Ethereum Pre-Sale Wallet — Hashcat Mode 15700
TL;DR — Ethereum's 2014 crowdsale produced 'pre-sale wallet' files in a unique format combining scrypt KDF (N=262144, r=8, p=1) with AES-128. These files are highly valuable today (ETH appreciated thousands of times since the crowdsale price). Recovery is genuinely expensive due to scrypt's memory-hardness but commonly attempted given the value at stake.
Pre-sale wallet history
The Ethereum genesis crowdsale (July-September 2014) sold ETH at ~0.0007 BTC each. Buyers received wallet files in a JSON format encrypted with their chosen password.
Many buyers haven't touched these wallets in a decade and forgot the passwords. Given ETH appreciated to thousands of dollars per coin, these wallets often hold substantial value, justifying significant recovery effort.
Why scrypt makes this expensive
scrypt's parameters (N=262144, r=8, p=1) require ~256MB of RAM per password attempt. This memory-hardness throttles GPU parallelism — modern GPUs can verify only thousands of candidates per second per card vs millions for SHA-based KDFs.
Multi-GPU recovery against pre-sale wallets is compute-intensive but feasible for typical 8-12 character human passwords.
Realistic outcomes
Pre-sale buyers tended to use memorable passwords (this was 2014, password manager adoption was lower). Patterns: birthday-based, themed words, common phrases. These are recoverable.
Strong random passwords were less common in this user demographic — but they happened. Run a free check to assess your specific case.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is presale recovery so much in demand?
Is scrypt unbreakable?
Can I do this myself?
Related references
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