Litecoin.watch wallet discovery experiment — release 2026-09-27.2

What ran
Core 0.21.5.8 on fresh Windows regtest with outbound networking disabled: 14 assertions, two controlled payments (2 and 3 regtest LTC), an older and refreshed backup, an imported key with no rescan, a scan starting after the payment, then a complete available-chain scan. A candidate signed by the recovered key was accepted and mined on regtest.
Electrum-LTC 4.2.2.1 signed Windows executable, every command offline: 7 assertions. Fresh native seed restores prepared 20 receiving addresses. The source was manually extended to index 35. A fresh restore prepared 20, then an explicit gap setting of 40 reproduced index 35 and signed a verified message. No Electrum server or live history discovery ran.

Reproduction
The complete versioned source repository is linked from https://litecoin.watch/wallet-recovery/#reproduction. It includes a runner, this release, the previous recovery release and confirmation-archive control tests.
For this release alone, use Python 3.10+ and verified binaries. Rename the .py.txt downloads to .py. Keep the public fixture alongside the scripts.
python recovery-discovery.py path/to/litecoind.exe path/to/litecoin-cli.exe core-result.json
python electrum-discovery.py path/to/electrum-ltc-4.2.2.1.exe electrum-public-fixture.json electrum-result.json
Core creates its own temporary datadir and chooses a loopback port. It does not accept an existing wallet or datadir. Electrum also creates fresh synthetic wallets. The Core process is stopped in the script's finally block. Test wallet files remain in OS temporary directories; they contain only synthetic material.

Authentication
Core Windows daemon SHA-256: 7430c6d0d4cb59d355361a0b90ffbfc4ac725609483e04c242bf95372cc9b8fe
Electrum Windows executable SHA-256: bfd3ab25c6cb19b79fe2da4c97592b7ee56e056dd77f7b7866b403b6b21c4a0b
Software signatures and release provenance were checked in https://litecoin.watch/uploads/research/wallet-recovery-20260927/provenance.json. Authenticate downloads against upstream keys, not only this website's hash.
Pinned release sources:
https://github.com/litecoin-project/litecoin/releases/tag/v0.21.5.8
https://electrum-ltc.org/
https://github.com/litecoin-project/litecoin/blob/v0.21.5.8/src/wallet/rpcdump.cpp
https://github.com/pooler/electrum-ltc/blob/4.2.2.1/electrum_ltc/wallet.py

Expected results
Core balances by stage: source 5; old backup 2; old backup after full scan 2; refreshed backup 5; imported key with rescan disabled 0; scan starting after funding block 0; full available-chain scan 3. These are different wallet copies/stages, not a time series of an investment.
Electrum prepared address counts: source initially 20, manually extended 36, fresh restore 20, configured wider range 40. Exact index-35 address must match the published synthetic fixture result. Timings, Core generated keys, txids and whole result hashes vary across independent runs.
Do not sum these assertions with earlier experiments as a recovery success rate. No real mainnet coins moved. No seed-only Core recovery, pruned-node recovery, clean-node chain download, mobile or hardware wallet tested. Gap 40 was an experimental setting, not a recommendation for an unknown real wallet.

Licence and review
Original observations and diagrams: CC BY 4.0. Our scripts: MIT. Third-party software retains its own licences. Prepared with AI assistance and actual executable tests; no independent human review claimed. Never fund the public fixture. Cite release 2026-09-27.2 and https://litecoin.watch/wallet-recovery/#discovery. Report reproducible discrepancies at https://litecoin.watch/corrections/.