Visually Memorable Seed Phrases – Bitcoin Stack Exchange

Can you help me improve my thinking on the points below?

A cryptocurrency (e.g. Bitcoin) private key is a 256-bit number (a series of 256 digits that are all 0s or 1s).

Private keys are typically derived through a one-way hash from a randomly generated 24-word Bitcoin BIP39 mnemonic seed phrase (human-readable).

Sample seed syntax:

decade lobster engine jar matter life forum rule push stay slab manual pretty inflict future spare veteran voice biology problem glass derive bind enable

All words come from the following 2,048 word list: https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0039/english.txt

When constructing a seed phrase using BIP-39’s list of 2,048 words, each word adds 11 bits of entropy to the phrase, making a 24-word seed phrase enough bits (264 bits) to securely encode a 256-bit private message. Guaranteed to include . Enter the key with an 8-bit checksum.

One of the cool features of cryptocurrency is that you can control your wealth through knowledge of your private keys, no matter where you are, what border you cross, or which company is dominant in the world.

Most people (except those who deposit their cryptocurrencies at exchanges that store their private keys) use a hardware device like a Ledger to manage their private keys, accessing them with just a short PIN they can remember for convenience.

However, if your hardware device is lost or damaged, that PIN is useless. The only way to “recover” your assets is with your private key (or some version of it with a 24-word seed phrase).

So people use https://cryptosteel.com/ to try to find ways to back up that seed phrase, such as burying it in an undisclosed location or putting it in a safe deposit box.

But I imagine that part There are (relatively few) people who want to memorize their seed phrase and there is no physical or digital evidence of it anywhere.

I have never heard of someone trying to memorize a 24-word phrase.

This is like trying to memorize 24 two-word pairs because you are actually memorizing the words and their positions in the list.

This is very difficult to do when words come randomly from a huge list of all types of words (nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc.).

You’ll probably need the skills of a world-record memorization expert.

theory:

You can create more memorable seed phrases by using ten five-word phrases instead of twenty-four two-word pairs. However, the phrase is more visually and viscerally memorable (based on a story you can make up yourself).

Inspired by https://genius.com/Christmas-songs-the-twelve-days-of-christmas-lyrics. Twelve three-word phrases (e.g. “5” “golden” “ring”, “4” “call” “bird”, “3” “French” “hen”). The approach I’ve come up with so far is to think of the list of 10 people as a gift to 10 people.

The five syntax parts are:

• quantity
• color
• agenda
• Nationality of recipient
• recipient’s occupation

Then your “seed phrase” will be very visual.

The tool generates 10 labeled images.

The partial proof of concept below is not what it seems.

The fourth image in the following example contains four drill icons, a Brazilian flag, and a coach icon.

Memorizing 10 five-word sentences with pictures is still a daunting task.

And most of us won’t even try.

But I’m curious part People will really appreciate this.

To get enough entropy you need:

• 10 sentences
• 40 colors (most popular)
• 400+ objects
• 137 countries (countries with highest GDP)
• 40 jobs

If you see any issues (security or otherwise) with my approach, please let me know.

If people think this might be useful, I’d like to finish what I started and share it.

PS If you define a “brain wallet” as a seed phrase determined by a human (rather than randomly generated with high entropy), then this is not the case.