Cardano Daedalus ITN testnet: how to fix syncing issues

6 min readJan 27, 2020

In this article we will guide you through the process of how to fix your Daedalus wallet to successfully connect and sync to Cardano ITN testnet.

Version

First of all you must have the latest version which at the time of our writing is 2.0.1-ITN1. You can see the version at the top when opening Daedalus. Check official website for latest version of testnet ITN Daedalus.

This fixes work with 2.0.1-ITN1 that version and there is no guarantee they work with newer versions. Check official Daedalus known issues for general fixes.

At the top “Daedalus Incentivized Testnet v1 — Rewards (2.0.1-ITN1#3.1.0.10152)”

Switch client solution #1

You can temporary switch to Yoroi where you can restore your Daedalus wallet with 15-word recovery phrase and delegate from there. It is an official wallet from Emurgo which is one of 3 entities that run Cardano network. See our Yoroi tutorial on how to setup that. https://medium.com/@adapointpool/how-to-delegate-stake-your-ada-with-yoroi-wallet-dae9a0d30031

Syncing issues Daedalus solution #1

If Daedalus is stuck on the sync screen there is a high chance we must change the trusted peer list to which the wallet connects to. This is especially true for version 2.0.1-ITN1.

First close Daedalus!

2. This second step is for Windows users but should be similar with other operating systems like mac os x or linux, we just have to find Daedalus — Rewards v1 folder and file jormungandr-config.

We have to open jormungandr-config file on the drive you installed Daedalus. There are two options how to find it.

Right click the Daedalus — Rewards v1 shortcut and click Open file location

Search on the drive you installed the Daedalus wallet. Click the one with the folder icon.

3. Now you should be in your Daedalus — Rewards v1 folder if you used the first or the second method.

Daedalus folder with “jormungandr-config“ file

4. Select jormungandr-config file and copy paste it into the same folder so you have a backup copy of it. If something goes wrong you can just remove previous file and rename the copy to jormungandr-config and everything should work as before.

5. Right click jormungandr-config -> select “Open with” -> “Notepad”

6. Next go to https://adapools.org/peers. Here you can find the trusted peers to bootstrap your wallet. Scroll down as shown in the image and copy the input field.

7. Because the list is in YAML format we have to convert it to JSON before updating our jormungandr-config file. Lets do that next. Go to https://onlineyamltools.com/convert-yaml-to-json. This online tool will convert it into the appropriate format for you.

8. Paste what you copied from https://adapools.org/peers to the yaml input field.

Paste into the “yaml input” field, copy from “json output” field

9. Next you should delete everything that is in the square brackets(“[ ]”) after “trusted_peers:” in jormungandr-config file. Also remove the square brackets! We should have this file opened in the background in Notepad(or some other text editor if not on Windows); if not see the steps above.

10. Paste from the “json output” field from the image above after “trusted_peers”: in your text editor. After doing this your file should look something like this.

Compare your file with this reference image.

Note: Your “address”, “id” are different than in this picture and that is fine because this list is being updated and we copied the updated list from the internet.

10. You can check that your file formatting is correct and special characters position is ok if you copy & paste everything from jormungandr-config into https://jsonlint.com.

This should tell you if you have some typo or some special characters(“”{}[],) position is wrong! Really important. You can also compare your file with the image above.

If the page says “Valid JSON” continue else the message on the webpage should tell you what is wrong and you should modify your local jormungandr-config accordingly to fix the formatting issues. Else you can always retry the steps with your backuped file.

Should write Valid JSON if everything is OK

Syncing issues Daedalus solution #2

Other thing you can try is to upgrade two files that wallet is using which should dramatically shorten syncing times and add some stability .

1. Focus opened Daedalus folder. If you do not have it open see steps above on how to locate it. You should have jcli and jormungandr file in it.

2. Backup these files(jcli, jormungandr) renaming them to jcli.backup and jormungandr.backup.

3. Go to files release page https://github.com/input-output-hk/jormungandr/releases.

This flow shown here is for Windows. See Assets under v0.8.9. Version v0.8.9 is compatible with the current version of Daedalus 2.0.1-ITN. Download the jormungandr-v0.8.9-x86_64-pc-windows-msvc.zip file.

Download “jormungandr-v0.8.9-x86_64-pc-windows-msvc.zip” for Windows OS

4. Double click the downloaded compressed file. Extract the contents into the opened “Daedalus — Rewards V1" folder.

Extract jcli and jormungandr to “Daedalus — Rewards V1" folder

Fin

If your wallet still doesn’t start syncing you should try to restart it a couple of times. Remember to leave it running for half and hour to an hour. If still nothing you should re-copy peers from https://adapools.org/peers after some time has passed. The list is being updated regularly.

If this doesn’t work check official Daedalus known issues.

Further if nothing works you should submit a support request from within the Daedalus. Click “Help” -> “Support Request”. They are quite responsive.