I am missing (not seeing) a transaction to (in) the GUI (zero balance)

Question

I withdrew from Kraken / Poloniex / Bitfinex / Poloniex / any other exchange or service (e.g. Shapeshift) and I am not seeing the transaction in the GUI. How do I resolve this issue?

Answer 1

First and foremost, to put your mind and ease and to verify that your transaction was correctly sent to your address, use this guide to verify your transaction:

How do I, as a recipient, verify that my transaction actually arrived?

It should show that you have one output with output match? = True for the amount you expect to receive. If this checks out, you can proceed with the rest of the guide.

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It's important to make sure you're running the latest version (v0.18.1.0 at the time of writing). You can check the version # on the Settings page of the GUI (under Debug info). If you're not running v0.18.1.0, please upgrade first:

How do I upgrade my software to the newest version?

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The following assumes you're using a local node

First, you can check whether you are using a local node by going to the Settings page and looking at the daemon address. It should state localhost (or 127.0.0.1) with port 18081.

Now, the most common "problem" is that people are not fully synced yet or their GUI wallet is erroneously stating that it's fully synced. If you're not fully synced yet, the GUI will not be able to "see" your transaction. To confirm your fully synced, perform these steps:

[1] Go to the Settings page of the GUI.

[2] Go to the Log tab.

[3] Type status into the command + enter (e.g. 'help' or 'status') box.

[4] An output will be displayed that looks like:

Height: 1456425/1456425 (100.0%) on mainnet, not mining, net hash 290.20 MH/s, v6, up to date, x(out)+x(in) connections, uptime xd xh xm xs

Where x is simply an integer. For example, you could have 8 outgoing connections and 2 incoming connections. The Height can be explained as follows. The first number is the height you (personally) are currently on, whereas the second number is the top height (most recent block on the blockchain). The first number can be lower than the second number if you haven't completed the initial sync yet.

[5] Now to verify that you're actually fully synced, compare the first number to the height displayed on a blockchain explorer like, for instance, XMRchain. You're fully synced if your height matches the height displayed on a block explorer.

[6] If the GUI is stating that you're fully synced (100.0%), but your height doesn't match the height displayed on a block explorer (and is off by a large number), it is erroneously reporting that you're fully synced. This is, fortunately, easily resolved as follows. First, exit the GUI and make sure to stop the daemon as well. Second, restart the GUI + daemon. Third, use the status command to verify that it's now correctly displaying the top height.

[7] If the GUI is correctly stating the top block height, but is stuck on a particular block, perform these steps. First, exit the GUI and make sure to stop the daemon as well. Second, restart the GUI + daemon. Third, use Show status to verify that it's now syncing past the block it was stuck on.

[8] On the 9th of March (block 1788000) a scheduled network upgrade occurred. If you are still running a v0.13 version, you can be reasonably certain that you're on the wrong (alternative) chain. Intuitively, the GUI will not be able to see a transaction sent to your wallet if it's on the wrong (alternative) chain. Fortunately, this is easily resolved by following this guide

Note that after the daemon is fully synced, the wallet will start refreshing. In addition, in Monero, there's two "syncs". First, the blockchain sync, which is basically downloading the blockchain from other nodes / peers. Second, the wallet sync, which is the wallet "refreshing" / scanning blocks looking for transactions belonging to your address / wallet. You should see your funds once both syncs have been fully completed.

Now, if you're fully synced, the wallet fully refreshed and you don't see your funds yet, perform these steps:

1. Exit the GUI, but keep the daemon running.

2. Browse to the directory your wallet files are located (Documents\Monero\<wallet-name> on Windows | home/<username>/Monero/<wallet-name> on Linux | Users/<username>/Monero/<wallet-name> Mac OS X).

3. Rename <wallet-name> (the file without extension) to <wallet-name>-old

4. Restart the GUI. This will trigger a wallet refresh from scratch, which shouldn't take longer than 30 minutes.

5. Once it states Connected (in the left bottom) you should see your funds.

Still not seeing your funds? Your wallet may, for some reason, have an erroneous Wallet creation height. You can resolve this as follows:

1. Go to the Settings page of the GUI.

2. Go to the Info tab.

3. Change the Wallet creation height to 1940000

4. This will trigger a wallet refresh from scratch, which shouldn't take longer than 30 minutes.

5. You should see your balance once it completes.

Still not seeing your funds? It might be that a small part of your blockchain is corrupted and it's, coincidentally, the part that contained your transaction. Perform these steps:

1. Go to the Settings page of the GUI.

2. Go to the Node tab.

3. Switch the wallet mode to Remote node

4. In the address box enter node.moneroworld.com

5. In the port box enter 18089

6. Click in another empty box on the page to ensure your settings are properly saved.

7. Again browse to the directory your wallet files are located (Documents\Monero\<wallet-name> on Windows | home/<username>/Monero/<wallet-name> on Linux | Users/<username>/Monero/<wallet-name> Mac OS X).

8. Rename <wallet-name> (the file without extension) to <wallet-name>-old2

9. Restart the GUI. This will trigger a wallet refresh from scratch, which shouldn't take longer than 30 minutes.

10. Once it states Connected (in the left bottom) you should see your funds.

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The following assumes you're using a remote node

If you're using a remote node, you're basically using someone else's public node / blockchain. Therefore, it's unlikely that an uncompleted sync is the issue. Thus, perform these steps:

1. Exit the GUI.

2. Browse to the directory your wallet files are located (Documents\Monero\<wallet-name> on Windows | home/<username>/Monero/<wallet-name> on Linux | Users/<username>/Monero/<wallet-name> Mac OS X).

3. Rename <wallet-name> (the file without extension) to <wallet-name>-old

4. Restart the GUI. This will trigger a wallet refresh from scratch, which shouldn't take longer than 30 minutes.

5. Once it states Connected (in the left bottom) you should see your funds.

Still not seeing your funds? Your wallet may, for some reason, have an erroneous Wallet creation height. You can resolve this as follows:

1. Go to the Settings page of the GUI.

2. Go to the Info tab.

3. Change the Wallet creation height to 1940000

4. This will trigger a wallet refresh from scratch, which shouldn't take longer than 30 minutes.

5. You should see your balance once it completes.

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If you, after all these steps, still don't see your funds (but verified with this guide that they were correctly sent to your address), it'd be best to either open a new issue the GUI repository or contact me on Reddit.