What Is Panic Mode?
Panic Mode is MovingWallet's emergency evacuation feature. If you have reason to believe your wallet's seed phrase is compromised — you've seen an unauthorized transaction, someone may have accessed your recovery phrase, or you've been phished — Panic Mode helps you move your most valuable assets to a safe address as quickly as possible.
Panic Mode is not a full migration. It prioritizes speed and value over completeness. It focuses on your highest-value assets and generates the fewest transactions needed to protect the most at risk.
When to Use Panic Mode
Use Panic Mode if:
- You see an outgoing transaction you did not authorize
- You suspect your seed phrase has been exposed (visible on screen in a recording, stored in a compromised location, etc.)
- You received an unexpected contract approval for all of your tokens
- You have been targeted in a social engineering or phishing attempt and you interacted with a malicious site
Do not use Panic Mode for a routine wallet migration. Use the standard migration flow for planned moves.
Before You Start — Critical Prerequisites
You need a safe destination address ready. This means a wallet you have not yet used, whose seed phrase is written down on paper and stored securely, and which has not been connected to any website. A hardware wallet (Ledger, Trezor) that has never been used is ideal.
If you do not have a safe destination address, create one first. Do not use another wallet that may share a seed phrase with the compromised one.
Step 1: Open MovingWallet and Select Panic Mode
On the main screen, click Panic Mode. You will see a warning screen explaining the scope and limitations. Confirm you have a safe destination address ready.
Step 2: Connect the Compromised Wallet
Connect the wallet you believe is compromised. Yes — you are connecting the potentially compromised wallet. This is necessary to sign the outgoing transactions. The alternative is to do nothing, which is worse.
Move quickly. If an attacker is active on your wallet, every second counts.
Step 3: Enter Your Safe Destination Address
Enter the address of your safe wallet. Verify it carefully — triple-check the first 6 and last 6 characters at minimum. This is not the time for mistakes.
Step 4: Review the Panic Plan
MovingWallet generates a compressed migration plan that:
- Prioritizes assets by estimated USD value
- Minimizes the number of transactions (batches where possible)
- Reserves just enough native token for gas on remaining transactions
- Skips low-value dust below a configurable threshold
You will see a list of assets sorted by value, with the plan to move each one. Review it quickly.
Step 5: Execute Immediately
Panic Mode skips the full simulation step (simulation takes time). Basic validation is still run, but the priority is execution speed.
Sign each transaction as fast as you can. Your wallet will prompt you for each one.
Step 6: After Evacuation
Once you have moved your highest-priority assets:
- Revoke all token approvals on the old wallet using a tool like Revoke.cash or Etherscan's token approval manager
- Do not use the old wallet again for anything valuable
- Do not fund the old wallet — if you receive tokens there in the future, treat it as a hot wallet with no security guarantees
- Check whether any connected dApps have unlimited approval to the old wallet address
- Report the incident to the relevant platforms if you were phished
Limitations
- Panic Mode cannot move staked assets with lock-up periods
- It cannot cancel pending transactions already submitted on the compromised wallet
- It does not revoke token approvals — you need to do that separately
- Bridge steps still take real time (bridge wait periods)
- This is not security advice — if assets have already been drained, MovingWallet cannot reverse transactions
Not Financial Advice
MovingWallet is a tool. It cannot guarantee asset safety, prevent all losses in a compromised scenario, or reverse on-chain transactions. Use it as one layer of a broader security practice.