Bitcoin Forum

I have an Electrum wallet and I successfully restored my wallet a few times now from the 12 word seed. My question is: what happens if something goes wrong with Electrum, what if they close down or just disappear for whatever reason and switch their servers off, what happens to my BTC then? Can I restore on another wallet using the Electrum seed?

No, Electrum uses a different (and superior) derivation scheme than BIP 39 so it's not possible to generate it on another wallet, however the Electrum source code is open so it's not possible for Electrum to completely disappear from the internet.
Also, you don't need internet access to access your private keys on Electrum, so you can always export your private keys from Electrum and import them into another wallet even if Electrum servers are shut down.

Not directly, since electrum does not use BIP39 to generate the mnemonic phrase.
But you can derive the master private key itself from electrums seed (with several code snippets available on github), which then is compatible with most wallets.



Why would you call it superior?

Both use PBKDF2-HMAC-SHA512 to calculate the seed out of the mnemonic.
The calculation of the checksum (BIP39: uses positions; electrum: uses HMAC) and the wordlist differ.

While electrum gives the ability to use a custom wordlist, it is not compatible with other BIP39 wallets.

So both have pro's and con's. But obviously none of them is superior.

In simple words if you want to know then it is that you cannot restore your electrum wallet on any other wallet. The only way is to take backup of the Private keys of the address you are using and store them. As with the private keys only you can access the same address on any other wallet.

The electrum seed is as superior as the betamax was to video tapes or like the SAE Combo electric car charger port.  They both suck because no one else supports the seed type.

i.e. I'd not touch electrum seeds for significant store of value because it is non-standard, standards allow users to choose the best wallet based on usability/features rather than being tied to their technology stack.

Don't get me wrong, I think electrum wallet itself is brilliant but there are now better alternatives like Trezor which do adhere to the BIP39 standard and reduce confusion in the community.  Electrum is making it harder to recommend them because they are non-standard.

So, this thread suddenly became "which has the superior mnemonic phrase" thread?  :P

No it can't be restored to other bitcoin wallets, but...
Don't worry, Electrum has a great number of userbase,
if the developers somewhat (unlikely) abandon the repo and delete all the related source codes,
[1] someone else will create an open-source recovery software, I bet.

And Bitcoins aren't stored in Electrum's servers or your hard drive, it was recorded by all of the nodes.
As long as you have the mnemonic phrase, lost most of the backups like wallet files private keys, etc., there's still a good chance to recover your private keys from the SEED alone even without the actual Electrum source code because repeat [1] (#post_).

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TL:DR: It's incompatible to other wallets.

yes, not directly but a slightly modified BIP39 tool can derive from electrum seed mnemonic just fine
I just need to change 2 lines of code on iancoleman BIP39 tool to make it work for electrum seed mnemonic

Electrum wallet itself is also compatible with BIP39 seeds... so while you can't generate a BIP39 seed within Electrum, you can still use a BIP39 seed (generated elsewhere) with Electrum to restore a wallet.