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Creating initial seeds in Sparrow with #passphrase is straightforward because the option to create a seed with or without a passphrase is visible before you generate the seed. On the Bitbox, however, this option is not readily apparent. Is it accurate that you can start with an old initial seed created without a passphrase and then add a passphrase to this existing seed ex post? It seems that you can choose to add a passphrase through the "manage device settings" menu, but this is only possible if the wallet was initially set up already without a passphrase. After confirming and unplugging the device, then replugging it, you are prompted to enter a "new" passphrase with still referring on the old seed (obviously). If you enter a passphrase that has never been used before, does this mean that the old seed is now associated with this new passphrase, resulting in a completely new wallet?

#asknostr #bitcoin #nostr 🧡💜

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Discussion

FreeYoda 4mo ago

What happened to that train 😳

BankSith 4mo ago 💬 1

Passphrase accident?

FreeYoda 4mo ago

😁 still curious...

Any passphrase creates an new wallet in combination with the seed phrase active.

It can creat basically 'limitless' new wallets in combination with one seed.

I think it is max 128 character long so that is pretty 'limitless' in my mind...

BankSith 4mo ago 💬 1

I am not fluent in cryptography so just as I thought, you can create a passphrase on an existing, old seed, right? I initially thought you can only create passphrase wallet in tandem with the seed itself in the same moment similar to sparrow.

FreeYoda 4mo ago

A wallet is basically a device/SW that keeps an overview of your unspend transactions UTXO's and the private keys to be able to proof you are the owner of those UTXO's.

The while set of those UTXO's and PK's is derived from your unique set of characters.

That set of characters can be your set of seed words or a set of seed words extended with a passphrase.

The are all seeds, 12 or 24 words out of a predetermined list, with or without an extension of 1 to 128 characters...

For the deterministic wallet, we all use those, it doesn't make a difference:

A deterministic wallet is a system of deriving keys from a single starting point known as a seed. The seed allows a user to easily back up and restore a wallet without needing any other information and can in some cases allow the creation of public addresses without the knowledge of the private key. Seeds are typically serialized into human-readable words in a seed phrase. The BIP 0032 standard for hierarchical deterministic wallets is used by all good wallets as of 2019.

The Daniel 🖖 4mo ago

You left out an important detail. You do need more than just the seed phrase to recover funds from a deterministic wallet. The derivation path is also critical to locating your UTXOs. You can think of it as a treasure map to locate the funds. Without that, there’s a lot of guesswork required, and potentially lost funds if the wallet isn’t following a documented standard. It’s very important to note the type of software and hardware used to generate the wallet to avoid a panic situation where a wallet appears to contain no funds, when actually it’s just missing the instructions to locate them.

Relatively Irrelevant 4mo ago 💬 1

A good implementation and documentation for passphrases is Coldcard.

https://coldcard.com/docs/passphrase/

Using passphrases makes it possible to generate approximately 5.9 × 10197 different wallets based on your original seed words.

Passphrases must be:

- No longer than 100 characters.

- ASCII characters only (no accented letters)

- Upper case letters

- Lower case letters

- Numbers

- Symbols

FreeYoda 4mo ago

How did you derived 5.9 × 10197 ?

ASCII has 128 symbols.

With 100 allowed that would give 128^100 combinations and that is without all combination using less than all 100 characters.

Relatively Irrelevant 4mo ago 💬 1

It’s an excerpt from the Coldcard article I linked to. They didn’t explain how.

I imagine it is the number of combinations 100 ASCII characters can produce, but that’s just a guess.

FreeYoda 4mo ago

Aha:

5.9 × 10^197 is already a number I can better agree to.

Plain cooy/paste gives 5.9 × 10197 😁

Relatively Irrelevant 4mo ago

Let’s ask nostr:npub19canpmsgykwumm43uxmp0l5sernavvnrf87mau9a6xnjfx6ajjhsh9qj29

Momo 4mo ago

To be honest, I don’t know because I haven’t played around with BitBox.

But this might help: find the fingerprint of the original wallet you create and note it down. (Your Bitbox must have it, even if it does not, Sparrow shows the fingerprint to you once imported.)

Then add the passphrase through the mechanism you just described which seems as clunky as fuck to be honest 😂

Then check the fingerprint of the new wallet to see if it has changed or not. The next time you turn on the device, check which fingerprint is shown. Whichever fingerprint it is, you can easily tell which wallet is loading by default.

Feel free to give me a call if you have any problem doing this check. Would be more than happy to help ☺️

Bitpower 4mo ago

The passphrase is an ephemeral addition to the seed, never stored by the signing device or "wallet". The reason most wallets do not present this up front is because it is very prone to user error, unlike the seed itself, or less so with the seed itself since the wallet stores it on the secure chip and can therefor be recovered later.

NokSuKao 4mo ago

Yes, you start with an initial seed and add a passphrase. Yes, every new passphrase represents new wallet.

https://blog.bitbox.swiss/de/optionale-passphrase-vorteile-und-risiken/

NokSuKao 4mo ago