Recovering Legacy Addresses

Legacy addresses can be recovered

With the upcoming Kiichain upgrade, wallet key handling is changing to support Ethereum-compatible tooling and address formats. This guide explains what's changing and how to recover your old wallets safely.

What’s Changing?

1. New Key Type

• Old Type: secp256k1

• New Type: eth_secp256k1

This enables Ethereum-compatible signatures (e.g., MetaMask, Keplr EVM support).

2. New Coin Type

• Old Coin Type: 118 (standard Cosmos)

• New Coin Type: 60 (Ethereum standard)

This changes the way addresses are derived from your mnemonic.

Recovering Existing Wallets

To recover old wallets (e.g., validator rewards wallets or delegator accounts) that were created before the upgrade:

kiichaind keys add <key_name> \
  --keyring-backend test \
  --recover \
  --coin-type 118 \
  --key-type secp256k1

• Replace <key_name> with your desired key name.

• Input your existing mnemonic when prompted.

Need to Check What Type a Key Was Created With?

Unfortunately, kiichaind keys list does not show the coin type. You’ll need to recall which mnemonic was created with which derivation path. To avoid confusion:

• Use clear key names like validator_old, wallet_eth.

• Document the coin type and key type when generating keys.