How to Recover an Ether.li Wallet: Ethereum Multisig Recovery Guide

Your Ether.li wallet still exists. The service behind it stopped taking new users in 2017 and was already going down for days at a time by early 2018. Today its website no longer responds, so the login and the SMS codes are gone. But the funds sit in a smart contract on Ethereum, untouched, and Ether.li wallet recovery is often possible with what your recovery sheet lists. Before you try to move anything, it helps to understand how the wallet worked, because that decides what you can still do.

Why a dead service doesn’t mean dead funds

Ether.li shutting down did not touch your money. The wallet was a 2-of-3 multisig setup: three keys exist, and any two of them can approve a transaction. Those three were your user key, a backup key you were asked to print and keep, and Ether.li’s own key, tied to the SMS confirmations. Ether.li’s own FAQ made the same point: if the service was down or unable to sign, the owner still held two of the three keys needed to move the funds.

Only two of the three are ever needed. So the key that died with the company was never one you can’t do without. Your ETH and any ERC-20 tokens are still in the wallet contract on-chain, unchanged, and what’s missing is a way to sign. If you kept your recovery sheet, you may already hold both keys that matter. The company vanished. The keys on that sheet did not.

First, find your recovery sheet and protect it

Find the sheet first. It’s the PDF or printout Ether.li gave you when you set the wallet up, and it carries the two things a recovery needs: your user account private key, in encrypted form, and the backup key. Ether.li encrypted the user key with the password you chose on the site, while its web app generated the backup key in your browser as a plain private key. If you entered your own backup address instead, that key lives wherever you created that address.

Once you have it, work only from a copy, and keep the keys off any internet-connected app you don’t control. Never paste your recovery sheet or type a private key into a website that offers to “restore” your Ether.li wallet for you. A key is a signature waiting to happen, and a fake restore page will sign your funds straight out of the contract the moment you hand it over.

What you have decides what’s possible

You have the recovery sheet with both keys

The sheet holds your encrypted user key and the backup key, and those two are exactly the two signatures the contract needs. That is the best position to be in. The work from here is decrypting the user key with your Ether.li password and using both keys to sign the transactions that move the funds out. The next section covers what that involves.

You have only one of the two keys

A single key can’t authorize anything on its own: a 2-of-3 wallet needs two valid signatures. Check the sheet again before you conclude the worst, because the sheet usually lists both keys even when people remember only one. If you supplied your own backup address when you created the wallet, look for that key in the wallet where you made the address. If the second key really can’t be found, and Ether.li’s key vanished with the company, you can’t reach the two-signature threshold.

The key is encrypted and you’ve forgotten the password

This is a password problem, not a lost-key one. The sheet prints your user key in encrypted form, protected by the password you chose on Ether.li, which some guides call the backup key’s passphrase. If you can no longer recall it, getting back in becomes a targeted password search rather than a dead end. Where the format allows it, the search runs against a hash the tool pulls from the encrypted key. Our guide to Ethereum keystore password recovery explains how such a search is planned, although Ether.li used its own encryption format rather than a standard keystore file.

You have neither key, or only ever used the app and SMS

If you only ever logged in through the Ether.li site with an SMS code and never saved the recovery sheet, you may hold none of the signing keys, and the service that held the third is gone. Without at least two keys, no one can move the funds, and time spent on that wallet changes nothing.

How an Ether.li recovery actually works

The steps are few, and every one of them has to be exact:

• Decrypt the user key from the sheet with your Ether.li password. The encrypted key is in Ether.li’s own format, not a standard Ethereum keystore, so ordinary wallet software may not recognize it. A recovery guide written in 2018, while Ether.li was failing, decrypted it with the decrypt function of BitGo’s open-source SDK, BitGoJS, which still includes that function.
• Load both keys, your decrypted user key and the backup key, into tooling that can call the wallet contract. Ether.li’s FAQ says the contract was built from the official Ethereum reference code, with three owners and two needed to send funds. This is developer-level work, not a single button.
• Before funding anything, verify the deployed wallet contract and the recovery transaction sequence. ETH for gas must be available in the owner account or accounts that submit those transactions, not merely at the Ether.li contract address. Estimate the required fees for that sequence first; only gas actually consumed is spent.
• Build the transfer out of the contract and authorize it with both keys: one owner account submits the withdrawal and the other confirms it. That makes two transactions, each paid for by the account that sends it.
• Sweep everything to a new wallet you created and control, including any ETH left on your user account: Ether.li recommended keeping about 0.1 ETH there to pay fees.

