Exporting Descriptor Wallet from Bitcoin Core

[BTC4life69]

Hiiiii. Is there a way to export a descriptor wallet in Bitcoin core? Apparently you can’t dump private keys. Also the descriptor wallet checkbox is checked by default when creating a wallet so I unknowingly created one rip

[casey]

Hiiiiiiiii. Copy-pasted from this great answer by Andrew Chow on Bitcoin Talk:

Descriptor wallets do not allow dumpprivkey because the fundamental principle behind descriptor wallets is that private keys are not enough information to transport a wallet. Private keys lack derivation information and lack information about what kind of scripts to create. They also do not work for wallets that have anything more complicated than just single key scripts. Thus allowing a RPC that only outputs private keys would be working against the point of having descriptors.Instead of dumpprivkey, descriptor wallets have listdescriptors. This will output all of the descriptors stored in the wallet, which means that it will include information about derivation paths and scripts to create. Descriptors are a full backup of the key and script information stored in the wallet. With 23.0, listdescriptors will also be able to optionally output descriptors containing private keys.

I think you want bitcoin-cli listdescriptors true to print the descriptors, with the true argument making it include the private keys in the descriptor.

[BTC4life69]

Hey this ends up giving long list repeating “descriptors” “time stamp” “active” “ range” and “next” then repeating. Don’t see any mention of private keys and unsure how I would import the wallet into a new pc from there

[BTC4life69]

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/zv39gy/how_to_import_descriptor_wallet_bitcoin_cli/ seems like a relevant thread but unsure what conclusion it came to

[BTC4life69]

maybe importdesciptors and then paste "desc" strings .... just weird because everyone talks about private keys but now its seems like bitcoin core is trying to push this descriptor wallet that uses a different name/method ?

[BTC4life69]

where/how do you run "bitcoin-cli listdescriptors true"

[nick07002]

this is what I was looking for. good answer and references. ty