Back up your keychains

Hi everyone,

Next week, we’ll be releasing an important update that will boost app performance. As with all updates but especially big ones, it is very important to back up all your private keys.

Here’s how to back up your private keys.

This is not to say that you will need to restore your account after the update. It is simply an important precautionary measure.

Why do I need to back up my keys?

Incognito is non-custodial. That means no one holds your funds, no one has access to it – just you. Your keys are what allows you to view your balance on the blockchain, spend it, and claim ownership of it. Your keys, your money.

So if you haven’t, back up your keys now! It will literally take just a minute. Send us a PM if you need help.

15 Likes

Is the update so big, that it will be definitively necessary to restore the wallet or is this something that could happen in the worst case? I believe many normal users will have no backups, thus this could cause a lot of trouble as they loosing their money then. The whole key thing should be improved a lot, if we want to go mainstream with this. I have backups of my keys but honestly it does not feel good to paste and copy my private keys around. This is not a safe way to do these things. Clipboard sniffing etc. Fortunately, mobiles are much safer than desktop, because of the lack of root rights.

8 Likes

I agree with @Anon. It is safer, and I find the backup currently very helpful. Just please make it backup all keys for an account. Private, validator, public, etc. I know the private is the most important. But, if were talking about the user taking responsibility, I would like to back up all the keys

7 Likes

Some people forget to save his Privet key, so their first responsibility is to save the Privet key. Well if he forgets to save it you can’t help him either, can you?

4 Likes

Great! Thanks for the advice. Only the private key or also the other keys?

4 Likes

@Anon @Thriftinkid You are correct. Until there is a better way, back up your own private key is our recommendation now.

@ybaki42 No one has that ownership to help him when he lost the private key of his account.

@Paulina Only the private key is enough. But you need to back up the private keys of all accounts you have (Account0, pDex, pDexWithdraw, pStake, etc…).

5 Likes

If there’s a possibility users might have to restore their wallets after an update, then I highly encourage an update a week before that forces users to backup their keys on app launch.

Might want to also include a disclaimer on the app update instructing the user to backup keys before installing the update.

5 Likes

Thanks for the suggestions. We are looking into all options available to us.

The idea is to make as many users as possible aware of the importance of saving the private key of all accounts.

3 Likes

hey you can already back up all your private keys - just scroll down, tap ‘copy all keys’ or ‘back up all keys’ to choose a backup option.

as for copy all keys of a keychain, i’ll pass it on to the team. thanks!

5 Likes

@ning A possiblity to export them encrypted like coinkite does would be great as well. Thus a user could export them even directly to one or several sd cards for maximal security etc. At least until we finally get hardware wallet support :slightly_smiling_face:

2 Likes

hey yep we’re working on HD wallet right now which will open up higher security options for us soon… maybe even our own cold wallet next year? :upside_down_face:

1 Like

An own cold card would be awesome :grinning: I really believe once we have a solid security solution for the private keys or network will grow massively. Me and many others would love to set up more nodes but feel not safe to store high amounts of PRV in a hot wallet.

Air gapped solution would be great for our own wallet as well. Like cobo vault https://cobo.com/hardware-wallet maybe a light version of this could be build really easy by just creating an app which does the same. So people could just buy a cheap phone and install the app via sd card so this mobile would never ever be online.

3 Likes

Is it possible to have the addresses/keys NOT truncated in the middle on phone screens when displaying them in text format? Or at least one place in the app where they are not truncated?

When I am backing up important keys, I want to make sure visually that more than just the beginning and the end of the keys match up with the address I have copied elsewhere. Right now, for me to see the WHOLE key, I have no other option but to trust the invisible workings of COPY and PASTE into another program to make visible the whole address or key which is not visible in my phone on any page of the incognito app in its full untruncated form.

Is this occurring just because my phone screen might be smaller than others? Is this done simply for the convenience of fitting it on one line though there is blank space below it when keys run on for multiple lines? Is this done for security reasons?

It would be easier if at least somewhere in the Incognito app (the manage keys keychain area perhaps) that I could have the full keys from beginning to end display in the phone app for easy cross-checking when I am looking at paper backups or backups kept in an encrypted pc password keeper type program. Because I find myself having to double check addresses and keys fairly often, a quick visual check of the whole key as opposed to have to trust the invisible workings of cut and paste would be helpful.

2 Likes

The private key is truncated with other people despite the screen size, too.
Have the private key (108 characters) fully visible is good.
But have you tried the new 12-word phrase?

2 Likes

Yes, I have my new seed. Compliments to the devs and the team for shipping the hd wallet as promised. Even with the seed though, I still must send my address in various ways (sometimes on laptop) to others and quick visual cross-checking of phone addresses with laptop screen addresses being sent via email or some other chat app is simple and convenient (and also a relatively minor issue compared with the major developments the team is working on).

2 Likes