tell for real if it was your address from which the coins came from, and how much. So it’s difficult to get all the details just by looking at the transaction hash details.
There are two ways of proving that the transaction actually took place…
1). You’ll need the private view key or private spend key, which Electroneum won’t give to you. So unless you had the coins in a paper wallet, this method is out.
2). You need to get the address to which the ETN was sent and the TX private key, as displayed when you click on the transaction in your Electroneum dashboard. Copy them into the fields in the section labelled “Prove Sending” below the list of transaction on the transaction hash page. On the next page, the explorer will ad up all the transactions in the specific bundle that is associated with the sent-to address, and display a total. If this total equals 17,000 ETN, then you can be sure that your funds were indeed stolen and the transaction has gone through.
Let me know what you find.
Hi. Apologies for jumping in here. I posted a comment weeks ago with not too much response.
Have made 3 transactions that are found on blockchain explorer. Cannot find them in my paper wallet after spending many, many hours trying everything that is on the internet. Have spent a month going around in circles with Electroneum support, only in the end saying we cannot support this type of question. Truly frustrating to say the least.
Have tried to import into mobile wallet but it fails. Have contacted Cryptopia (coins were not mined) to see if they can see where or what happened. 20 day wait time for response, so I’ll be waiting for weeks.
Also downloaded the graphic version of the wallet with no luck. Not sure, but there could be some issue when trying to load paper wallet first time to check the balance. All sorts of issues.
Anyone any advice much appreciated.
Greg
Not sure what your actual problem is. Can you explain it somewhat simpler? From where did you send the coins, and to where? It sounds like you’ve been using multiple paper wallets.
Hi Benjamin,
I sent it from Cryptopia to the paper wallet using the address I was given when I first opened the wallet. Cannot find them there but see them on the blockchain.
I believe I’ve done everything correctly – syncing all, etc.
How do I get access to the wallet with the keys I have? Have I saved everything of course?
Greg
So you sent the ETN from Cryptopia to your paper wallet?
Do you have the original keys of the wallet you sent it to? Remember that every time you download the paper wallet, it generates a new one for you. It’s your responsibility to save this wallet on your computer or print it out.
To check if the ETN is in your paper wallet, you can try to import them to your online wallet (although I’m hearing several people experiencing delays with that these days). The other method is to follow Method 2 above to restore your paper wallet to a wallet-cli in the command line.
Hi
I’ve tried to import to the Android app but it fails. Yes, I have all keys saved.
I have only downloaded the paper wallet once I believe. To me, it’s an incredibly cumbersome setup. I haven’t had these problems with other wallets at all, and as I said, I’ve spent so long trying to sort this.
When I first started the wallet it said doesn’t exist so you go through the process and get new keys for this and that. It becomes a jungle in my opinion.
I try to open the wallet but always just get this message. Obviously, I’m doing something wrong. I do believe I’m confused between the CLI and paper wallet also.
Monero ‘Helium Hydra’ (v0.11.1.0-076de9be)
Logging to C:UsersGregDownloadswin-x64-0.11.1.0electroneum-wallet-cli.log
Specify wallet file name (e.g., MyWallet). If the wallet doesn’t exist, it will be created.
Wallet file name (or Ctrl-C to quit): electroneum-wallet-cli.exe -generate-from-keys NEWWALLET.etn
No wallet found with that name. Confirm creation of new wallet named: electroneum-wallet-cli.exe -generate-from-keys NEWWALLET.etn
(Y/Yes/N/No):
Benjamin – I think this entire process and long article are a prime example why you NEED to make a simple GUI for the desktop replicating the mobile app and website, so someone can have access to all the buttons and commands available by clicking a “check balance” or “send” or “whatever” button rather than this experience in the command line…
I’ve been struggling for 1 month now to FINALLY get a response from Electroneum via email, and now I’m on email number 3 still trying to get an answer to my original question… if there was a desktop GUI with simple to use buttons, I suspect you would solve a LOT of the little questions, or at least remove a lot of the steps from people trying to figure things out in command line when we’re a point-n-click society…
You talk about ease of access, perhaps to you the above is simple and easy, but not everyone has YOUR experiences, and many people have point-n-click abilities, if you want to cater to the world such as through the mobile app, why don’t you have a desktop GUI of THIS local wallet replicating that same user experience as the website, seems to me, someone concerned with ease of access would be asking his bosses, yeah, why don’t we have a desktop GUI experience, rather than suggesting this is the “price you need to pay” in order to use Electroneum.
