Update to LadyBUG- Peercoin Wallet V3.1 from 2015 Not working, Not syncing

I heard about this Update to Lady Bug Version. I am attempting to do this.

My peercoin wallet is Version 3.1 from 2014-2015 era. on a Android tablet.
It doesn’t sync or show any updated Peercoin price.

I made a recovery Peercoin File. ‘peercoin-wallet-backup-2023-01-01’
under file info it says its a UNIX Executable file. Its not a wallet.dat file.

The new peercoin wallet I downloaded to my computer, I transferred the Peercoin-wallet-backup-2023-01-01’ File and it cannot be recognized by the new peercoin wallet.

The new peercoin will not open my ‘Peercoin-wallet-backup-2023-01-01’ File.

  1. why won’t my peercoin 2015 wallet sync
  2. why won’t the newer version of the peercoin wallet open up my peercoin recovery file.
  3. why is updating peercoin so hard to do/?

I’m sorry to hear that you are unable to access this old wallet but please be assured that it is still possible to gain access to the private keys from a wallet backup.

This old Android wallet was unfortunately discontinued in 2018 after it was removed by Google without warning or ability to provide updates. The wallet is no longer functional due to changes in the Peercoin protocol and discontinuation of servers necessary for synchronisation. It is also old enough that it may not function correctly on later versions of Android.

The wallet format used by this old wallet is not compatible with any other wallet. This includes the new Peercoin Android wallet as this is entirely separate software.

The private keys may be accessed using the “wallet-tool” available via peercoinj. I shall provide you with a guide on how to use this tool, but please be patient as it may take a few days. The guide will assume that you have a Linux machine (Debian specifically but may work on Ubuntu) which may be operated via a virtual machine.

If you are unable to restore the wallet yourself, the only option would be for someone else to extract the private keys from the wallet for you which would require sharing the wallet, password and any wallet PIN. This will also require that you trust the person with your funds.

3 Likes

My peercoin wallet has not private key, or Pin. you simply turn on the andoid tablet and open the peercoin app and the peercoins are in the Peercoin wallet since 2015. and it was offline for years.

I turned on the Tablet to try to update to LadyBUG and no success.
This is an obvious problem, If the creation of Peercoin cannot sustain these random technology changes that occurred over the past 10 years. Peercoin holders like myself currently feel at a loss. People holding cryto shouldn’t require coding/programing skills to keep a wallet alive. The system should operate and function infinitely without these random technology changes like you mentioned in 2018. Which I did not know about. I haven’t been active in Crypto in years and not current on following stuff. I only came back into relearning about Crypto in 2020 when I learned about changes in Crypto with DeFi and saw how much Crypto currencies have evolved since 2012.

Bitcoin from 2007 still work today, Why doesn’t Peercoin from 2015 work today in 2023.

You are not using Peercoin, you are using an obscure peercoin-compatible android app that is not supported by anyone and was abandoned in 2017/2018. Have you used the Peercoin-qt app or a paperwallet or hardware wallet, it would all be fine.

Your wallet backup contains encrypted private keys. The wallet you are using is a defunct Android wallet that is separate from the Peercoin desktop client.

It’s not possible to update the wallet because it was discontinued in 2018 after being removed by Google. I attempted to appeal the removal but Google refused to reinstate it. This is a risk with any Android or iOS app installed via Google Play or the App Store. Google and Apple can choose to remove apps for any reason at any time and prevent users receiving any further updates.

You can’t rely on older software continuing to work the same forever. Even with Bitcoin Core, there have been issues with wallet compatibility.

Your funds are still available (assuming you kept your wallet secure), you will just need to move to another wallet after extracting the private keys from your backup which is what the wallet-tool is for. The backup uses an old format that was specific to that wallet and is not compatible with other wallets (it never was).

This answer explains how keys can be extracted for the Bitcoin Android wallet that this old wallet was built upon: How do I extract my private keys from a protobuf wallet? - Bitcoin Stack Exchange However, I will need to verify the steps required for restoring the backup for Peercoin.

