BitShares Forum

Main => Technical Support => Topic started by: mike623317 on June 30, 2017, 01:19:26 am

Title: Changing the brainkey?
Post by: mike623317 on June 30, 2017, 01:19:26 am

Does anyone know how to change the brainkey of an existing account? A local wallet, not hosted on OL.

Thanks

Title: Re: Changing the brainkey?
Post by: mike623317 on June 30, 2017, 05:09:51 am

Let me rephrase this..

The help section states about the brainkey :

"If you never manually imported an account key into your wallet, you can alternatively backup your accounts and their funds by exporting the brainkey, a string of words from which your keys are derived deterministically"

What im trying to do is create a new wallet where i can determine my own brainkey and import the private of my existing account so that i could at the very least always restore my wallet on a new computer by simply remembering a phrase. However, according to the above statement i cant do that after importing the key to my new wallet.

I guess i could just transfer from one account to another, but is there a way to change the brainkey on an existing wallet?

Title: Re: Changing the brainkey?
Post by: sahkan on June 30, 2017, 05:22:58 am

Quote from: mike623317 on June 30, 2017, 05:09:51 am

Let me rephrase this..

The help section states about the brainkey :

"If you never manually imported an account key into your wallet, you can alternatively backup your accounts and their funds by exporting the brainkey, a string of words from which your keys are derived deterministically"

What im trying to do is create a new wallet where i can determine my own brainkey and import the private of my existing account so that i could at the very least always restore my wallet on a new computer by simply remembering a phrase. However, according to the above statement i cant do that after importing the key to my new wallet.

I guess i could just transfer from one account to another, but is there a way to change the brainkey on an existing wallet?

I have not tested this myself, but under the light Wallet, SETTINGS, WALLET there is an option to reset your brainkey sequence. Maybe that will do what you need?

Title: Re: Changing the brainkey?
Post by: svk on June 30, 2017, 02:07:51 pm

You cannot change the brain key of an existing wallet. If you want to use a custom brain key, create a new wallet and click use custom brain key.

Title: Re: Changing the brainkey?
Post by: mike623317 on June 30, 2017, 02:41:33 pm

Quote from: svk on June 30, 2017, 02:07:51 pm

You cannot change the brain key of an existing wallet. If you want to use a custom brain key, create a new wallet and click use custom brain key.

Thanks SVK. So, I would then import my private key I assume.

Am I correct that I can go to a new computer and use my brainkey to restore and access my funds?

Title: Re: Changing the brainkey?
Post by: fluxer555 on June 30, 2017, 03:44:22 pm

The brain key is used to derive private keys deterministically. When you import an account key into your wallet, these are not cryptographically linked to the brain key of that wallet, so they cannot be deterministically generated.

When you import an account, go to the Permissions tab and clock your public key, you will see this:
(https://www.dropbox.com/s/ebojyb5zyqnz037/imported_account.png?raw=1)

Which shows that this is non-deterministic, and where the account was imported from.

I haven't messed around with the account permissions all that much, but I think it should be theoretically possible to swap out the permissions of a non-deterministic account to enable recovery of said accounts via brain key. @svk, any thoughts on this?