If you can do it with the website, how on earth couldn’t you do it with a desktop GUI…
Very good points indeed.
The point is that in order to get ANY information regarding your paper wallet, you will need to download the entire blockchain to your computer. A desktop GUI version will certainly make the process much simpler (and you’ve certainly convinced me to look into creating one myself), but any desktop version will still need the entire blockchain in the background to get wallet balances, send ETN, etc. The desktop version will only interface with the wallet-cli in the background and provide you details as given by the wallet CLI.
The reason why the web interface works for anyone is that Electroneum is doing all the interfacing with the blockchain backend ON BEHALF of the user, using their own servers. This is also the reason why it takes some time to refresh your balance since the web interface first needs to load your wallet and perform all the computations in the wallet-CLI before being able to give you an answer. So the online wallet only works because Electroneum’s servers are doing the heavy lifting in the background.
You could just leave your coins on the Electroneum online wallet and enjoy all the user-friendliness, but be at risk of any possible hacks of the Electroneum system. Or, like I said, if you want more security, you could keep your coins in a paper wallet, although you’ll need to pay the price of working in the command line and downloading the entire blockchain to your system.
I’ve made the suggestion to Electroneum to think about including a future feature within their app that allows someone to view the balance within their offline wallets and related transactions. Not everyone wants to go through this CLI wallet process. In addition, have you heard about their constantly having issues with importing offline wallet ETN? This has been happening to me on-and-off since December and especially within the last 7 days or so.
Hello!
Thank you so much for this tutorial, I am trying to download the blockchain since my app does not let me upload my balance. Keeps failing in the process.
Where is the Blockchain saved to in the hard drive when you go trough it this way? Regards.
Mine is stored at C:ProgramDataelectroneumlmdb. You might need to change your computer’s settings to show hidden files and folders. ProgramData only becomes visible once it is enabled.
Hello,
I tried several times to transfer my paper wallet to online wallet but I always obtain errors.
The last error I got is “This transaction failed with error code 20.” What does it mean?
Thanks,
Matteo
Matteo, which route are you following? Are you trying to import the coins using the app, or are you trying to send the coins from a command based paper wallet cli?
I tried from the app (web and mobile) but the result is always the same… My online wallet has 0 ETN while my paper wallet should have just few ETN. Maybe the amount is too low and it does not cover the fee?
“Checking your balance” is a common activity that everyone will want to do regularly. Saying that this is nearly impossible because it is a “security feature” does not solve the problem.
It should not be necessary to use a command line to get this information. It should not be necessary to download the entire blockchain to view one’s items in it. There needs to be a GUI-based tool to do this activity.
Electroneum clearly needs more usable tools created for it. This is a long way from consumer-friendly, and it needs to be if it will have mass adoption.
It’s true, the command line is not one of the easiest things to work with. But that is the price you need to pay if you want total control and security over your coins.
You can easily use Electroneum’s online wallet to store your coins instead, which does offer the functionality you’re looking for. But the moment you share your private keys with a GUI-based tool, it exposes your keys to the Internet and sends them to a centralized location, putting your keys at risk. Large collections of private keys (like the Electroneum online wallet) are great targets for hackers, so there will always be someone trying to break in.
