Gap limit electrum

[MMM]

Noticed addresses started appearing in red. So I understood it some thing called gap limit.
So i understand it is safe to use them but if restoring i will have to do something to make electrum find those addresses?

[Strider1973]

You mean an address in the "receive" field with a light red background?
That just means that the address has been used (but it can be used for additional payments to it of course).

Or do you mean an address in the "History" tab? Then it's an outgoing transaction.

[MMM]

yes, this red background.
i am not sure it means it was used. cause it's a new address just generated.

[Sherlock]

It is not a problem.
Gap limit is de facto just a "display option". It is limiting the amount of addresses shown.

From the same seed electrum will always generate the same amount of unlimited addresses. Just the wallet software has a problem to compute and show them, so any wallet has something like the gap limit, so the wallet loads fast. The higher is the gap limit, the slower is the loading. That is the whole problem.

You do not understand probably fully what is the seed or in broader sense a cryptography. Seed is really like some seed of a plant stuffed with DNA. ANd from theat DNA always grows the same plant (wallet with the identical adddresses). There are no mutations!

[Sherlock]

You mean an address in the "receive" field with a light red background?
That just means that the address has been used (but it can be used for additional payments to it of course).

"Used" address is a term in crypto for an address that received and SENT coins. Address that received some coins, but never sent them out, is not called "used". It is simply an address with balance. I am saying this not to confuse some other things.

The best practice for privacy (yours and others) is to not use both used addresses and funded addresses. Just generate more of them in the wallet.

[MMM]

Than you.

You do not understand probably fully what is the seed or in broader sense a cryptography. Seed is really like some seed of a plant stuffed with DNA. ANd from theat DNA always grows the same plant (wallet with the identical adddresses). There are no mutations!

No, the predetermined part i did know and also that it's not lost, but worried that will have to jump through hoops in case i need to recreate it.

[Sherlock]

Look I did not want to sound wiseass-ish. I just know my own brain and I had similar question to myself about gap limit and addresses and in fact I realised on this gap_gap_limit problem how the cryptography works and it is much simpler than I thought in fact.

If a person understands how the cryptography/seed works then there simply can not be any jumping through hoops with generating more addresses.

(Assuming that you know how to make the gap limit higher with wallet.change_gap_limit manual command in console.)

You can simply (in safe airgapped environment) take your precious loaded seed. Copy it to another empty electrum. See the same addresses. Raise the gap limit and see the additional addresses.

When you are in it you can actually, just take the XPUB from the original electrum and put that to electrum and even the XPUB can generate all the addresses and this is how it should be done as the most safe way. Because XPUB (itself derivated from seed) is something like a castrated seed. It can generate only public keys = addresses. It can not generate private keys = you can not send coins with XPUB. So this is a way how to make watch only wallet (but with unlimited addresses).

Because IIRC the derivation from seed comes in 2 steps. First from the seed is derivated XPUB (and XPRIV). Then from XPUB are derivated the addresses. Always the same addresses.