Peerchemist is correct here. The problem here is not Peercoin. Unfortunately, you stored your PPC on a third party mobile wallet that was not developed or supported by the Peercoin team. If you had planned on being absent for a long period of time, it would have made more sense for you to store your coins using the main Peercoin qt wallet, or a paper wallet that can be easily imported. The important thing though is it’s still possible to retrieve your coins, so best to give Matthew a few days to verify the steps you need to take to recover them.

I don’t have an Linux device. I am using a macbook. The peercoin wallet I used, I downloaded from the Android app store back in 2014-2015. at the time that was the only peercoin wallet, I believed it was made by peercoin as there were no other alternative wallets. I never knew about Ledger or Trezor at the time. Or any other safe way to keep crypto. The entire idea of Crypto is that the owner holds it. Which I did, It was not stored in any exchange (Bank) I never say any updates or announments with Peercoin over the past 6-7 years, up until I read about the LadyBUG update taking place in 2023. so now I just want to update and comply with the new standard for Peercoin.

I will check back daily, to see on the next steps i can take.
Thanks for your help

2 Likes

If all goes well I’ll provide instructions for Mac on Monday.

I don’t know all the technicals with the Peercoin backdrop that happened in 2018. As I have this UNIX executable file made from that Android wallet Version 3.1 called “peercoin-wallet-backup-2023-01-21”

I heard Chat GPT gives coding solutions, so If someone with more knowledge of these Peercoin Network Changes that occured during 2017-2018 can ask Chat GPT in a technical coding question, Its possible Chat GPT maybe able to help me so I can open this file and update to the Upcoming LadyBUG peercoin update and get back on the network. I don’t know what happens if I can’t do this before the deadline of April 17, 2023.

Nothing.

Will I still be able to recover and transfer my Peercoins onto the New Ladybug network after April 17, 2023 deadline? as it sounds like I’m in panic as I have to figure out how to resolve this issue with my older android peercoin wallet, not syncing and transfer onto the newer wallet to be in compliance with Ladybug. Either by File that can bet opened by the Peercoin wallet or sending the peercoin from old peercoin wallet that is not syncing to the new wallet. However I don’t believe even if I put the new wallet address and Send it, it won’t work as this Android wallet was kicked off google store in 2018 from what I learned. so it won’t sync. therefore it won’t send anything on the network.

Your keys will work perfectly fine with the new Ladybug changes. You don’t have to import them before the 17th of April. The old Android wallet doesn’t appear capable of connecting with the Peercoin network any-more, so sending the funds using the wallet doesn’t appear possible.

I aim to provide the wallet restoration instructions today.

2 Likes

Thank you MatthewLM, I hope I have the technical know-how an basic computer skils to follow the instructions using Mac OS 12.6.3 monterey.

I’m pretty sure Peercoin has had 7 or 8 upgrades since 2014. Have you just been absent from the community for that long? Also, I was just wondering where you read about the Ladybug upgrade?

1 Like

@scottyoso It is possible to obtain the HD seed phrase and private keys used by the wallet in HEX format. However the software doesn’t provide private keys in WIF format that can be imported into the Peercoin desktop client. The HD key derivation also uses paths that are incompatible with the flutter wallet.

Therefore, some other software is required to read and convert the private keys into an importable format. I’m not able to provide this at the moment, however I know @backpacker69 was previously able to convert these private keys using existing software: [DEFUNCT] Peercoin Android Wallet 3.2 Released - #118 by backpacker69

I believe the software would have been this: GitHub - peercoin/bitaddress.ppc: JavaScript Client-Side Bitcoin Wallet Generator Maybe someone else has a suggestion for how HEX private keys can be easily converted.


The following instructions are for obtaining the incompatible seed phrase and HEX private keys on macOS Ventura. Please upgrade if possible to avoid possible problems.

Please note that this uses very old software and should be run at your own risk. Whilst I have tested it, it is not guaranteed to work for anyone else. Be careful not to share or expose your private keys or wallet backup.

The following steps require running commands in a command line. This can be done using the Mac Terminal application. Commands may be typed or copied and the enter key must be pressed to run the commands. Commands should be run to completion before entering the next command.

