Restoring your wallet from seed

Restoring from seed

Note: Your seed words can restore your wallet’s BTC and BSQ, but they do not restore other Bisq application data such as your payment accounts, open disputes, etc. For that, you need to back up the Bisq data folder. Also note that restoring from seed does not restore [reputation value] earned from contributing to Bisq.

Restoring from seed is intended as an emergency measure, to be used if you can’t get your funds back any other way. We highly recommend trying [these remedies] to solve common wallet issues first.

To restore a wallet using your seed words first click on Account then click on the Wallet Seed tab. On this screen you may now enter your seed words in the Restore wallet from seed words box as well as your wallet date and press RESTORE WALLETS.

If your goal is to transfer BTC or BSQ, it’s best to send the funds to a new address with a transaction. This is also better for usability, as wallets with lots of transactions can cause Bisq to get laggy over time.

You should only restore from seed into a new Bisq wallet. You could restore BTC funds to an external wallet like Electrum, but restoring BSQ on a non-Bisq wallet is virtually guaranteed to fail given the complex nature of BSQ transactions (see warning [here]).

Note: If you do restore from seed on Bisq and still see a zero balance for BTC or BSQ, make sure to wait until the program is done syncing with the Bitcoin network (when done, the green bar on the bottom right labeled Synchronizing 'With Bitcoin Mainnet (using Tor) / Synchronizing DAO will go away).