monero-site/knowledge-base/user-guides/view_only.md
2017-03-07 11:00:34 +01:00

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static_page View Only Wallets Creating a view only wallet icon_userguides <!-- Icon is based on work by Freepik (http://www.freepik.com) and is licensed under Creative Commons BY 3.0 -->

A view-only wallet can only see which incoming transactions belong to you. It can not spend any of your Monero, in fact it can't even see outgoing transactions from this wallet. This makes view-only wallets particularly interesting for

  • Developers writing libraries to validate payments
  • End users validating incoming transactions to cold wallets

Creating A View-Only Wallet

You can create a view-only wallet from any existing wallet.

Open an existing wallet or create a new one using monero-wallet-cli. In the wallet, type address and viewkey to display the wallet's address and secret viewkey. Type exit to close the wallet.

Next, create your view-only wallet by typing monero-wallet-cli --generate-from-view-key wallet-name. The last argument will be your new wallet's file name. You will be prompted for Standard address and View key by the wallet. Paste in your original wallet's address and secret view key. Next, enter and confirm a password for your new wallet and you're done.