How to Fix the 'Invalid Seed Phrase' Error

The "invalid seed phrase" error — MetaMask calls it an invalid Secret Recovery Phrase — almost never means your money is gone. It means the words you typed failed a maths check before the wallet even looked for a balance. Seed phrases are built with a built-in error detector: the last word is calculated from all the others, so one wrong or misplaced word makes the whole set fail. That sounds harsh, but it is the feature that stops you restoring a subtly wrong wallet and thinking the coins vanished.

What usually causes it?

Six things, in rough order of how often they turn up:

• A word that is not on the list. Phrases use a fixed dictionary of 2,048 English words. "Recieve" or "moonlight" is not on it, so the app rejects the line.
• Autocorrect. Phone keyboards quietly rewrite "abandon" or capitalise the first word. Turn off predictive text before typing.
• The order. Word four and word five swapped is enough. The wallet cannot tell you which one is wrong, only that the sum does not add up.
• Handwriting. Read back your own paper: a stray letter, a squeezed-in correction, or two words on one line read as one.
• Extra spaces or a wrong count. Phrases are 12, 18 or 24 words. Eleven words, or a double space that the app counts as a blank, both fail.
• Two phrases mixed. If you have written several backups on similar paper, half of one and half of another is a very common find.

How do you find the bad word?

Check each word against the standard list, offline, using the word-list viewer built into most wallets or a local tool — never a website that asks for the whole phrase. Most words on the list are identifiable from their first four letters, which makes bad handwriting easier to resolve than it looks. If you are confident about eleven words and unsure of one, a single word can be worked out by trying the candidates; that is an ordinary afternoon's patience, not a hack.

Type slowly, on a keyboard rather than a phone, with predictive text off, and try once more before assuming the backup is bad. If the app finally accepts the phrase but shows nothing, that is a separate issue — see restoring a wallet from a seed phrase — and the seven checks cover the rest.