Electroneum has come a long way in simplifying the crypto experience. Most other coins don’t have anything close to the user-friendly functionality that Electroneum has created. Yes, you’re able to manage other coins on an exchange app, but that is exactly the same as using the Electroneum online wallet – a centralized entity.
So for now, if you want total control of your ETN and the added security benefit that comes with an offline paper wallet, the command line is the only option.
I agree with Memeoic’s comments. For mass adoption the command line route simply doesn’t cut it and is not viable long term. I have many other coins and all (with the exception to ETN) have the capability to be able to check balances without having to download the entire blockchain or compromise private keys.
Hello Benjamin and thanks for the excellent guide. Do you have another article how to check the complete balance (incl incoming and outgoing Txs) and also how to send ETN from paper wallet to other ETN address?
Not yet. I’ll write articles to cover that soon. As for the sending ETN from a paper wallet to another address, one easy way is to use the Import button on the Electroneum online wallet. It allows you to scan the QR codes on your paper wallet and load the coins onto the online wallet. From there you can easily send it to another wallet.
Where can we see the latest updated size of the entire Electroneum blockchain?
You should be able to see this on the Electroneum block explorer: https://blockexplorer.electroneum.com
Hi,
Was wondering if somehow I can retrieve my tokens if I accidentally deleted pdf file from usb drive. I thought I printed my paper wallet and deleted pdf file on accident. Now I’m afraid I’ve lost my tokens for good. I’ve purchased from Cryptopia and transferred to my paper wallet address. Please help.
So sorry to hear that. If you can’t find those private keys on a printout or on a USB, the coins are gone for good. You’re the only one you’ve ever had access to the.
Arnold, the printer that you used might have previous prints stored in its internal memory, you could try reprinting if it wasn’t too long ago. Also, you can try recovering lost files from the USB drive, there is an app called recover SD (something like that). Good luck!!!
Fantastic advise! Didn’t even think of that! Thanks for sharing!
I never printed out my file. Was going to get to it when I could. I forgot that I sent my tokens to the wallet so I deleted the PDF file. I did this on an Acer laptop with Chrome OS. So when something is deleted it can’t be recovered. I tried running a free recovery program on my other laptop but it just gives me old files on USB. I have to use Acer laptop and find a recovery program for Chrome OS to try and see if it can find the wallet there.
Sorry for your loss…
I’ve read somewhere that once something is written to hard disk, it can never truly be erased due to the magnetic nature of the disk. I’ve seen some programs (forgot the name now) in action that can be used to make sense of these magnetic remnants and try to recover the files. A good computer shop usually offers these kinds of services. But I remember that they are costly. Perhaps you should get a quote from one of them and see if the cost will be worthwhile the amount of ETN you’ve lost. But again, you can’t be 100% sure that they will find anything.
Hello Benjamin,
I hope you can help me with the following problem.
I can’t check my offline wallet balance. When I run the “electroneum-wallet-cli” I put in the wallet name that I created before, but I receive the message “No wallet found with that name”. Which I don’t understand because the wallet is located in the same folder as the wallet CLI. When I create a new wallet in the same folder with the same name, I receive the message that the wallet already exists?! I was synced with blockchain and I tripled checked that I made no spelling errors. Any thoughts about what I’m doing wrong?
Not sure what the problem might be. Are you sure you are using the entire name, including any extensions? For example, some people name their wallets “mywallet.etn”, and in that case, you need to add the .etn as well when you recall the wallet.
If all else fails, just create a new wallet instance with a different name. You’ll be able to enter the same wallet keys as you used with the previous one. So basically you’ll simply be creating a separate wallet-cli for the same wallet, and you’ll be able to see the balance of the same wallet, just as with the previous one.
Let me know how it works out!
Hey Benjamin, I have a stupid question. I followed your #2 guide for loading a view only paper wallet in CMD. I set a wallet name and password as instructed, I chose a good password and made a backup of it just in case.
