What level of entropy can the average adult human comfortably and confidently hold in their head?
We all know that even 12 bip39 words are too much and cannot be reliably memorized over very long time periods.
What would be a comfortable amount of bip39 words? 6?
I'd argue that whether or not the level of entropy can be held comfortably in your head is an arbitrary metric. There will always be tradeoffs between convenience and security. Sooner or later the general public will need to accept that it's in their best interest to get over their own complacency and accept that their security is more important than a level of convenience that lends to outright laziness.
It's an important metric when designing securiry solutions to make them fit for human capabilities.
Replacing every authentication challenge from a password to a 512 bit key might sound good on paper for security but in practice it would just make people rely on physical security keys and backups which can get lost or stolen.
A password has the benefit that is something you know, not something you have.
If we could use radom keys as passwords, that would be the best of both worlds imo.
The more incovinient a setup is, the easier it is to make mistakes. Most cyber criminals have very good opsec, but their impratical setups cause them to make mistakes 1 time when they are in a rush and that is usually enough to get them.
7±2 is what most people can easily retain with no training
Wondering how that changes when you commit 12 words to a melody.
Almost everyone retains dozens of nursery rhymes and hundreds of song lyrics in their head.
I get that the rhyming schemes help, but I also think about stage actors that can retain vast passages of Shakespeare in their heads and recite back, word perfect.
I can recite back the American pledge of allegiance, even though I haven’t spoken those words in decades. 🤔
12 words should be easy for most people if turned into a story
If the words are correlated they are not truly random, thus the real entropy would be lower.
The words and numbers can be correlated with a random melody.
Why would they be correlated? You can make a story out of any words
