Back up your wallet.
A working backup is the difference between a recoverable wallet and lost XEC. Two pieces matter: the seed and the file.
- Share your 12-word seed phrase or private key with anyone — support, admin, moderator, or wallet team.
- Paste your seed phrase into a website, browser form, chat message, or support ticket.
- “Validate”, “sync”, or “verify” your wallet by entering your seed on a page.
- Send funds to an address to “unlock”, “release”, or “migrate” other funds.
Two layers of backup, doing different jobs.
12 words. On paper. Offline.
Rebuilds every private key in the wallet. This alone restores everything. Anyone who reads it can spend your XEC, so it never touches a connected device.
Encrypted file, on an offline drive.
AES-256 encrypted with your wallet-file password. Preserves labels, contacts, and transaction history. Useful, but the seed is what truly restores you.
Back it up in six minutes.
- Step 01
Write down your seed
Open Electrum ABC → Wallet → Seed. Copy the 12 words by hand onto paper. Verify each word against the wallet display before closing the dialog.
- Step 02
Store the paper offline
Keep it somewhere that survives fire, flood, and prying eyes — a safe, a safety-deposit box, or a steel seed plate. Never store the seed on any device connected to the internet.
- Step 03
Copy the wallet file
Locate the wallet file in the Electrum ABC data directory and copy it to an external drive. The file is encrypted with your wallet password — it is a secondary backup, not a primary.
- Step 04
Test the backup
On a different machine, install Electrum ABC and restore from your written seed. Confirm the first receive address matches the original. If it matches, the backup works.
Where Electrum ABC stores your wallet file.
| OS | Path |
|---|---|
| Windows | %APPDATA%\ElectrumABC\wallets |
| macOS | ~/Library/Application Support/ElectrumABC/wallets |
| Linux | ~/.electrum-abc/wallets |
Never photograph, type, or upload your seed.
Screenshots end up in cloud sync. Password managers get breached. Email drafts are scraped. If a seed has ever touched a connected device, treat it as compromised and rotate to a new wallet. Paper or metal only.
When to restore from your backup
Hardware failure, lost laptop, OS reinstall, or migrating to a new machine. In all four cases, install Electrum ABC on the new system and follow Restore from seed. Your XEC was never on the device — it was on the eCash chain. The seed just rebuilds the keys that prove ownership.
How do I back up my Electrum ABC wallet?+
Write down your 12-word seed phrase on paper and store it offline. That seed is the master backup — anyone with it can rebuild every key in the wallet. As a secondary backup, copy the encrypted wallet file (from the Electrum ABC data directory) to an offline drive.
Where is the wallet file stored?+
Windows: %APPDATA%\ElectrumABC\wallets. macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/ElectrumABC/wallets. Linux: ~/.electrum-abc/wallets. The file is AES-256 encrypted if you set a wallet-file password.
Is the seed phrase enough, or do I need the wallet file too?+
The seed alone is enough to fully restore the wallet on any machine. The wallet file is only required if you forgot the seed but still know the wallet-file password — without the seed and without the file, the XEC is unreachable.
Should I store my seed digitally?+
No. Photos, password managers, cloud notes, and email drafts are all vulnerable to remote compromise. Write the 12 words on paper or stamp them into metal. Store in a place only you can reach physically.
Can I split my seed across multiple locations?+
Not by simply cutting the words in half — partial seeds dramatically weaken security. Use a proper Shamir-style split (SLIP-39) or a multisig setup instead. For multisig see our guide on building m-of-n wallets in Electrum ABC.