Wallet Balance is 0 After Restoration

Problem

After restoring a wallet using the 12-word Daedalus wallet recovery phrase, the wallet balance is showing as 0 ADA and the wallet is not showing any transaction history either. 

Cause 

An incorrect recovery phrase will restore a different wallet which has a 0 balance and no transaction history. 

Solution 

1. There are many, many possible combinations of the 12 words used in the 12-word Daedalus wallet recovery phrase. The order and the words both have to be an exact match with the original 12-word Daedalus wallet recovery prase in order to get access to that same wallet.  

You must use the correct 12-word Daedalus wallet recovery phrase words in the correct order. Although this sounds obvious, based on experience at the Technical Support Desk people make mistakes with this frequently, with disastrous results.  

2.  Wallet name and spending password have nothing to do with restoration. Wallet name & Spending passwords are not stored on the blockchain and play no role in the process of restoration. The wallet name and spending password that you enter in the recovery process are applied to your wallet after it has been restored and they are applied only on that very instance of Daedalus (on that machine). If you install Daedalus on another machine you can restore the same wallet (same 12-word Daedalus wallet recovery phrase) and give it a completely different name and spending password.

3. If you enter your 12-word Daedalus wallet recovery phrase in reverse order, for example, it could still be a valid 12-word Daedalus wallet recovery phrase (BIP-39 mnemonic) and thus Daedalus will be able to restore it BUT this will not be the same wallet as this is a completely different 12-word Daedalus wallet recovery phrase.

Tips:

1. It is a common mistake that a user created more than 1 wallet and have different recovery phrases.
2. If you remember the day you created the Daedalus wallet you are trying to access, you could search in the trash on your machine or pictures on your smartphone just in case you kept a screenshot. Many of our users find that they can access their wallet this way.  
3. You can check the words that you have against the list of words that Daedalus uses, see Using the BIP39 Wordlist to Check Your 12-Word Daedalus Wallet Recovery Phrase