How to Restore Tezos ICO Coins Using the Tezbox Wallet

Tezbox
4 min readFeb 20, 2021

Introduction

The Tezos ICO was one of the most successful crowdfunding campaigns in crypto history. More than $200 Million worth of cryptocurrency assets were invested in the Initial Coin Offering of Tezos. Even after several years, there are still many investors who never claimed their ICO coins. These tezzies are waiting to be activated, baked, and included into the blockchain.

This article will describe how you can claim your ICO Tezos coins and restore your fundraiser wallet through the Tezbox online client. Before we begin, ensure that you have your Fundraiser PDF at your disposal because you will need the information stored in that document to recover your Tezos account.

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Required Information from The Fundraiser PDF Needed to Restore an ICO Wallet:

· The 15-word recovery phrase/seed.

· The exact email address used during the ICO registration process.

· Your public key (a string of letters and numbers that begins with tz1).

· The password you used on the ICO website. This password is not included in the Fundraiser document and is only known by the investor. If you underwent KYC verification, please don’t confuse the ICO password to any password you might have used when creating your account to undergo KYC.

· The activation code you received if you completed the KYC verification.

Please Note: Don’t mistake the public key or password to your account’s private key. The private key is not required during the restoration process, and it needs to stay private!

Suppose you are unsure whether you participated in the Tezos ICO or not, or you don’t know how many Tezos coins you are owed. In that case, you can check the official Tezos fundraiser website and find out. Just enter your public key hash on the provided line and click on the Check button.

If the address contains Tezos coins, you need to undergo KYC verification to proceed with the restoration process.

The KYC/AML Process

All ICO contributors need to complete an identity verification process on https://verification.tezos.com/ to get their hands on their tezzies. Register on the site by entering a valid email address and select a strong password. Read and agree to Tezos’ privacy policy and the TOS and click on the Register button.

The identity verification procedure can take several days, so please wait patiently. When it’s completed, you will receive an activation code that you need to restore your ICO wallet.

How to Activate an ICO Wallet?

There are different ways to activate an ICO/fundraiser wallet. You can do it during the Tezbox account restoration process, or you can activate it before that thanks to the activaꜩ tool. The activaꜩ tool can only be used by investors who have completed their KYC process.

1. Go to https://stephenandrews.github.io/activatez/ and read the explanation of what the tool does.

2. To activate your ICO wallet, enter your public key hash into the provided field.

3. Enter the activation code you received after completing the KYC verification.

4. Click on the blue Activate button.

If the entered data is correct, your ICO coins will become visible on the Tezos mainnet. To check if the activation worked, open a block explorer such as tezblock or TzStats and enter your public key hash. Again, please ensure that what you enter is the public key and not your private key. You might need to wait a few minutes before your Tezos coins become visible on the public blockchain.

Restore Your ICO Wallet on Tezbox

After successful KYC verification and account activation, it’s finally time to restore your wallet. We are going to use the Tezbox online client for that purpose.

step1: go to https://wallet.tezbox.com

1. Go to https://wallet.tezbox.com/#!/new.

2. Click on Restore existing account.

3. Click on the first tab — ICO/Fundraiser Wallet.

4. Enter your seed, email, public key hash, and password in the corresponding fields. Since we already activated our account in the previous step, you can leave the Activation code field empty. If you didn’t activate your wallet previously with the activaꜩ tool, please also enter your Activation code.

5. Double-check to see if the information was entered correctly and make sure there are no double spaces between your seed words or any wrongly spelt words.

6. Click on Restore account.

7. In the final step, you need to enter a password to encrypt your wallet. Once you confirm your password, you will gain access to your wallet and see the correct Tezos balance.

I Can’t See My Balance in Tezbox, What Do I Do?

step1: go to https://wallet.tezbox.com

If your Tezbox account shows a 0 balance, there might be a synchronisation problem with your wallet. To fix it, click on your account profile on the top right and go to Settings. In the RPC Address field, enter the following address: mainnet-tezos.giganode.io.

Click on the back button and refresh your account. Log out and log back in to synchronise with the blockchain. You should be able to see the correct balance after that.

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