Now I would like to see what’s in my wallet, so I ran the electroneum-wallet-cli -wallet-file command you suggest above, gave it my name and was prompted for my password… and apparently my password is incorrect. I don’t know how I could get it wrong, but I’m not too proud to insist that it’s machine error.
I suppose my backed up password is incorrect. Can you tell me please, how screwed am I? Can I still view or move my mining winnings without this local password which I created after my wallet? Thanks.
No worries.
One obvious solution might be to check if your caps lock was on. Other than that, I guess you might have entered the password wrong when you entered it the first time. But you can just as easily create a second copy of the same wallet (assuming you restored it from a paper wallet), and just give it a different name than the first time you tried. This will give you the exact same functionality.
How can it be accomplished on a mac?
You can use the Command Line program on Mac to do the same thing. I’ve done it on my own Mac. The commands are nearly identical. It should be just the directories that look a bit different. Just make sure you download the Mac full miner and not the Windows full miner.
Hi Benjamin,
Thank you for being there and helping those of us who need the help. I transferred etn to my offline paper wallet but still have some left on the exchange because I had a limit I could transfer in one day. I need to transfer the remaining amount to the wallet, how do I do that please? Thank you!
Not exactly sure I understand. To send the remaining ETN to your wallet, just repeat the process in one day’s time when your daily limit has been lifted.
Sorry for the late reply. Did you manage to get your coins to the wallet?
Hi Benjamin,
First off, I love your site and all the information! So very helpful!
I’m struggling with getting my ETN to Cryptopia. I’ve consulted with other crypto traders, etc. and we’re all stumped. From the online wallet, I transferred 22,000 ETN to Cryptopia over 48 hours ago. In the online wallet as well as the app on my phone it shows the transaction as completed. I’ve checked the ETN wallet address at Cryptopia as well as the payment ID several times. Everything looks good, and I can trace the transaction on the blockchain explorer. I’ve logged a ticket with Cryptopia but with their support backlog, it says it could take twelve days minimum for them to respond. Would you be able to offer some guidance as to what may be happening? Maybe I am misreading something on the blockchain explorer? I’m really deeply confused with the situation.
Thank you again for this great site and all the great info!
Sorry for taking this long to respond…
I’m not sure what the problem is. Do you mind sharing your transaction ID so I can have a look? It’s perfectly safe to share it publicly.
One obvious problem I can think of is that you have not entered a payment ID. The payment ID works like a reference code on a normal bank transfer and lets the institution know who it was that deposited the funds. Without the payment ID, they don’t have a way of knowing if it was you or someone else. Can you remember if you entered one?
Other than that, if everything checks out on the blockchain explorer, the only advice I have is to wait for Cryptopia’s support.
No problem at all, just happy to hear back from someone! Lol! Electroneum support took a week plus to get back to me. And Cryptopia’s support as well. I opened a ticket like 17 days ago and crickets… Nothing.
I did include the payment ID. As you can see when you look at the blockchain explorer everything went through and was completed WEEKS ago. This is exactly the sort of thing that makes folks so nervous about cryptocurrency. At times it is not reliable…
Anyways, any assistance is greatly appreciated, more than you can ever imagine.
Here is the transaction ID: 63497f10f2100c14300236ddbebbe73f88f9bad9bcc5e91266f5130f47a614be
On the Electroneum wallet manager (https://my.electroneum.com), should the Wallet Balance display the sum of both wallets (online + offline) or just the online one?
The wallet manager will only show the online wallet balance. The offline wallet is a different wallet instance that is not managed by my.electroneum.com. Only you have the private keys to the offline wallet so only you will be able to see the balance.
I could see that there are transactions for my desktop wallet (electroneum-wallet-cli) in blockexplorer.electroneum.com, whereas if I type balance into my electroneum-wallet-cli I am not able to see any balance (showing 0.00). Does it take time to reflect on my desktop wallet?
Did you refresh the wallet so that it has the latest blockchain?
