If you are trying to enter your recovery phrase to restore a Bitcoin or Liquid wallet and you receive the "Invalid Recovery Phrase" error, it may help to review the reasons for this and possible solutions below.
One or More Words Are Incorrect
During the restore process, Blockstream Green will alert you to any word that has been entered incorrectly:
- Mobile: The word will be highlighted in red.
- Desktop: The app will prevent you from proceeding to the next entry box.
There are a few possible causes for this:
- Not lower case: Re-enter the word in all lower case letters.
- Misspelling: Correct the word based on your backup.
- Hidden punctuation: Remove any spaces, tab breaks, periods, commas, etc.
- Copy-pasted: Try manually typing the word instead (copy-paste can sometimes result in the wrong encoding).
- Backup not written down clearly: For example, you have written down the word "brush" but your correct word is actually "crush". You may wish to try similar-looking words from the complete recovery phrase word list.
One or More Words are Missing
Your recovery phrase consists of 12, 24, or 27 words. If you have a different number of words, it means you are missing some and will need to locate them.
Password Protected is Incorrectly Enabled
The Password protected option is only used for 27 word recovery phrases. If you do not have a 27 word recovery phrase and enable this option, you will receive the Invalid Recovery Phrase error.
Words Are Correct But in the Wrong Order
If all words entered are recognized as valid by the app, but are recorded in the wrong order:
- Mobile: The app will show the error Invalid Recovery Phrase.
- Desktop: The app will not progress after you click Restore.
To restore access to your funds, you may be able to reorder the words using a wallet recovery service, but this is beyond the scope of support that we can provide.
Recovery Phrase Does Not Match a Wallet on Our Server
If all words have been accepted and you are still unable to proceed with the recovery due to the "Wallet not found" message, the two most likely causes are:
- The recovery phrase is for a different network: Make sure you are trying to restore the recovery phrase to the right network. The wallets for Bitcoin, Liquid, and Testnet in Blockstream Green are completely separate.
- The recovery phrase was created by different wallet software: Recovery phrases generated by other wallet software (e.g. Electrum) are not compatible with Blockstream Green. You should retry with the original wallet software used to generate the recovery phrase.
You are welcome to select Manual Restore to bypass the "Wallet not found" message.
Tip: If you have tried the above suggestions, still cannot restore, and are convinced your recovery phrase is correct, you are free to restore your recovery phrase to another platform (such as Electrum). Make sure to select BIP39 as the "Seed type" when restoring on Electrum.