The confirm-backup command

zallet confirm-backup records that you have backed up a BIP 39 mnemonic phrase that Zallet generated.

A phrase produced by zallet generate-mnemonic exists nowhere but inside the wallet. Until you copy it somewhere durable, anything derived from it — every account, and every address in those accounts — is lost along with the wallet database and its encryption identity. Zallet therefore refuses to derive new accounts, or new addresses within existing accounts, from such a phrase until this command has been run against it. The keystore.require_backup configuration option turns that requirement off.

A phrase you supplied yourself with zallet import-mnemonic needs no confirmation. You had it in your hands in order to type it in, so Zallet already treats it as backed up. (For the same reason, importing a phrase Zallet generated also confirms it — this command just saves you typing all twenty-four words.)

Zallet never displays a recovery phrase, not even here. You obtain your own copy by exporting it and decrypting the export, which means confirming a backup attests to rather more than having read some words off a screen: it shows you hold the export and a working age identity and its passphrase. The identity is what every other secret in the wallet is encrypted to, so being able to decrypt with it is the thing most worth establishing.

Warning The phrase is not a complete backup of your wallet. It covers only funds derived from that seed; a wallet can also hold spending keys imported with z_importkey and other standalone key material, which no phrase covers. See Backup and restore for what a complete backup requires.

Usage

$ zallet confirm-backup
zallet never displays a recovery phrase. To confirm this one's backup you need
your own decrypted copy of it:

    zallet export-mnemonic --armor --seedfp zip32seedfp1qhrfsdsq... >mnemonic.age
    age -d -i /home/you/.zallet/encryption-identity.txt mnemonic.age

Write the phrase down, including the numbering of the words, on something durable
that you will keep somewhere secure, and delete the decrypted copy afterwards. Then
read the words requested below back from what you wrote down.

Enter word #4: about
Enter word #11: absurd
Enter word #19: across

Backup confirmed.

If the wallet holds more than one mnemonic phrase, name the one to confirm with --seedfp.

On regtest, confirmation is not required by default. keystore.require_backup defaults to false there and true on every other network, matching zcashd (which set fRequireWalletBackup = false in its regtest chain parameters). A regtest wallet is disposable, and this command is interactive, so requiring it would leave automated tests with no way through. Set the option explicitly to get the same behaviour everywhere.

Three words chosen at random are requested. If any answer is wrong, nothing is recorded and the command exits with an error; check your written copy and run it again. Running the command against a phrase whose backup is already confirmed does nothing.

Reading the words back off the decrypted file rather than off your written copy defeats the point of the exercise, so do not do that.

Because the phrase must be decrypted in order to check your answers, this command needs the wallet’s age encryption identity. If that identity file is passphrase-encrypted, you will be prompted for the passphrase.

Relationship to zcashd

This command replaces zcashd’s zcashd-wallet-tool utility, which zcashd required before it would generate new spending keys or addresses under -walletrequirebackup (see Migrating from zcashd). Reading part of the phrase back to the wallet is the same check in substance, with three differences:

• zcashd-wallet-tool printed the phrase to the terminal, having obtained it by calling z_exportwallet — which writes every wallet secret to a file in plain text as a side effect. Zallet does neither, and confirms the operator’s access to the age identity in the process.
• zcashd had exactly one mnemonic phrase per wallet. Zallet supports several, so confirmation is recorded per phrase, and --seedfp selects between them.
• zcashd gated six RPC methods; Zallet implements only two of them (z_getnewaccount and z_getaddressforaccount), and gates both, plus its own z_recoveraccounts. getnewaddress, z_getnewaddress, getrawchangeaddress, and keypoolrefill do not exist in Zallet.