Recover Ethereum Presale: How to Open Your 2014 ETH Wallet

You bought ETH in the 2014 presale and want to open the wallet again. Two things decide whether you can recover an Ethereum presale wallet: the presale JSON file you were sent (usually named ethereum_wallet_backup.json) and the password you chose when you bought. With both, the wallet opens in software that still reads the presale format. If you forgot the password to the presale JSON file, the file becomes the target of a password search. Without the file, the password on its own opens nothing.

Understanding the Ethereum presale and why recovery matters

The Ethereum Foundation sold ETH for 42 days from July 22, 2014, before the network launched. As its sale announcement set out, the price started at 2,000 ETH per bitcoin, stayed there for 14 days and then declined linearly to 1,337 ETH per bitcoin. About 60 million ETH were sold at roughly $0.30 each. Every buyer received an encrypted JSON wallet file and set a password for it. The file holds the encrypted seed from which the wallet’s private key is derived, together with the wallet’s Ethereum address.

The difficulty today is age, not the format. Over more than a decade, passwords have been forgotten, files have disappeared with old computers and closed email accounts, and early wallet software such as Mist has been discontinued.

Presale ETH that has never moved is not necessarily lost. Some owners hold on purpose. Others lost the password, the file or the drive it was stored on. Which of those pieces you still have decides whether the wallet can be opened.

Before you try anything: copy the file and check the address

Copy the file first and keep the original untouched. Every attempt, yours or anyone else’s, should run on a copy.

Then check whether the wallet still holds anything. The file stores its public address in a field called ethaddr, and you can look that address up on Etherscan without the password and without moving any funds. If the ETH was moved out years ago, no password will bring it back, and no service can either.

Bought more than once? Buyers sometimes overwrote an earlier wallet file with a later one of the same name. Look for files with that name in different folders, emails and backups, and check the ethaddr of each one: the file you have may not be the one that holds the earlier purchase.

What you need for Ethereum presale recovery

Three things matter: the presale wallet file, the password or whatever you remember of it, and any private key you extracted from the file in the past.

The Ethereum presale wallet file

Every route except a saved private key needs this JSON file. You downloaded it when you bought, and the sale also emailed a backup copy to the address you entered. Besides the ethaddr address, it holds the seed in encrypted form, in a field called encseed. A presale wallet has no recovery phrase to fall back on: the encrypted seed exists only in the file and its copies. Preserve the original and work on copies.

The password or passphrase (or hints to it)

This is the password you set during the purchase. The Ethereum Foundation’s description of the sale mechanics calls it a passphrase and recommends a very strong one. It is not a BIP-39 passphrase or a seed phrase. Nobody holds a copy, and it can’t be reset. If you forgot it, everything you still remember about it, such as fragments, patterns and the keyboard you typed it on, becomes the basis of a search.

Private keys exported earlier

If you decrypted the file at some point and saved the private key, you don’t need the file or the password at all. Import the key into a compatible wallet and confirm that the address it shows matches the ethaddr in your file. Anyone who sees the key controls the ETH, so keep it offline and move the funds to a new wallet you created yourself.

The methods to recover an Ethereum presale wallet

The right method depends on what you still have:

• The JSON file and the password. The original route: software that reads the presale format decrypts the file with your password.
• A private key extracted from the decrypted file. A shortcut that skips the file and the password, if you saved the key years ago.
• Professional help. For a forgotten password, or a file that is damaged or only exists on a failed drive.

If you have the password but not the file, the file has to be found first, because the encrypted seed lives inside it.

Comparing Ethereum presale recovery methods

How to restore your Ethereum presale wallet with the JSON file and password

Because the format is now more than a decade old, you need software that specifically supports Ethereum presale JSON files. Here is the restore, step by step.

Step 1: Locate your presale wallet file. It is usually named ethereum_wallet_backup.json. Look in old emails, on USB drives and external hard drives, and in cloud backups. Searching your computers for .json files can turn it up too. Copy it before you do anything else.

Step 2: Choose software that reads the presale format. The presale file is not a standard Ethereum keystore file, so a generic JSON import may fail. MyEtherWallet reads it: in both its current web app and its version 6 offline package, the keystore option recognizes the presale format. Technical users have a second option in Geth, the Go Ethereum client: its command geth wallet import asks for the password and imports the presale account into Geth’s own keystore. Trust Wallet, MetaMask, Exodus and hardware wallets don’t necessarily accept the original presale file directly. Don’t use Mist either: it was declared no longer supported in March 2019. If you used Mist for later wallets, our Mist wallet recovery guide covers those.

