I Restored My Wallet but the Balance Is Zero

You carefully saved your 25-word seed, you restore it into a wallet, sync finishes — and the balance reads zero. Your stomach drops. Take a breath: this is the single most common scare in all of Monero, and it almost never means your funds are gone. In the overwhelming majority of cases, the wallet is simply looking in the wrong place because of one setting: the restore height. This lesson explains what went wrong and how to fix it.

Your Funds Are on the Blockchain, Not in the App

First, the reassuring truth. Monero coins are never stored inside a wallet app. They exist as outputs on the blockchain, and your seed is the key that finds and controls them. Restoring a wallet does not "download" your money — it rebuilds your keys and then scans the chain to rediscover outputs that belong to you. If the scan does not cover the blocks where your funds arrived, the wallet honestly reports zero, even though the funds are sitting safely on-chain the whole time.

What Restore Height Means

When you restore, the wallet asks (or assumes) a restore height — the block number from which it should begin scanning. Its purpose is efficiency: there is no point scanning years of blocks from before your wallet ever existed. Set correctly, it saves a lot of time. Set too high, and the wallet starts scanning after your coins arrived — so it skips right past them and finds nothing. That is the classic zero-balance mistake.

Why a Too-High Restore Height Hides Your Money

Imagine your wallet received Monero at block 2,500,000, but during restore you entered a height of 2,900,000 — perhaps today's height, or a guess. The wallet only scans from 2,900,000 onward, never reaching the block that holds your funds. Everything looks broken, but nothing is: the output is still there, still yours. The wallet just needs to be told to look further back.

The Fix: Rescan From an Earlier Height

The cure is to lower the restore height and scan again. Depending on your wallet, this may be called rescan blockchain, rescan spent, or simply re-entering the wallet with a lower height. In general:

1. Find the restore height or rescan option in your wallet's settings.
2. Set it to a block at or before your first-ever deposit — if unsure, an earlier height is always safe.
3. Trigger the rescan and let the wallet scan forward from there.

When in Doubt, Use Height 0

If you have no idea when your funds first arrived, set the restore height to 0 (or the earliest your wallet allows). This forces a scan of the entire blockchain, guaranteeing that no output is missed. The only cost is time — a full scan can take a while, especially on a remote node. But it is completely safe and it always finds funds that exist. Many people set a rough earlier date and rescan; height 0 is the guaranteed-thorough option.

Be Patient — Rescanning Takes Time

A rescan from a low height means checking a large range of blocks, so it will not be instant. The balance may stay at zero until the scan passes the block where your funds arrived, then suddenly appear. Do not panic if it stays empty for a while; let it finish. A fast or local node speeds this up considerably — see Running or Choosing a Node. If the wallet seems stuck rather than merely slow, review My Wallet Won't Sync.

Confirm You Restored the Right Wallet

Before assuming anything is wrong, verify you restored the correct seed. The surest check is the primary address: a correctly restored wallet produces the same primary address as the original. If the address matches what you expect and it still shows zero, the restore height is the near-certain cause. If the address is different, you may have restored a different seed or mistyped a word — recheck your 25 words carefully. This connects to the recovery testing habit taught in Backups and Recovery.

Quick Recovery Checklist

• Do not re-send your seed anywhere. The seed is fine; only the scan range is wrong.
• Confirm the primary address matches your original wallet.
• Lower the restore height — to before your first deposit, or to 0 if unsure.
• Rescan and wait for the scan to pass your funds' block.
• Use a fast node to shorten the wait.

A zero balance after restore is a settings problem, not a loss — proof of how forgiving self-custody can be once you understand it. With your funds visible again, the next thing worth understanding is why some of that balance may still be locked right after arriving, which we cover in Locked vs Unlocked Balance.