How to recover a wallet in cardano-cli from a 24-word mnemonic

Question

I have a wallet created with Daedalus and have the 24-word mnemonic available. I would like to use the same wallet with cardano-cli in order to build and submit more complicated transactions directly through the cardano-node. I need to get my hands on the signing (private) key and verification (public) key.

I found the old, now archived cardano-cli repo which actually describes the procedure. However, the wallet subcommand is no longer available in the latest cardano-cli.

https://github.com/input-output-hk/cardano-cli/blob/master/USAGE.md#recovering-a-wallet

Answer 1

cardano-cli does not support mnemonic derivation natively, so you'd have to use cardano-wallet software:

1. Install cardnao-wallet or cardano-addresses and put the executables in your $PATH. I will be using cardano-wallet for this demo, but cardano-address would work exactly the same.
2. Run the following:
   <YOUR_24_WORD_MNEMONMIC> | cardano-wallet key from-recovery-phrase Shelley > root.xprv This will create an extended root private key from the mnemonic under the name root.xprv
3. Run the following:
   cat root.xprv | cardano-wallet key child 1852H/1815H/0H \
| tee acct.xprv | cardano-wallet key public --with-chain-code > acct.xpub
   This will create two files: acct.xprv (your extended account private key - will be used to further derive your payment/staking private/public keys) and acct.xpub (your extended account public key - use this to verify that it is the same as the "wallet public key" in Daedalus in the next step)
4. Fire up Daedalus and go to More > Settings > Wallet Public Key. View your public key and ensure that it is the same as the acct.xpub you derived in the previous step:

5. If the keys match, you may now use the acct.xprv to further derive the address-specific payment/stake keypairs.
6. Run the following:
   cat acct.xprv | cardano-wallet key child <DERIVATION_PATH>, where the DERIVATION_PATH is the following:

• 0/n for payment keypairs
• 1/n for change-address payment keypairs
• 2/0 for the account-level staking keypair

Running the above command will output the extended signing key for each address index (n). To convert these keys into cardano-cli compatible non-extended signing keys, refer to this Q/A. You can also use cardano-cli to derive non-extended verification keys from each non-extended signing key.

Note: If you've used this wallet on Daedalus frequently, you likely have UTXOs in a few payment and change addresses, so you would have to derive key-pairs for all addresses that UTXOs reside in. Alternatively, you can create a new wallet (new mnemonic) on Deadalus, transfer all the funds there, and then you'll have them all sitting at a single address, likely either at 0/0 or 0/1.

Comment if you have any questions or if you need any further clarification. Hope this helps!

Answer 2

If you're using CNtools, you can recover a deadalus wallet using your mnemonic seed phrase.

From the CNtools menu, you would select Wallet > Import > Mnemonic then enter your seed phrase. Your wallet will be restored and you can access your private keys in $CNODE_HOME/priv/wallet/[WALLET_NAME]