Recovering account with a ZERO ETH balance

Support Backup / Restore / Import
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Hello everyone!

When recovering the wallet MetaMask, subsequent accounts are added if they have a non-zero ETH balance.

What if one of the accounts was used only for authentication and there is no ETH or any other token?

Is there a chance to recover them only based on the seed phrase of the main (first) account (new computer, new browser, no private keys - only seed phrase)?

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Hello @Paulus, welcome to MetaMask community!

If the account originated from the same Secret Recovery Phrase of your wallet, then it will be added in the order you’ve added them before. If it’s from another wallet (SRP), you would have to import it individually within the other one, but in this case not sure if it would be needed as you would have it on the other MetaMask wallet with its own SRP, by getting it in another browser.

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@Chinzilla Thank you for your answer.

MetaMask, according to what you write, recreated in this way all accounts that had a non-zero balance. The account I am writing about has been omitted (the account is from the same wallet).

Also failed to get this address (I only know the last 5 characters) via mnemonic-account-generator :frowning:

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Then it could actually be an imported account which originates from another SRP. It won’t show those as it’s not possible. Make sure you know what wallets you have and from where that address could have been.

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I only have one MetaMask wallet so there was only one SRP (that works but skips empty addresses).

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So by using this tool: Mnemonic Account Generator , you weren’t able to find the account (address) you were looking for?

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Try going through these 2 articles and see if the info within helps.

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Mnemonic Account Generator - this tool, even with many thousands of generated addresses, did not show the correct one. Of course, other addresses coincide with the accounts set up by MetaMask, but this one - the most wanted one, did not appear.

Thank you for both articles. Of course, I had already read the first one. I can’t apply the content from the second one in a given situation (after all, the account does not have transactions).

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I did a test on a brand new wallet. It is exactly as you write, that is, it even adds empty accounts. So I can’t understand where I went wrong before… I didn’t have another wallet, another seed phrase, etc. and the address I was looking for was completely lost.

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Hello @Paulus,

I do not know what is the issue that the account you are looking for can not be generated normally by recreating the accounts under the same secret recovery phrase, but I am trying to help by suggesting an indirect path to find it.

Since you only know the last 5 characters of the account you are looking for, and you could not find it among the ones created by the Mnemonic (Secret Recovery Phrase) Account Generator, one path that “may” help you is to find all existing EVM compatible accounts including those characters and find the ones having the last 5 characters the same as the one you are looking for. If you are lucky that there is only one match, then it may be yours. At this point. you can send a small amount of ETH to that account and try to restore the account using your MetaMask wallet. As it is a non zero ETH account, then it can be restored automatically if the account is yours.

For this purpose we need:

  1. The list of all existing EVM accounts. Where can we find it? Previously, on a platform I could find accounts matching a string of characters, but it is not available now.
  2. Find the accounts with those 5 characters at the end.

Under any conditions, be aware that NEVER share your Secret Recovery Phrase with any one and NEVER enter them on any sites.

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Another option that just came to my mind and you may want to try is:

Since you mentioned that you used the account only for authentication, then you should remember which platforms you have used for this purpose. Try to reach their support, and explain the case and only give them those 5 characters of the public address, and NEVER share your Secret Recovery Phrase. I think they should have a database of the addresses using their platforms. Then, they can give you the public address matching those characters.

After finding it, you can send a small amount of ETH to the address and restore it normally using your MetaMask.

If the account is really important to you, then it is worth trying this path too.

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Thank you very much. Great ideas. There was a light at the end of the tunnel :slight_smile:

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Your are welcome. Good Luck! :fox_face: :slightly_smiling_face:

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Simple solutions are the best. As you wrote, contacting the technical support of the project turned out to be sufficient. They changed the address assigned to the account to a new one, so I don’t know if the method with a transfer would also work. Thank you again :slight_smile:

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Thanks for letting us know. Glad that the issue got resolved. :slightly_smiling_face:

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