Step 3: Open the JSON file. Never upload the wallet file to an unknown website or send it to anyone whose identity and security procedures you haven’t checked. MyEtherWallet itself advises against software access, which includes keystore files, while connected to the internet, and recommends doing it offline. For a wallet that holds substantial value, follow that advice:

• On an online computer, download the Offline.zip package from the last version 6 release on MyEtherWallet’s GitHub releases page. Version 7, the current one, has no offline feature.
• Copy the package to a USB drive, move it to a computer that stays offline, unzip it and open index.html in a browser.
• Choose “Access my wallet”, then “Software” and “Keystore”.
• Select your copy of ethereum_wallet_backup.json, enter your presale password and click “Access Wallet”.

On the current web app the same route is “Connect wallet”, then “Keystore”: select the file with “Select Keystore”, enter the password and click “Connect”. Type myetherwallet.com yourself rather than following a link to it. MyEtherWallet flags this online route as not recommended, because software access while connected to the internet increases the risk of the wallet being compromised.

Step 4: Unlock and verify. If the password is right, MyEtherWallet opens the wallet and shows its address. Check that it matches the ethaddr in your file. The offline version shows no balance, so check the address on Etherscan from an online computer. Then move the ETH to a new wallet you created yourself, with a fresh backup. From an offline setup, MyEtherWallet’s “Using MEW Offline” guide explains how to prepare the transaction online, sign it offline and broadcast it.

Complications while recovering an Ethereum presale wallet

Sometimes the software won’t let you in even though the file and the password seem to be there. A forgotten password has its own section below; these are the other causes to work through.

Corrupted, lost or deleted JSON files

Presale files go missing in two familiar ways. The computer that held the file was replaced or its drive failed, and no copy had been made. Or the only copy was the backup the sale emailed to you, and that email account was closed years ago.

Check every place a copy could have ended up before concluding it is gone: old laptops and external drives, USB sticks, cloud folders, and the mailbox of any address you used in 2014, including its archived and deleted mail.

A corrupted file is a different problem. A file that was damaged, for example one only partly recovered from a failing drive, may not load at all, or may not decrypt even with the right password. Open a copy in a plain text editor: an intact presale file is a short block of text with fields such as encseed and ethaddr. If those are missing or cut off, keep looking for another copy. Don’t paste the file’s contents into any website.

Technical and software issues: keyboard layouts and encoding

If you typed the password on a non-English keyboard in 2014, the characters the presale form received may differ from the ones you remember: accents, special characters and a changed layout all produce a different password from the one you think you typed. Type the password into a plain text field on the layout you used then (QWERTY, AZERTY or QWERTZ) and compare it character by character before you conclude it is wrong. Check Caps Lock while you’re at it.

Software is the other half of this. If a wallet app calls the file invalid, it may simply not read the presale format. Try software that does, as in step 2, before you conclude that the file is damaged.

Security breaches and phishing

Presale buyers have been targeted by phishing sites, fake recovery services and malware that steal email logins and wallet files. Anyone who holds your file and password can move the ETH, and once that transaction is confirmed, nobody can undo it. That is why the Etherscan check comes first: if the ETH already left the address, the problem is theft, not lost access, and Crypto Recovers cannot return stolen ETH. Be wary of anyone who contacts you offering to recover presale ETH, and never type your password into a site you reached through a link in an email or message.

Hardware and environmental factors

Physical damage, lost devices and failed storage media have made some presale wallets unreachable. Backup habits were less established in 2014, and some buyers kept a single copy of the file.

If the only copy was on a drive that has since failed or been wiped, stop using that computer or drive. Don’t reinstall or format it, and have it imaged before anyone tries anything else. A deleted or unreadable file can sometimes be recovered from the drive, but only if nothing has overwritten the data since, and on an SSD the TRIM function may already have cleared deleted data. Our page on a wallet on a broken computer or drive explains what to do first.

What happens if you forget your Ethereum presale password

Forgotten passwords have a simple consequence: the file stays encrypted until the exact password is entered, and there is no reset and no other key. You can still try likely candidates by hand, one at a time, on a copy of the file, because a wrong entry doesn’t normally lock or damage a presale wallet.

Start with a list, not with guesses. The Ethereum Foundation recommended a very strong passphrase. If you followed that advice, the password may be long and mix upper- and lower-case letters, numbers and symbols, perhaps built from personal details, dates or phrases that meant something at the time. Write down:

• the passwords you used for other wallets, apps and websites around 2014, since the presale one may have copied one of them;
• the symbols, dates, names and substitutions you tend to use;
• the keyboard layout and language settings you had then.

If a password you try is rejected, run through these checks:

• Check your keyboard settings. Caps Lock may be on, or the layout may have changed, for example from QWERTY to AZERTY.
• Check your password managers and the passwords saved in your browsers.
• Look through old notes, devices and files. Passwords do turn up in old notes, sometimes after their owners were sure they were gone for good.

