Introduction

Reach the funds in your Trustodian wallets using third-party software, without Trustodian

This guide is for the person who holds the funds. It shows how to rebuild your Trustodian wallets in third-party software using your recovery phrase, so that your access to the money does not depend on Trustodian being reachable, online, or in business.

Nothing here requires our servers, our app, or our permission. Everything below is standard: BIP-39 phrases, standard derivation paths, and output descriptors.

How recovery works

Your funds are not stored in Trustodian. They sit on their blockchains, and a key authorises moving them. Except for a wallet you imported by private key, every one of those keys comes from one phrase, by a fixed and public procedure:

recovery phrase
  └─ + passphrase, if one was set
       └─ derivation path          ← picks which key
            └─ private key
                 └─ address        ← what the chain knows
                      └─ funds

Any wallet that runs the same procedure on the same phrase arrives at the same addresses. That is the whole of recovery: there is no account to log into and no permission to request.

The path is what usually goes wrong. Two different paths over one phrase produce two completely unrelated wallets, both valid, only one of them yours.

Start here

1. What are you recovering?

   Pick the network below. Each network page gives you the exact path, how the wallet index behaves, and the address format to expect.

2. Is it a vault?

   A vault is a multisig, and restoring the phrase alone never restores one. Read How vaults recover first: for Bitcoin and Cardano you also need the Recovery Kit, and without it the funds cannot be reached.

3. Which wallet will you use?

   The network page names the workable choices. Wallet guides carry the click-by-click procedure for the four wallets where the interface itself needs explaining.

New to this, or not sure any of it applies? Read Before you begin first. It covers what you need in hand, how the passphrase behaves, which wallets the phrase does not recover, and the rules that keep the phrase from being stolen while you work.

Networks

Ethereum and EVM

Also Polygon, BNB, Base, Arbitrum, Optimism, Avalanche

Bitcoin

Native segwit, one restore finds every wallet

Solana

Index varies the account, not the address

Cardano

Icarus scheme, index varies the account

Tron

Coin type 195, not an Ethereum key

XRP Ledger

secp256k1, not ed25519

Vaults

How vaults recover

Which rebuild from the chain, and which only from your kit

The Recovery Kit

Every vault and wallet on the account, in one file

Bitcoin vaults

Output descriptors in Sparrow, Specter, Bitcoin Core

Cardano vaults

Native scripts and cardano-cli

XRP vaults

Signer lists and xrpl.js

Tron vaults

Account permissions and TronWeb

Reference

Derivation paths

The canonical table for every chain

Wallet guides

EVM wallets, Sparrow, Electrum, Eternl

Troubleshooting

Wrong address, missing funds, passphrase