Watch keys

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Revision as of 09:46, 11 December 2020 by MwithM (talk | contribs) (Add category (guides))
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Watch keys or xpubs are useful to display your balance in case of Bisq wallet corruption without exposing private keys to an external wallet estimated by the Bisq wallet. Watch keys are displayed by pressing ctrl+j, together with a list of addresses and total balance. Use the copy to clipboard button and paste the text into a text editor to search for zpub, xpub or simply watch. Zpub is used to watch segwit (P2WPKH) addresses, and P2PKH or zpub is for legacy and BSQ addresses.

Note
Don't import private keys to an external wallet. In case of emergency, is better to import private keys to a new Bisq instance at Accounts > Wallet Seed - Restore wallet from seed. Importing seeds to an external wallet should be used only if this method fails."

Importing watch key to external wallet.

Import the watch keys one by one to Electrum or Sentinel to display your balance safely. At Electrum, create a new Standard wallet through Use Master Key and paste the xpub or zpub, which is a string similar to xpub6CUGRUonZSQ4TWtTMmzXdrXDtypWKiKrhko4egpiMZbpiaQL2jkwSB1icqYh2cfDfVxdx4df189oLKnC5fSwqPfgyP3hooxujYzAu3fDVmz. Similar steps are required for Sentinel.