Lost my seed-phrase! What do I do?

Let's say something terrible happened today - you lost access to your valuable wallet.

This can happen if you forgot your wallet password, or maybe a couple of words from your seed-phrase got erased. Maybe you didn't write down your seed-phrase at all and accidentally deleted the extension you needed in your browser.

We hope this never happens to you, so if you haven't written down your seed phrase in your favorite notepad yet, do it now! However, if you still nailed down any precautions - here's an instruction on what you can do in a situation like this.

First of all, one of the recommendations for the most serious case scenarios (deleting a wallet where you definitely did not write down the seed phrase) is to turn off your computer immediately. When deleting files, only references to those files are deleted, and memory sectors are marked as empty, so the faster you turn off the computer, the more likely it is that those sectors in memory have not had time to overwrite. Since most data on a computer is not deleted instantly, but after some time, there is a small chance that computer experts will be able to recover the data you need after some time. This is the most extreme measure, but it can prove highly useful in the most critical situation.

If your problem is a bit simpler, for example, you forgot your wallet password or forgot a couple of words from your seed-phrase (not more than 3-4), you can try to restore access to your wallet by yourself. However, for this you will need to understand a couple of programs and the structure of the files inside your wallet.  For example, if you forgot your password and are a Metamask user (Chrome-based or Firefox browsers) on Mac or Windows, there is a ready-made instruction for you to restore access: https://support.metamask.io/ru/managing-my-wallet/secret-recovery-phrase-and-private-keys/how-to-recover-your-secret-recovery-phrase/.

If you have a seed phrase on hand, but for some reasons you can't make out some of the words, then you need to find the dictionary that your wallet uses to generate the phrase. They may vary slightly from each other, but one of the most popular dictionaries is here: https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0039/english.txt

You just need to know the name of the wallet and what network it was originally created for, and  in most cases typing this into a search query will get you the dictionary you need.

Alternatively, you can also use this program https://github.com/TCRetriever/BTCRecover-master/tree/master. You can search YouTube for a more detailed guide, there are quite a few videos on this topic. (However, it requires some technical knowledge and the ability to work with programs through the terminal). It has a lot of applications, from forgotten passwords to full recovery of seed-phrase for some wallets.