Seed phrases, exports, and migration.
The seed is the source of truth. Everything else — the wallet file, the password, the exported keys — is derived from it.
Back up and migrate a wallet.
- 01
Reveal the seed
Wallet → Information → Show seed. Enter your password. The 12 words appear once — write them down before closing the dialog. - 02
Store the backup offline
Two locations, ideally on different media. Paper and metal cover most threat models. - 03
Export private keys (optional)
Wallet → Private keys → Export. Only useful if you need to import a specific address into another tool. The seed alone is enough for full recovery. - 04
Migrate to a new machine
Install Electrum RVN on the new computer, choose 'Restore wallet', and enter the seed. Old wallet files do not need to be copied over.
Long-term seed handling for Ravencoin holders.
A seed phrase is a small piece of paper that controls an arbitrary amount of money for as long as the chain exists. The hard part is not the cryptography — it is the operational habits around backup, storage, migration, and inheritance that determine whether you still have the wallet in five years. This guide covers each of those, in the order most people actually need them.
A BIP-39 mnemonic — 12 or 24 English words from a fixed dictionary — that encodes the master entropy from which every key in the wallet is derived.
From the seed, the wallet derives the master private key, and from that, every receiving address, every change address, and every signature your wallet will ever produce. The same seed always produces the same wallet on any compatible client. A wallet file is not the wallet; the password is not the wallet; the binary is not the wallet. The seed is the wallet.
How to back up a Ravencoin seed phrase
Open the wallet, go to Wallet → Information → Show seed, enter your password, and copy the 12 words by hand onto paper. Use clear printed letters and number each word so the order is unambiguous. Then — before closing the dialog — verify what you wrote against what the wallet shows. Typos are silent; a single wrong word produces a different wallet with zero balance.
- Write in clear printed letters; number each position.
- Verify the written copy against the screen before closing the dialog.
- Two physical backups in different locations beats one perfect backup.
- Stamped or engraved metal beats paper for decade-plus storage.
- Never photograph the seed; phone cameras sync to cloud backups silently.
The cheapest reasonable setup is paper in a sealed envelope in a small home safe, plus a second copy in a bank safe-deposit box or with a trusted family member. The next step up is a steel plate sold for this purpose — stamped, engraved, or assembled from washers — which survives fire, flood, and decades of neglect. For very large balances or adversarial threat models, geographic separation across multiple jurisdictions is worth the operational cost.
The wallet can export the private key for any specific address through Wallet → Private keys → Export. This is useful in a handful of cases: importing one address into a different tool, sweeping funds from a single address to a different wallet, or recovering a specific UTXO. For normal recovery, the seed alone is enough — and exporting keys creates extra files that need to be handled with the same care as the seed.
Migrating to a new machine
Install Electrum RVN on the new machine, choose "Restore wallet → I already have a seed", and type the 12 words in the original order. The wallet re-derives every address and rescans the chain — balances and history reappear when the scan completes. The old wallet file does not need to be copied; the seed is enough. On the old machine, securely delete the wallet file once you have confirmed the new machine has the right balance.
A wallet that nobody can recover after you die is identical to lost funds. Write down where the backup lives, what it is, and what to do with it — in a form a non-technical executor can act on. A sealed envelope with the location of the seed (not the seed itself) plus instructions to bring it to a specific person or lawyer covers most situations. Update the instructions when the setup changes. A multisig setup with one cosigner held by an executor solves the same problem more elegantly for larger balances.
Paper survives most things except fire, flood, and slow degradation over years. Steel backups (etched or stamped washers, plates, or capsules) survive fire, flood, and decades of indifferent storage. For anything you plan to hold past five years, the cost difference is trivial and the durability difference is decisive. Keep at least two copies in geographically separated locations; a single backup is a single point of failure regardless of medium.
Frequently asked
Continue with Electrum RVN
- Ravencoin wallet recovery — the restore side of the same coin
- Ravencoin cold wallet — where to put a seed long-term
- Electrum wallet security — the broader security picture
Run your own Ravencoin wallet.
Open-source, lightweight, and built for the desktop user who wants real control over keys and assets. Download the wallet directly from our download page — signed installers for every operating system.