Moving between wallets
Upgrading to a hardware wallet, or leaving an app you no longer trust. The order of operations matters more than the destination.
Sooner or later you move: from an exchange to a wallet you control, from a phone app to a hardware device, or away from software that has stopped being maintained. The destination is rarely the hard part. The order you do things in is.
Two ways, and they are not equivalent
Send the coins. You create a new wallet with a new phrase, and transfer the funds as ordinary transactions. The old wallet stays valid but empty. This costs network fees and leaves a public record, and it gives you a genuinely fresh key.
Import the phrase. You type the existing phrase into the new software, which derives the same keys. Nothing moves on-chain, there are no fees, and it is instant.
Never import an old phrase into a hardware wallet
The point of the device is a key that has never existed on a connected computer. A phrase that lived in a phone app has already been somewhere that could have been compromised, and importing it carries that history into the new device. Moving to hardware means generating a new phrase and sending the coins.
So: importing is fine between software wallets of similar exposure, or when recovering onto a replacement device. Sending is what you do when the whole point is to improve where the key lives.
The derivation path problem
Here is the thing that produces panicked messages, and it is almost never an actual loss.
One seed phrase can generate an unlimited number of addresses, and the recipe for which addresses is called the derivation path. Different wallets sometimes default to different paths. Import a correct phrase into a wallet using a different default, and you see a valid, empty wallet.
The funds have not moved. You are looking at different addresses derived from the same seed. Most wallets let you choose the path, or offer a "scan all standard paths" option, and the balance appears the moment the right one is selected.
An empty wallet after an import is almost always the wrong path
Before assuming the worst, check the old wallet's address on a block explorer. If the balance is still sitting there, nothing is lost and this is a settings problem.
The order that prevents mistakes
- Set up the destination completely firstNew wallet created, phrase written down by hand, and recovery tested by wiping and restoring. Do this before anything is at stake.
- Take a receiving address from the new walletCopy it from the wallet itself, never from a message, an email or a note you made earlier.
- Send a test amountA few dollars. Wait for it to confirm and appear in the destination. Every time, on every network, regardless of how large the real transfer is.
- Send the rest, one network at a timeIf you hold the same token on several networks, treat each as a separate move with its own test.
- Leave the old wallet alone for a whileDo not delete the app and do not destroy the old phrase until you have confirmed everything arrived and used the new wallet for a few weeks.
Two things people forget
Fees on the destination network. To move a token later you need the network's own coin for the fee. Send a small amount of it along with the tokens, or you will arrive with a balance you cannot move.
Approvals stay with the address, not the wallet. If the old address had granted permissions to contracts, those permissions do not follow the coins — but they also do not disappear. If you plan to keep using that address, revoke what it granted. The page on drainers explains how.
Leaving an exchange
Same procedure, with one addition: on the withdrawal screen the coin and the network are two separate choices, and the second one is the one people get wrong. Match it to what your destination wallet expects, and send the test first. The page on networks and addresses is about exactly this mistake, and it is the most expensive routine error in this subject.