From: Eric Kvam <nerdyrugbyguy@gmail•com>
To: Bitcoin Development Mailing List <bitcoindev@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [bitcoindev] BIP39 Extension for Manual Seed Phrase Creation
Date: Fri, 23 May 2025 04:25:32 -0700 (PDT) [thread overview]
Message-ID: <a139ee2e-473c-487b-a9b0-e68013fdb7cen@googlegroups.com> (raw)
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*Motivation*
Make it easy for users to manually create their seed phrase so that they
don't have to trust a "black box" and allow for encoding derivation path in
seed phrase to simplify recovery
*How*
Use every eighth word from the wordlist to generate 16 word phrases with
128 bits of entropy (no checksum). The most significant eight bits of each
word are used as entropy. The least significant three bits of each word
specify the derivation path.
- *000* Derivation Path Not Specified
- *001* m/44'/0'/0'
- *010* m/49'/0'/0'
- *011* m/84'/0'/0'
- *100* m/48'/0'/0'/2'
- *101* m/86'/0'/0'
Up to seven derivation paths can be specified if all words have the same
least significant bits. If the least significant bits of each word vary,
there are 48 bits that can be used to encode meta-data. As long as
meta-data is limited to certain allowable values, this provides a mechanism
for error detection, similar to a checksum.
*Benefits of Suggested Implementation*
- The word length determines how the seed phrase should be interpreted.
User only needs to know how many words they have and how many words the
wallet supports to check for compatibility with this extension
- Uses same wordlist to represent the same entropy as a 12 word phrase
(could be a revision to BIP39 instead of a new BIP)
- Manual procedure is very simple, each derivation path can use a
shortened 256 word list which enjoys improved alphabetical separation of
words
- May prevent naive word selections which aren't limited to every eighth
word (similar to what checksum does)
- Can be extended further. For example, a 32 word phrase with the same
entropy as a 24 word phrase could also be added. We can keep adding
formats with unique word length and keep adding uses for the meta data as
needed.
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next reply other threads:[~2025-05-23 13:15 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 6+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2025-05-23 11:25 Eric Kvam [this message]
2025-05-23 14:29 ` Kyle Honeycutt
[not found] ` <09A940A2-122A-445E-82EA-1B4E32AC7E34@gmail.com>
2025-05-23 20:45 ` 'Russell O'Connor' via Bitcoin Development Mailing List
2025-05-24 12:33 ` Eric Kvam
[not found] <20250523131541.1521C7C0DB0@smtp.postman.i2p>
2025-05-24 20:56 ` pithosian
2025-05-25 14:26 ` nerdyrugbyguy
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