Lumens (XLM) Paper Wallet Generator

BrianGale

Hi everyone,
We've receive a lot of inquiries about a Lumens Paper Wallet Generator. Would anyone be interested in creating one? Should be fairly to create an easy one using Stellar's JS SDK. I think the community would really appreciate this!

ChitraBaral

BrianGale how to check the balance on paper wallet

sami

I second Brian's post. Anyone out there interested in creating a Lumens Paper Wallet Generator. You'll get my vote for the "content creators challenge".

jed

You just have to print out your secret key. Not sure you need special software for this.

sami

Thank you jed. I was actually referring to something inline with "bitaddress.org" where a private key can be generated offline.

jed

This will do offline generation: https://github.com/bartekn/cold

bartek

I created this one yesterday: https://stellar.github.io/paper-wallet/ Super simple but does it's job. Source: https://github.com/stellar/paper-wallet

davidlkyoung360

bartek Hello, thanks, but can you please explain how to use it? Is the first address the public key? The second address is the private key? So, do we send our lumens to the first address and then sweep the second address when we wish to retrieve the funds back out of the paper wallet? Any instructions would be greatly appreciated, thanks!
Dave

ShayaaMuhammad

bartek Which one is the private key and the pubic key? There are two QR codes/keys.....

bartek

davidlkyoung360 Yes, exactly. The first address is public key (G...), second private key (S...). You can send to public key, when making a transaction out of the wallet later you need to sign it with a private key.

davidlkyoung360

bartek HI, thank you so much for your response! So the first step is, I generate the pair of public and private keys, write down the keys and take a screen shot of the page and keep them in a safe place offline, like a usb portable drive which I keep offline. Then, I send the amount of lumens I want to safekeep to the public key. Then, when I want to retrieve the lumens from the paper wallet, I just need to import the private key into my stargazer wallet or centaurus wallet, and then the balance will show there? And then I can send it back to the exchange for trading? Also, if I may mention, the exchange has this message regarding sending lumens there:-

"Please use "payments" and not "path_payment" when sending XLM. If the tag is not included in your transfer, we cannot credit your account. Please do not directly deposit from an exchange or pool unless they allow you to specify a tag."
Can you please go through what this is all about, and why? because I never had to do this for bitcoins. ;-)

Are the lumens 100% safe being in the paper wallet then? Is there a Stellar Lumens blockchain explorer where I can enter the public key and check the balance of the paper wallet address just to make sure the lumens are in there?

Thank you so much for your kind assistance!
best regards,
Dave

yasould

bartek Hi Bartek, first of all many thanks for your detailled instructions, which i followed and worked fine, but my issue is that i can not transfer Lumens from Binance to my created paper wallet as my the public key doesn´t fit in the Binance field (XLM Withdrawal Address), i appreciate your contructive help in advance.

davidlkyoung360

I also found another website that generates paper wallets for many coins, here it is:-
http://cryptolife.net/upwg/

It says you have to set the decimal version referring to their chart, does anyone know if this will work for XLM? Also, will it be possible to set the BIP 38 Encrypt passphrase when make up the paper wallet for XLM? Because I always do when I make my paper wallets for bitcoins? Thanks!
Dave

bartek

davidlkyoung360 it won't work as stellar keys are of different format that bitcoin.

davidlkyoung360

bartek Thanks so much for your response! I will be sure to give it a try! Cheers! ;-)

bartek

davidlkyoung360

I generate the pair of public and private keys, write down the keys and take a screen shot of the page and keep them in a safe place offline, like a usb portable drive which I keep offline.

You can also print it. If you want to have more security and know how to use command line interface you can use https://github.com/bartekn/cold on an offline machine.

Then, I send the amount of lumens I want to safekeep to the public key. Then, when I want to retrieve the lumens from the paper wallet, I just need to import the private key into my stargazer wallet or centaurus wallet, and then the balance will show there? And then I can send it back to the exchange for trading?

The whole point of cold wallet is to not use it online. You should sign transactions on an offline machine.

If you want to import it to centaurus or stargazer then you can just use them to generate a key pair for you.

"Please use "payments" and not "path_payment" when sending XLM. If the tag is not included in your transfer, we cannot credit your account. Please do not directly deposit from an exchange or pool unless they allow you to specify a tag."

Many exchanges has a single Stellar account, when you send a payment you need to attach a memo so they know which account to credit. You can add memo in almost every wallet.

Are the lumens 100% safe being in the paper wallet then?

There is always this small chance that someone will hack your machine and steal your private key but if you do all the things correctly (generate key pair, sign transaction) in an offline machine the chances are zero.

Is there a Stellar Lumens blockchain explorer where I can enter the public key and check the balance of the paper wallet address just to make sure the lumens are in there?

https://stellarchain.io

bkolobara

davidlkyoung360 Your process of storing your keys looks ok to me. Just remember that USB drives also fail, maybe printing the page out is a good idea (as this is the purpose of a paper wallet). If you wrote down somewhere the keys it should be alright.

The difference with bitcoin is that exchanges don't give you an uniq address for deposits. Everyone deposits do the same address. For them to be able to differentiate users you need to include a memo.id (specific to your account) when sending lumens to an exchange. Some of the wallets/exchanges don't let you specify this memo/tag and if you send to them they can't credit your account. That's why they warn users.

I use https://stellar.expert/explorer/public as the blockchain explorer.

davidlkyoung360

Thank you so much! I will give it a try right away! Cheers! Dave ;-)

bartek

Also one good practice is to send a small amount of lumens to your paper wallet, then try to send it somewhere (as you would do with a larger amount) and confirm everything is working fine. Then you can send a larger amount to the same wallet.

jma

I am very interested to see what solutions may arise to solve/mitigate the issue of key storage. Personally I really like the way accounts/keys can be generated quickly and effortlessly. The only downside (if that is the right word) is that you are basically on your own if a private key is ever exposed or lost.

The only really “safe” solutions seem to be keeping keys entirely offline or in hard/paper copy as discussed above, but these are also the least practical for day to day usage. And while mobile wallets seem to provide a good medium between convenience and security, even Centaurus states: “Don't hold more Lumens in this app than you need for every day purpose and you can afford to lose in worst case! Use at own Risk.”

I wonder if some form of insurance will arise to cover this. ?