Retrieving Lost Doge with .wallet file and wallet address?

armour248

I purchased a small amount of Dogecoin years ago. It was a miniscule amount...but obviously now would be worth more than I paid. In the all too common story, I really have no idea how to access them at this point. I have a MyVolume.wallet file (presumably from MultiDoge?) and I know my wallet address. I think I was supposed to have a few other files that went with the .wallet file but unfortunately that is the only one I can find. Any help would be appreciated. Thank you!

MartynDerg

Had someone in the dogecoin discord come in with a similar problem, and we found that .wallet files are used specifically by WowDoge, as far as we can tell. WowDoge, as far as we can tell, is a deprecated dogecoin wallet that is no longer able to talk to the network. But it can use the .wallet file, and you can use it to get your private key, which you can then import to something like Dogecoin Core to talk to the network and transfer your coins.

I encourage you not to trust random links on the internet, but I'll give them to you anyway.
WowDoge's github, which is not particularly useful: pavel4n/WowDoge
The WowDoge website that is currently up, and for some reason not the .org domain provided on the github. This is where you will find Windows/Mac downloads. https://www.wowdoge.app/

Drop by the dogecoin discord if you want more help with that, and please please please be vigilant, there are many many scammers who would absolutely love to get a hold of your coins and pretend to help. never ever give your wallet files to anyone, never share your private key, never "connect your wallet" to anything. Stay safe, and good luck!

armour248

MartynDerg Thank you so much! I definitely won't be sharing any specifics, files or anything else with potential scammers. It's a small downside to the crypto world...lots of disingenuous people out there trying to take advantage of others

armour248

When I try and open the .wallet file I'm just getting a "Failed to open wallet. Details: Expected the service to be RUNNING but the service has FAILED"

I'm guessing that's just due to wowdoge is no longer connected to the network?

MartynDerg

armour248 I heard back from the person in the discord that I mentioned, they say that

I found that the latest one had an issue where it threw an error, and then the dev popped on a couple years ago to say they knew about it and were going to fix it, but they were not heard from again. So I figured an older version might not have that bug and it didn’t. Old version is here: https://web.archive.org/web/20150924221346/http://www.wowdoge.org/download/WowDogeSetup.exe

Yavuz

.wallet file is most likely a MultiDoge backup. If you can't read the contents of the file (using Notepad for example), the wallet file is encrypted.

The only possible problem is... From experience, MultiDoge had a version (or versions) where the encrypted file is not correctly exported. If that's the case with your file, you can't decrypt it properly and sadly can't access the coins.

You can do two things:

Use MultiDoge to import the wallet (must know password if encrypted), and export the private keys again, but this time without encryption. Then, import the private keys in something like Dogecoin Core (cumbersome) or Guarda (easy and quick). You can then do whatever you want.
Decrypt the file using openssl, with the password. And then import the private keys in something like Dogecoin Core (cumbersome) or Guarda (easy and quick). You can then do whatever you want.

Let me know if you need more instructions.

Yavuz

@armour248
New post, with a mention of the username, to make sure the user is notified and sees my post.

Also, in case you need help, let me know which operating system you use. (Linux, macOS, Windows...)