  1. Install homebrew: https://brew.sh
  2. Install required packages with the following commands:
brew install openssl
brew install openjdk
brew install maven
brew install git
brew install java
  1. Ensure that the Java runtime can be located. This following command will ask for your Mac user password:
sudo ln -sfn /opt/homebrew/opt/openjdk/libexec/openjdk.jdk /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/openjdk.jdk
  1. Ensure any spending PIN is removed before exporting a backup from the application. If no spending PIN was previously used, then it is OK.
  2. Move your peercoin-wallet-backup-yyyy-mm-dd file to a directory on your Mac.
  3. Use the cd command (change directory) to change the working directory to the directory containing the wallet backup:
cd /Users/yourusername/path/to/wallet/directory
  1. Decrypt the wallet with the following command, replacing the yyyy-mm-dd date. You will need to enter the backup password. The decrypted_wallet file will contain your decrypted backup, so ensure it is kept safe throughout the remainder of the process:
openssl enc -d -aes-256-cbc -md md5 -a -in peercoin-wallet-backup-yyyy-mm-dd > decrypted_wallet
  1. Clone peercoinj and cd into the directory:
git clone https://github.com/MatthewLM/peercoinj && cd peercoinj
  1. Install the library:
mvn install -Dmaven.test.skip=true -Dmaven.javadoc.skip=true
  1. Visit the tools directory:
cd tools
  1. Build the wallet tool by running it once:
./wallet-tool
  1. The following command will dump the seed and any other private keys to a wallet-dump file in the same directory as the wallet. The contents of this file must be kept safe and not shared with anyone:
./wallet-tool dump --wallet=../../decrypted_wallet --dump-privkeys > ../../wallet-dump
  1. The wallet-dump file will contain the wallet seed phrase after “Seed as words”. The wallet key derivation is not the same as the Flutter Peercoin Android wallet and uses the m/0'/0/n and m/0'/1/n paths instead. HEX private keys are found after each priv= in the file. These would need to be converted into WIF format before they can be imported to the desktop wallet using importprivkey in the console (Window → Console in the menu).
2 Likes

I read about Ladybug on bloomberg news article. I never connected with any peercoin community back in 2014 when I bought and didn’t know anyone in RL who actually bought into any crypto, just talk… so my exchange shut down. I had to liquidate my crypto and take my crypto off the exchange into a private wallet. so I found the only wallet available at the time. The Peercoin didn’t catch on like I expected it to. Ethereum copied Peercoin’s PoS concept. as at the time every other cryptocurrency was PoW. After my exhange shutdown. I lost interest in cryptocurrency, and never cared to find another crypto exchange as there were minimal crypto exchanges in my country. So i just lost interest in cryptocurrencies until I re-learned about crypto in 2021 with everything that happened, I missed out on alot of opportunities.

How many programs do I need to use to complete these steps of tasks? also I opened my Mac Terminal- it says I need to update the terminal to ‘zsh’ where my version is older and uses ‘bash’ so Which version is best for this process within Terminal ‘Zsh’ or ‘Bash’ script.
Just reviewing the steps, It seems complex and will likely take me a few days to figure this out. we’ll see.
Also… I don’t know what a ‘Spending Pin’ is… the only password I made was when I made this file ‘Peercoin-wallet-backup-2023-01-01’ i had to make a password. Also this process makes me a new ‘Seed phrase’ within the terminal? so I need to write down this ‘word seed phrase’ to open up this new file covert to be opened up into the new peercoin wallet? I don’t know how to convert HEX to WIF, all of which I do within Terminal command prompt?

Admittedly I used iTerm (https://iterm2.com/). I didn’t expect there to be an issue with the default Terminal. Maybe running the zsh command in the terminal will be sufficient and you can run the remaining commands from there.

You might need to run brew install zsh.

If there are no problems when using bash, I see no reason why bash shouldn’t work either.

You set the spending PIN in the application settings. If you didn’t set one, you don’t need to worry about it.

The seed phrase is what the wallet used originally. To convert the HEX to WIF, you will need to use some software. I referenced the old paper wallet software that might be able to do it.

1 Like

i am stuck at Step 11.

What are you trying to run? You shouldn’t be running openjdk as a command, you just need to install it via brew install openjdk.