Hi
I’m so glad I found this site where I can get some help with the paper wallet. It’s proving a bit of a nightmare for myself who is far from a PC expert. I can find the transactions of my buys into the blockchain with my paper wallet address using the blockchain explorer, but cannot find them in the wallet on my Win 10 64 bit PC.
Initially, after running everything, it asked for my private key and view keys, but it told me they could not be found. I gave up in frustration. I then found a video advising me what to do when you get a zero balance… Here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJxNQbNmHAM
I did all this and refreshed and it still gave a zero balance. Not sure what else can be done.
One point that is more confusing is that, in the video, it seems to create another wallet. I see that the public wallet address is the same but the other two keys are not the same as those when I first downloaded the paper wallet. Also, it gets a little confusing for those of us who are not experts, regarding the term “secret” that they use, yet when you print out the wallet details it uses the term “private”. This just adds to the confusion.
Any help would be hugely appreciated. Greg
Thanks for sharing the video, and sorry for the long response time. Were you able to see your balance yet?
Hi Ben,
Apologies also for the long reply time.
No, not as yet. Electroneum support is looking into it for me but it is taking a long time to get any answers. Transactions are showing on the explorer though. I have all the keys recorded so I gather that I haven’t lost them.
Hi, after the issues with Electroneum’s own pools (going up and down all the time), I read all my transactions from the blockchain. This, however, showed less information than what the pool website had. Any way to see where the missing coins are?
Also, do you have any idea when the balance of the unpaid mining coins will be paid to us? Pools are now closed.
Regards
As far as I know, all the remaining mined coins have been paid out to the miners. Are you still waiting on yours?
I’ve tried it a couple of times but I get the same message: Failed to parse arguments: unrecognized option ‘-generate-from-view-keys’
I’ve done all the rest but I can’t get electroneum-wallet-cli –generate-from-view-key NEWWALLET to work. What am I doing wrong? How annoying. Please help, someone.
I see that the website software I am using has turned the two small dashes in front of generate-from-view-key into one long dash, which is probably why you are having problems. Please try it again and use TWO small dashes in front of generate-from-view-key, like this:
electroneum-wallet-cli --generate-from-view-key NEWWALLETI have also updated the article to reflect this.
If you’re still having problems, please respond and tell me which operating system you are using.
Benjamin, first of all thanks for your assistance. It is working correctly now. Many thanks! Guys like you are important so keep up the good work!
Glad I could help! Thanks for the kind words!
Hi, thanks for the quality job you are doing here. Please, I want some guidance and clarification on how to get my ETN to the exchange. I have had several issues dealing with the subject matter because I’m a crypto novice.
Firstly, I can see my ETN balance in my crypto wallet. Is it possible to transfer these ETN coins directly to the exchange from my wallet?
Secondly, if the answer is no then I assume I will have to use the paper wallet, but the question is, which public wallet address should I use? Is it the one from the wallet or the offline wallet PDF, because I discovered that the public wallet address changes each time I download the offline wallet from my wallet account and also the public address in my wallet account.
Lastly, is it possible to mine all the coins I have in my wallet account to an offline account? Let’s say I have up to 7000 ETN. What’s the best way to mine these coins from my wallet account to the offline wallet and finally to the exchange?
The best an most user-friendly way to transfer your coins to Cryptopia is by using the online wallet system. Firstly you should indicate on Cryptopia that you want to deposit ETN. They will provide you with a public wallet key and a payment ID. Then go to the online wallet and select Send ETN. Enter both those codes. Be sure to enter the payment ID as well, else you WILL LOSE your coins. The payment ID works like a reference when you make a bank transfer to a large institution, so they have a way of identifying that it’s you who made the payment.
Take note that each time you download a paper wallet, you are creating a NEW wallet. Electroneum allows you to create and use as many of them as you like, but they are all different. So you should download one (or a couple if you want) and save it somewhere on your computer for later use. If you download it again from the Electroneum website, it will generate a brand new one for you.
