I am confused about what a private key is? Is that the 12 word or so long phrase? If i have the wallet file, can I regenerate this phrase? Also if decred is like any other crypto, it should have a password that I make myself, that I believe I made a while back. I know what that is, just not the private key/passphrase. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
If your wallet is that hosed then it would probably be easiest to start over and recreate your wallet from seed. You need the 33 word seed from when you originally created your wallet. (Don't post it here or share it with anyone.) There are some good instructions here: https://forum.decred.org/threads/how-to-rebuild-resync-wallet-successfully.1338/ You won't lose any DCR and it'll be perfectly in sync with the blockchain.
The password that I generated worked, however I do not have the 33 word passphrase. I am able to unlock the wallet with the password I wrote, but the wallet claims I have 400 decred, whereas the block explorer says i have 700. Even further confused now. How is my balance different? Is there a way to get that 33 word passphrase back if I am able to unlock the wallet via the password I generated months ago?
It's probably just out of sync. It happens sometimes after your wallet's run awhile and you've upgraded (or not upgrade) your versions of dcrd & dcrwallet. Resyncing from seed fixes it. Nope. If you lost it it's gone. You cannot recreate your wallet. Search everywhere you might have saved it and hope you can find it.
I let it fully sync, and I have the wallet file. I do not have the passphrase, however I was able to unlock the wallet through a password I wrote. I will let it run for another day or so, but DCRD is up to today's date. Would it be advantageous to move my coins to another address and save the 33 word passphrase? or perhaps that passphrase was deleted and replaced with my password that I wrote with which I was able to unlock my wallet?
If you have access to your wallet to where you can send your coins to a new wallet, that might be a good idea. That way you can write down the new seed and save it somewhere safe.
I will do that. However, my fully synced wallet is still displaying an incorrect balance? Perhaps I am using that command incorrectly? I'm not terribly savvy in cmd line. What commands should I use to scan and check for my balances? I know decred spreads coins out among a bunch of addresses on the wallet? Would that affect my balance? I have only ever used one public address for POW mining.
If you are using a very old wallet, you can get the seed by starting it with --unsafemainnet and calling the 'getseed' command. Newer wallets destroy the seed after it's been generated. If you have only used one address ever, you can dump the private key with --unsafemainnet on and the 'dumpprivkey <address>' command. Then you can create a new wallet and import the private key with 'importprivkey <privateKey>'. The wallet can also manually be rescanned by running the dropwtxmgr command line tool, but I'm not sure that's currently bundled with the software.
YES! But first you should try to have your wallet synced properly. The block explorer shows the correct balance, and if your wallet differs from that value, it means there are transactions that apply to your wallet that your wallet doesn't know about. I don't know for certain if this command line flag will help in your case, but try launching dcrwallet with the --automaticrepair flag added to the end of however you usually launch dcrwallet. Example: dcrwallet -u username -P password --automaticrepair More importantly though, you should also try to launch the wallet and have it scan for more addresses by using: dcrwallet -u username -P password --addridxscanlen 2000 There are 3 types of balances. Spendable, locked, and immature (funds that are still pending and are not yet added to your balance). Perhaps you're just seeing the spendable balance and not the grand total. To check your entire Decred balance (locked+spendable), use dcrctl -u username -P password --wallet getbalance default 0 all To check your spendable Decred balance, just issue the following command (which by default shows the spendable balance) dcrctl -u username -P password --wallet getbalance If you are participating in PoS mining/voting, you will have some Decred locked by stake tickets until they are called to vote. These locked funds will show up in the "all" balance but not in the "spendable" balance. On the subject of different addresses, yes the wallet uses different addresses, but your total balance is the sum of all the balances of the addresses. You can think of each address like a giftcard. You can use one or more giftcards for each transaction (depending on the total), and whatever you don't use from each giftcard gets transferred to a new giftcard as change (or back to the same giftcard if you launch your wallet with the --reuseaddresses flag).
I ran both flags separately (--automaticrepair and --addridxscanlen 2000) and --wallet getbalance default 0 all still only tells me I have a balance of 428 but block explorer is telling me 672. https://mainnet.decred.org/address/Dsd42oX2Bykzb4vMjznAuEFfs3qTYXZGcNE I have not been able to get to the point to participate in PoS
I do not have my seed. I was under the impression my seed was destroyed when I came up with my own password, but I am getting the impression that that is not the case. Am I SOL?
You could also create a new wallet with a new seed and transfer the coins that you can access to this wallet first. Then you have secured at least a part of it and then look for new options
Ive considered this but splitting up my coins seems to double the complications; and im not quite ready to make that plunge yet.
Did u try this - "If you are using a very old wallet, you can get the seed by starting it with --unsafemainnet and calling the 'getseed' command. Newer wallets destroy the seed after it's been generated." which version of dcrd are u using?
I dont know what "calling the getseed command" means? I am using 0.1.3. I could try an older version?
It meant using the command. But I don't think it will work. 0.1.3 is pretty new. And the method with older version will work if u put the seed in again. Check properly maybe u have the seed somewhere. Last resort is to make a new wallet and send all coins from this one to that. The seed is like a master password and can be used to create a wallet again with all coins intact. While the private and public key is for the specific wallet created then. U can create another wallet with same seed but different private and public key. Wouldn't make any difference
I understand the purpose of the pass phrase, but didnt believe it was necessary if i had multiple copies of the wallet stored in various locations. Apparently I was wrong. I would not expect if I actually had the wallet that I would need the passphrase. What is the command? in dcrd? dcrwallet? dcrctl?
The problem has been corrected. I had another wallet on my work computer that displays the correct amount. I have created a new wallet am in the process of transferring now. Thanks for all your help, everyone