I have a Windows 10 PC, a Rewards wallet that had been in use for several months, and I am a Brave Verified Creator. I recently had to reinstall Windows, but I had the foresight to make sure that I had saved the Wallet passphrase to LastPass so that I could restore my balance with the Import button. (alas, I forgot about my bookmarks, but that’s a different sob story)
When I reinstalled Brave and plugged in my passphrase, I only had the previous month’s payout in my Wallet. 100BAT of savings were gone.
It’s unclear to me whether the passphrase I saved was actually just my “Verified Creator” balance, or whether the passphrase is only intended to support the previous month of transactions, but I sure wish I’d known I would lose those BAT when I was looking at the export screen!
Hi @alterquin, thanks for reaching out.
When you say ‘passphrase’, you’re referring to the Recovery Key, correct?
If so, the recovery key won’t back up grants, only pending earnings and self-funded BAT. There’s no way to get your grant BAT back.
Yes, when I click the settings gear in Brave Rewards and it opens the Manage Wallet modal.
You know, the one that says “backup”, followed by a unique recovery key passphrase, followed by this helpful descriptive text:
You can always use this key to get your wallet back if something happens to your browser or computer. But make sure to protect it — anyone who gets this key could steal your wallet.
Should it maybe be more clear that even though my “wallet” looks like it has 120 BAT in it, that that’s not actually what will be backed up?!? The words “only pending earnings and self-funded BAT” are literally nowhere to be found – there’s no support article about wallet backup, either
@Aa-ron, I’ve attached a picture of the only thing in the entire browser that a person could reasonably identify as their “Brave wallet”. Imagine a screenshot that looks just like this one, except that the number is something like 119. There’s no delineation of “recoverable” vs “irrecoverable,” and when you click that settings gear there is no warning of the possibility of importing even 0.01 BAT less than the number the user can see on the previous screen. It is unacceptable to set users up to throw away money because of, what, a UI “mistake”? Laziness? Non-communication between departments? I’ve used this browser for months and the modals have all looked like this the entire time, and that is far too long to be misleading your customers in this way.
If my wallet recovery key hasn’t changed in 6 months, and if Brave is logging payments to individual wallet-identities as I believe is required for tax purposes, and if I am able to verify that I am the same user (because I am also a Verified Creator), then why is it not possible to restore my previous payouts? Does this currency mean anything or can the equivalent of ~$20 real US dollars just disappear into the void because of Brave’s inadequate and misleading UI? I would have emptied my wallet if there was even the slightest suggestion that I would need to. That is money that could have been spent.
