Migrating from Electrum to PKTWallet

If you have an electrum based wallet which becomes overloaded from too many transactions (e.g. from mining directly into it), then you will need to migrate your keys to a pktwallet instance.

Step 1: Setup pktwallet

Follow the instructions in pktwallet to get your wallet up and running

Step 2: Export your keys

  • In Electrum, click Wallet -> Private Keys -> Export
  • electrum_export1.png
  • You will be prompted to enter your Electrum wallet password, then a window should appear showing your keys
  • KEEP THESE KEYS SECRET
  • electrum_export2.png
  • Find an address which you want to migrate and copy the key with that address
  • Do not copy the part which says p2wpkh:, just the letters after it
  • The key will look sometihng like this: ci2TBp2HTWtyMQtizWMuugHxG6lNpInA1bSpLIWzjJS2AI8ObwV5

Step 3: Import key to pktwallet

  • In a terminal window, run pktctl --wallet getbalance to verify that your wallet is working
  • Unlock your wallet using pktctl --wallet walletpassphrase <the password you used when setting it up> 1000000
  • Type pktctl --wallet importprivkey <the key you just copied>
  • You should see the address printed on the screen

Importing more keys

  • When you import a key, it starts a rescan of the chain automatically, in order to import more you need to stop
  • pktctl --wallet stopresync to stop

Speed things up

If you know exactly when an address was paid, you can speed up the import by only rescanning blocks where it might have been paid. For example if you are sure that the address was not paid earlier than block number 600000 you can do the following:

  • pktctl --wallet stopresync
  • pktctl --wallet resync 600000 100000000

Check that it's working

It's recommended that you run pktwallet with -d debug flag in order to be able to see the debug logs. When you are resyncing you should see log lines like the following:

1609188780 [DBG] wallet.go:2817 Rescan cycle [620100]
1609188781 [DBG] wallet.go:2817 Rescan cycle [620200]
1609188782 [DBG] wallet.go:2817 Rescan cycle [620300]
1609188783 [DBG] wallet.go:2817 Rescan cycle [620400]

The number if the block number which is being scanned.

Troubleshooting

  • ErrBirthdayBlockNotSet: birthday block not set
  • Your wallet is not synced yet, wait for it to become synced
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