One wrong contract address, nonce, or signature, and the transaction either fails or burns gas for nothing. That’s the step where a small mistake costs real money, and the step worth handing to someone who has done it before. Old guides that tell you to import the keys into Parity are out of date: the Parity Ethereum client was archived in 2020 and its successor, OpenEthereum, in 2022, so don’t build your recovery around them.

When an Ether.li wallet can’t be recovered

Some cases have no route, and the reason is the math of the wallet itself. A 2-of-3 needs two signatures. No keys, or only one with no way to find the second, leaves that threshold out of reach. Ether.li’s own key died with the company: no one can reach it now, and no one can rebuild or request the key.

No sheet, no user key, no backup key, no service left to ask. There is no route in.

Seeing your balance is not the same as reaching it

You can look up the wallet contract address on a block explorer such as Etherscan and watch the balance sit there, and that can feel like the money is within reach. On its own, it isn’t. A block explorer shows what the contract holds; moving any of it still takes two valid signatures. A visible balance confirms the coins exist and haven’t moved. It says nothing about whether you can currently sign for them.

After you’re out: leave the multisig behind

Once you’ve swept the funds to a new wallet, don’t rebuild your setup on a service that no longer exists. Move to a standard wallet you control, either a hardware wallet or a software wallet you back up with a recovery phrase. A 12- or 24-word phrase stored offline is far easier to keep safe than a printed sheet of raw keys from a company that shut down years ago.

If you still have your Ether.li recovery sheet but the decryption or the signing won’t come together, start with a free assessment: describe what you have, and we give you an honest read on whether the wallet can be reached, before any commitment. Crypto Recovers has completed 200+ recoveries since 2019. We work only under a written contract, on a no recovery, no fee basis, and we never handle your money. Request a free assessment.

When a recovery comes together, you make the final sweep yourself, sending the ETH and tokens to a new wallet you created. The agreed fee is paid separately, as your contract with us sets out, and is never deducted from the recovered ETH or tokens.

FAQ

Can I still recover my Ether.li wallet now that the service has shut down?

Often, yes. The service stopped working years ago; the funds didn’t. If your recovery sheet still carries your encrypted user key and the backup key, and you know the password to the user key, those two signatures are enough to move them.

Can I recover my Ether.li wallet if I only have one key?

Not with one key alone: the contract needs two signatures. Check the sheet again first, since it usually carries both. If no copy of the second key turns up anywhere, the threshold can’t be reached.

Can I contact Ether.li support to recover my wallet?

No. Ether.li stopped taking new users in 2017 and its website no longer responds, so there is no one left to answer. What you can do depends entirely on the recovery sheet and keys you still have.

Can I recover my Ether.li backup key if I forgot its passphrase?

Sometimes, and it helps to know which key that password protects. On an Ether.li sheet, the encrypted key is your user account key, locked with the password you chose on Ether.li; the backup key was printed as a plain private key. The encrypted key is what a password search runs against, and what you remember about the password (its length, the words or patterns you used back then) decides how large that search is. An assessment of the sheet and your memory tells you whether it’s realistic; a password can’t be rebuilt from nothing.

Do I need ETH to transfer funds from my recovered Ether.li wallet?

Yes. The owner account or accounts submitting the recovery transactions need ETH for gas. Sending ETH only to the Ether.li contract address does not fund those sender accounts. Verify the contract and required transaction sequence before calculating and supplying the fees.

Can I continue using my old Ethereum address after recovering my Ether.li wallet?

The address still works, but don’t keep using it. Sweep everything to a wallet you created and control, backed up with a recovery phrase, and leave the multisig behind.

Can I recover my Ether.li wallet if I lost my recovery sheet?

Only if another copy of the keys exists: a saved PDF, a printout, a backup of the computer you set the wallet up on. If the sheet held your only copies, there is nothing left to sign with.