Backup and recovery

The master secret and receipts have different recovery properties. Back them up separately.

Master secret

The 256-bit master secret derives every address and grants spending authority. It can be backed up as:

the exported 64-character hexadecimal value; or
the exact original photo used for pixel derivation.

Store the backup offline and test that its short key ID matches before relying on it.

The local wallet.key file is not password-encrypted. On Unix it is created with mode 0600; the operating-system account and storage encryption remain the security boundary.

Photo recovery

Only identical decoded pixels derive the same secret. Keep the original file. Do not rely on a thumbnail, cloud preview, screenshot or messenger copy.

Metadata does not matter. Pixel changes do.

Receipts

wallet.receipts contains confirmed outgoing payment evidence. It is not derived from the master secret and is intentionally cleared when a different secret is imported.

Copy it together with the master-secret backup if you need the complete local payment record. Individual receipts can also be exported as self-contained text.

What an import restores

Import restores:

deterministic address derivation;
current UTXOs found for discovered addresses;
authority to spend those UTXOs.

It does not restore:

local address labels;
receipts that existed only on another device;
pruned historical transactions without a saved receipt;
generated addresses beyond the contiguous discovery range.

Safe replacement

Before replacing the secret:

stop mining;
export and verify the current secret;
copy wallet.receipts if needed;
record any locally meaningful address labels;
install the new secret;
allow address discovery and synchronization to finish.

Never paste a secret into a website, issue report, chat or support message.

Contract data

Back up wallet.contracts.json, contract-activity/ and the complete objects/ directory, including objects/terminals/, together with wallet authority. They contain public terms, activity and proof evidence that cannot be reconstructed from the secret alone. Stop the node for a consistent copy. See contract recovery.

Tokens, NFTs and media

Current native ownership is discovered from authenticated State for your wallet addresses. Keep wallet.receipts, the saved native activity and native-media/ with the data-directory backup. This preserves your local operation records, prepared NFT metadata, artwork and queued publications. Close the wallet and stop its node before copying the directory.