If you want to stop by our Discord it's easier to help you troubleshoot. I can make some guesses here, but I'd probably need to ask you some questions to narrow down the reason.

Since you asked about the daemon not starting--did you confirm that the daemon is not running on the VPS side? If you're not sure, check with something like:

ps -ef | grep phored

If it is not running, the only result will be the command above, but if it is running then it would also list a line for the running daemon along with whatever parameters it was run with.

If the daemon won't run, that is the issue and we need to solve the underlying reason. Again I can't be sure without more information. How did you install the masternode? Using the VPS script, or some other method? I'd suggest looking in the debug.log file and seeing what error messages that may contain. Check the .conf file to make sure it has all the proper values including a valid masternode private key.

If the daemon is running on the VPS, then probably the next thing to check is that all the values match between the masternode.conf file in the wallet and the VPS--correct IP address and port, matching MN private key, and the correct, unique masternode collateral TX ID and index.

You can DM me here if you'd like, or find me on Discord or Telegram and I'm happy to help further.