From time to time, you may need to restore your Arculus Cold Storage Wallet using your 12-word recovery phrase. This could be due to a phone upgrade or replacement, or the purchase of a new Arculus card. Additionally, there is a security feature within Arculus that requires you to enter your 12-word recovery phrase and restore your wallet if you enter your 6-digit PIN code incorrectly 3 times (don't worry, you'll get a warning indicating this is your last chance to enter the PIN correctly).

In every Arculus box, we include a recovery phrase card to write down your 12-word recovery phrase and encourage you to store it in a safe place. In order to restore your Arculus Cold Storage Wallet, you will need to have your 12-word recovery phrase available.

If you've entered your 12-word recovery phrase correctly, the wallet restore process should only take a few minutes. Your asset balances may appear as a $0 balance for a few minutes as the Arculus app syncs with the blockchains. 

If you've waited a few minutes and the balances are all $0, you may not have restored your intended wallet. You may have entered the words in the wrong order or you may have spelled a word incorrectly. There are many words in the BIP39 word list that are similar to each other. For example, these are all valid words from the list: air, aim, home, hope, anger, angry, fade, fame, cool, cook. Because of the similarity of some of the words, it is possible to write the word down incorrectly. Because the incorrectly written word is still a valid word from the list, an Arculus Wallet will be restored successfully to your card. Of course, if you incorrectly documented a word that is not on the list and enter that word when restoring your wallet, the "Restore" button will not activate or if using an Android device, you will receive an error indicating the phrase is invalid. The Arculus app recognizes that is not a valid word and will not let you proceed.

If you are encountering any issues restoring your wallet with your documented 12-word recovery phrase, there are a few tools that could assist you in determining if you have the correct 12 words. First, we recommend that you compare the words you wrote down against the BIP39 Word List.

If you've compared the words and you are still unable to restore your wallet, please try using this third-party tool: Mnemonic Phrase Recovery Tool.

If you need any additional assistance, please contact our Support team for guidance.