Sia Wallet

Guide · ~5 minutes

How to recover Sia Wallet.

Three scenarios: you have the seed and want to restore it, you've forgotten the password but have the seed, or you've lost the seed itself. This guide covers all three — and is honest about what recovery is and isn't possible.

Download Sia Wallet

Pick your scenario

  • Standard restore. Install Sia Wallet, pick 'Restore from seed,' type your words in order. Full balance reappears. Jump to step-by-step below.

  • Password is recoverable via seed restore. There is no 'reset password' button — the wallet is non-custodial — but restoring from seed with a new password gives you access. Jump to password recovery.

  • Honest answer: without the seed, Sia Wallet cannot recover your funds. No support team can. What to try first, and when to accept the loss — scroll to the lost-seed section.

Restore from your 12-word seed

  1. 1

    Install Sia Wallet on the recovery machine

    Download the installer for your OS from siawallet.tech/download. Install as normal. If Sia Wallet is already installed on this machine with a different wallet, close it and keep reading — step 3 covers how to add an additional wallet without overwriting the existing one.

  2. 2

    Choose 'Restore or migrate' on the welcome screen

    First-run wizard shows four options: Create new wallet, Restore from 12-word seed, Migrate legacy Sia-UI seed, Add Ledger. Pick 'Restore from 12-word seed.' The wizard opens a 12-slot input grid for your BIP39 words.

  3. 3

    Type your 12 words, in order

    Enter each word from your written seed. The wizard validates against the BIP39 wordlist as you type — it highlights any word that isn't valid BIP39. If a highlighted word is definitely correct on your paper, double-check spelling against the BIP39 list; a single misspelled letter renders the whole seed invalid.

  4. 4

    Set a new password

    Pick a password for the restored wallet. This is a new password, separate from your original — the wallet file is being recreated, so the original password isn't relevant here. Use a strong password; the standard advice applies.

  5. 5

    Wait for sync

    Sia Wallet reconstructs your addresses from the seed and queries the network for balance and transaction history. In lite mode, this takes a few seconds. When the sync indicator reaches 'Synced,' your full balance and transaction history are visible. The wallet is recovered.

You've forgotten your password but have the seed

Sia Wallet is non-custodial. This means no central service holds your keys and no 'reset password' email can restore access — because no one but you has the wallet file or its encryption key. What you have is better: your seed. The seed is the master key. The password is a local encryption layer on top.

The recovery path is simple. Uninstall Sia Wallet (or ignore the existing install and use a different data directory). Install fresh. Restore from your seed using the steps above. Set a new password at step 4. The restored wallet has the same addresses, same balance, same history — and a new password you remember.

Your old wallet file, with the forgotten password, can be deleted. If you want to keep it as a redundant backup, that's fine — no one can use it without the password or the seed, and you have the seed.

You've lost your seed

Before accepting loss, check these: any secure note app on any device you've used (search 'siacoin' or 'seed'), any encrypted backup drive, any offsite paper backup you might have forgotten making, any steel backup plate from a previous setup. Many 'lost' seeds turn up on the second or third search. If the wallet itself is still installed on a machine you have access to and you remember the password, open it and go to Settings → Security → Show Recovery Seed — you can re-record it immediately.

If none of that produces the seed, the honest answer is: Sia Wallet cannot recover your funds. The Sia Foundation cannot. No support email can. No service claiming to recover lost crypto seeds for a fee is legitimate — they are scams preying on this exact moment. The coins still exist on the blockchain; they are simply in an address no one can sign for.

This is the cost of non-custodial self-custody. The upside is that no one else can take your coins either. The downside is that 'no one else' includes a support team that could help you. For future wallets, back up the seed twice in two physical locations before funding — paper and steel is a common pairing.

  • Hold

    We don't hold your keys

  • Reset

    No password reset exists

  • Derive

    Seed is the only input

  • Recover

    Lost seed = no recovery

  • Override

    Non-custodial means non-custodial

Recovery questions

My seed has 13 or 14 words — is that right?

Sia Wallet uses 12-word BIP39 seeds for new wallets. If your seed has 13 words, it's likely a 12-word BIP39 seed plus a BIP39 passphrase (a 13th word) — enter the 12 into the main fields and the passphrase into the 'Advanced: passphrase' option. If it has 28 or 29 words, it's a legacy Sia-UI seed — use the migration guide, not this recovery guide.

Can I partially recover from a seed missing one word?

Theoretically yes — the BIP39 wordlist has 2,048 words, so a missing word means trying up to 2,048 combinations. Sia Wallet does not include a brute-force tool for this; it would be dangerous to publish. If you know 11 words and need the 12th, open-source BIP39 recovery tools exist (Coinbase's Iancoleman BIP39 tool is a common one). Run them offline on an air-gapped machine if you try this.

How long does a restore take to sync?

In lite mode (default), a restored wallet reaches 'Synced' within 30 seconds on typical connections. Historical transaction data for a wallet with many transactions may take an additional minute to fully populate. Full-node mode means waiting for the full blockchain sync first — hours to a day depending on connection and hardware — before balance becomes visible.

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