Finally, one does not mine coins to another wallet, but rather transfer them. The term mining has to do with validating other people’s transactions. But as I said, the best way for you would be to transfer your ETN directly from the online wallet to Cryptopia.
Thanks! If I made a paper wallet and synced it to the PC according to method 2, how can I transfer my money from my paper wallet back to the exchange?
There are commands you can use to transfer them from the CLI waller, but they’re quite complicated, especially if you’re required to enter a payment ID as well.
The best way would be to Import the ETN to your online wallet using the tools they provide. You’ll be asked to scan all the codes on your paper wallet. From there you’ll be able to transfer it to an exchange using the payment ID.
Hi, thanks for your work!
Concerning method 2:
Before I found your tutorial I tried out one on YouTube. In this one I also had to fill in my private spend key. I am wondering what the difference is. Here is the video (at 6:30): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0fLyCis-ns
Thanks for your help!
Mickey
Hi! The one on YouTube is a full wallet restore. It will actually show you your real ETN balance that takes outgoing transactions into account. The drawback of the full wallet restore is that exposes your private spend key to the Internet.
That’s why I recommended the one in the current tutorial which loads a view-only wallet. This doesn’t require the private spend key and so there’s no way a hacker will be able to get a hold of your coins. The drawback, like I said in the tutorial, is that you can only view the balance due to incoming transactions. Outgoing transactions are not included when calculating the balance, since Electroneum wants only the true owner of a wallet (with the private key) to know how much he has spend where.
After I synced my paper wallet via method 2. How can I acces my wallet again after schutting down my PC?
You can open up the electroneum-wallet-cli. It should ask you for your wallet name. Enter the name exactly as you typed it during creation, including any capitalisation. Press Enter. Then enter the password you created and press Enter. This should open the wallet.
If this doesn’t work, navigate to the mining software folder as described in the article and enter:
electroneum-wallet-cli --wallet-file [MYWALLET]…where [MYWALLET] is the exact name of your wallet.
Let me know if it works!
Can someone tell me how I can access my wallet again? Which apps and what commands do I have to put in to open my wallet again after I turned my pc off?
Are you referring to a paper wallet or to a wallet you created on wallet-cli?
I was reffering to method 2. I made a paper wallet and loaded it via command prompt. I followed your steps and everything went fine. But how can i access it now again after shutting my pc down
I mined some ETN which were supposed to be transferred to my command line wallet I created. Checked using keys that it was registered on blockchain but 10h later, still not in my wallet. Have resynced to blockchain, refreshed, reloaded but my wallet shows 0 balance and transactions. Never had this with other coins.
Are transfers supposed to take many hours/days/weeks? Have I been scammed?
Which pools were you using? Are you sure the ETN was already paid out? Remember that the ETN only pays out to the wallet after reaching a certain threshold. This threshold differs for different pools.
I can never thank you enough! I wrote you yesterday with my panic that my recent transaction of loading my paper wallet with all my ETN didn’t show up on my “recent transactions” page on Electroneum.com! And with Electroneum’s known backlog I had no hope of resolution any day soon. But following your instructions step by step I now have absolute confirmation that my ETN reached my paper wallet, and all is well.
Thank you so very much for the time and effort you spent on creating this post.
I would like to add — to help those seeking transaction confirmation as I was — that when you go to plug in your public and private view keys respectively, if you’ve copied/pasted the key codes from your laptop PDF, MAKE SURE to remove all spaces in the code, or else it won’t work. I didn’t do that the first time, and got nothing. But then remembered someone asking you about that space issue in another article you wrote and when I removed the spaces, voila! Worked like a champ.
Again – many, many thanks, sir, for your incredibly helpful and clear article. Peace of mind is priceless.
Thanks for your kind words of appreciation, Cynthia! And thanks for noticing the space issue. Forgot about that. I’ll update the article to include that as well…