Writing the list can bring the right password back. If it doesn’t, that list is the raw material for a search. Here is more about how to recover the password for a .json file.

Using specialized password cracking tools

Hashcat and John the Ripper are free, open-source password recovery tools that support Ethereum presale wallets. Hashcat lists the format as mode 16300, “Ethereum Pre-Sale Wallet, PBKDF2-HMAC-SHA256”, and can run on graphics cards (GPUs) as well as CPUs. John the Ripper’s jumbo version reads the same format through its ethereum2john script, which turns the presale file into a hash that the tool tests candidates against.

Both tools require technical knowledge and careful configuration. A useful search is built from targeted candidates, known patterns, dictionaries, rules and masks. Blindly trying every possible password is impractical once the password is long or complex. Download the tools only from their official sites or GitHub repositories, run them on a copy of the file, and keep that computer offline while you work: a “presale password cracker” from an unknown source can steal both the file and the password.

When to consider Ethereum presale recovery experts

The hard cases combine an old wallet with a missing piece: the password is gone, or the file only exists on a damaged drive, and the owner has no technical background. That is where professional crypto recovery comes in. If running a password search yourself is not your world, this is exactly the case we take.

Professional work makes sense in three situations, and each of them needs the file or the device that held it. The first is a forgotten password once your own candidates are exhausted: the search is then built from what you remember (the character types you favor, the keyboard layout you typed on, the words, dates and substitutions you used elsewhere in 2014) and run against a copy of the file. The second is a deleted file on a drive that still exists: the drive is imaged and searched for the file, which works only if nothing has overwritten the data. The third is a file that current software refuses to open.

Without the file or that drive there is nothing to search, and we’d rather tell you that now than after you’ve spent money on it. If you still have one of them, our Ethereum presale wallet recovery page explains how we handle these files, and our guide to finding a legitimate crypto recovery company explains what to check before you hand the file to anyone.

Crypto Recovers has done recoveries since 2019 and has 200+ recoveries behind it, on a no recovery, no fee basis. We never hold your ETH: if access is restored, you move the funds yourself to a new wallet you created, and you pay the agreed fee yourself, separately. If you’ve tried to open your presale wallet without success, contact us and describe what you still have, without sending the file or the password.

FAQ: Ethereum presale recovery

How do I recover an Ethereum presale wallet?

Recovery starts with the original presale JSON file, which holds the encrypted seed the private key is derived from. If you also have the password, compatible software such as MyEtherWallet can decrypt the file and you can move the ETH to a newly created wallet. If the password is forgotten, the route is a targeted search built from what you remember (patterns, dictionaries, rules and masks), run against a copy of the file. Without the file there is nothing to decrypt.

What information do I need to recover my ETH presale funds?

Three things help: the presale JSON file (usually named something like ethereum_wallet_backup.json), everything you can still describe about the password (length, character types, dates and names you used, and the keyboard layout and language settings you had in 2014) and any private key you may already have extracted from the file. A private key on its own can be imported directly into a compatible wallet. The password on its own is not enough, because the encrypted data lives in the file.

What happens if I enter the wrong presale password too many times?

Entering an incorrect password does not normally lock or damage an Ethereum presale wallet. Still, preserve the original JSON file and make every attempt on a verified copy. That protects the original data if software or hardware problems occur.

How can I verify that my presale wallet actually contains ETH?

The presale JSON file normally contains the Ethereum address in its ethaddr field. You can check this public address on a blockchain explorer such as Etherscan without decrypting the wallet or moving any funds. Never enter your password or private key into a blockchain explorer.

Can I recover my wallet if I only have the password but lost the JSON file?

The password alone is not enough, because the JSON file contains the encrypted data needed to derive the private key. If the file was deleted but the original storage device is still available, data recovery may sometimes be possible. Whether it works depends on the drive: data that has been overwritten, or cleared by TRIM on an SSD, is gone.

Can I recover ETH presale funds without technical expertise?

Yes, if the required recovery material still exists. With the file and the password, MyEtherWallet’s keystore option opens a presale wallet without any programming. Follow the current instructions for the software you use carefully. If the file, password or restore process is unclear, get technical help before experimenting with the only copy.

Is an Ethereum presale wallet file the same as a JSON keystore file?

No. Standard Ethereum keystore files, such as the UTC files Geth creates or a keystore file saved from MyEtherWallet, follow the Web3 Secret Storage format, with fields such as crypto and mac. The 2014 presale file is an older JSON format with different fields, such as encseed and ethaddr. MyEtherWallet opens both through its keystore option, but a wallet that imports standard keystore files will not necessarily accept a presale file.