How to recover crypto you accidentally sent to the wrong network address (2024)

So you bought some coins on an exchange and tried to send them to your TrustWallet app, or wherever.

Problem is, the coins you bought on the exchange weren’t actually on the native network, they were ERC20 tokens. And your TrustWallet address of course is on BSC, or whatever.

Therefore, your coins are gone.

Insanely, the exchange marked the transaction as complete, and Etherscan also says the transaction is complete. There is literally no indication anywhere that anything is wrong, save the fact that you haven’t received the coins in your TrustWallet.

This is the state of crypto UX right now.

God only knows how many coins are out there, frozen in mismatched network carbonite.

Now this method is not always possible, especially with the more obscure coins. But if the coins you lost are a relatively big name with support on multiple wallets, then I think there is a pretty good chance you can recover them, no matter how long ago you made this mistake.

I recently recovered funds that I thought had been lost for well over a month.

Thankfully, I saved my screenshots and the link to the etherscan transaction page.

That trail of info was very helpful when I went back to recover my coins.

Step 1:

Confirm which network that the sending address is on.

Step 2:

Confirm the network that the receiving address is on.

Step 3:

Now that you’re clear on that, there are slightly different processes for different situations.

Situation A:

You sent an ERC20 token to an ERC20 address, but the wallet of the receiving address did not support the particular coin.

For example, you sent some $RAINBOW from Metamask to your ETH address on Exodus (which, as of this writing does not support $RAINBOW).

In this case, you need to get the seed phrase of the wallet you sent the coins to (Exodus). If you don’t have the seed phrase, you can find it in the settings of most wallet apps. This is key. There’s no retrieving the coins without the seed phrase of the receiving wallet.

Once you have that, you will recover the funds using another wallet app.

Find a wallet that supports your coin and network. Metamask is currently the wallet that supports the most coins.

Go to https://metamask.io/download.html

Download Metamask and restore the wallet using the 12-word phrase.

Now that you have restored your wallet to Metamask, add the desired token.

Boom, you should see your coins.

Situation B:

You sent coins to an ERC20 address that were not ERC20 coins. This is a super common mistake for BSC/ TrustWallet users.

In this case, you follow the same steps as above, but then you connect Metamask to BSC.

Once you are connected, you add the desired token to your BSC network.

Boom, you should see your coins.