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Bitcoin => Bitcoin Technical Support => Topic started by: chainofzee on June 01, 2020, 12:25:19 PM



Title: Seeds
Post by: chainofzee on June 01, 2020, 12:25:19 PM
hi,

why isn't it possible to use a seed generated in a specific wallet in another one?
Aren't they all generated by the same method? (BIP39)


Title: Re: Seeds
Post by: Rath_ on June 01, 2020, 12:31:11 PM
Aren't they all generated by the same method? (BIP39)

No, Electrum for instance, uses their own method (https://electrum.readthedocs.io/en/latest/seedphrase.html?highlight=bip39) which they introduced two years before BIP39 was released. You can import a BIP39 seed in Electrum, though.


Title: Re: Seeds
Post by: chainofzee on June 01, 2020, 12:33:26 PM
Aren't they all generated by the same method? (BIP39)

No, Electrum for instance, uses their own method (https://electrum.readthedocs.io/en/latest/seedphrase.html?highlight=bip39) which they introduced two years before BIP39 was introduced. You can import a BIP39 seed in Electrum, though.

Thanks :)


Title: Re: Seeds
Post by: bob123 on June 01, 2020, 12:44:18 PM
Besides electrum, all reputable wallets do use BIP39.
All of these mnemonic codes are compatible with wallets supporting them.

If you are looking for compatibility within different wallets, go for a BIP39 mnemonic code (i.e. generate them not using electrum but a different software wallet).
Electrum lets you create BIP39 mnemonics too, but its easier to just use a different wallet to create it.


Title: Re: Seeds
Post by: chainofzee on June 01, 2020, 12:52:26 PM
Besides electrum, all reputable wallets do use BIP39.
All of these mnemonic codes are compatible with wallets supporting them.

If you are looking for compatibility within different wallets, go for a BIP39 mnemonic code (i.e. generate them not using electrum but a different software wallet).
Electrum lets you create BIP39 mnemonics too, but its easier to just use a different wallet to create it.


Thank u :)
based on the new decisions and changes they've made, i will definitely move to another wallet.
is there an alternative u suggest for the desktop?


Title: Re: Seeds
Post by: hosseinimr93 on June 01, 2020, 12:59:33 PM
based on the new decisions and changes they've made, i will definitely move to another wallet.
is there an alternative u suggest for the desktop?
I recommend you to use iancoleman (https://iancoleman.io/bip39/) for generating a seed phrase. iancoleman will give you a seed phrase and several addresses.
Then you can import your seed phrase into Electrum. (No need to import the wallet into Electrum as long as you don't want to spend your bitcoin. Just keep your seed phrase very very secure.)
This way you will have a wallet with BIP39 seed phrase in Electrum.

If you want to import the wallet into Electrum:
Go to Electrum and create a new wallet, select "I already have a seed" and enter your seed phrase. When importing your seed phrase, click on options and check "BIP39".
You must select the correct script type when importing your wallet into Electrum.
Select "Legacy" if the addresses iancoleman give you starts with 1. Select "native segwit" if they start with bc1 and "p2sh-segwit" if they start with 3.

Note: For your security, use iancoleman offline.


Title: Re: Seeds
Post by: bob123 on June 01, 2020, 03:11:23 PM
is there an alternative u suggest for the desktop?

Electrum is fine. It offers quite a lot of nice features.
If you don't want to use the electrum mnemonic, you can just use another wallet to generate it and import it into electrum.

But if you are looking for another wallet, Wasabi (https://github.com/zkSNACKs/WalletWasabi) is a nice one.



I recommend you to use iancoleman (https://iancoleman.io/bip39/) for generating a seed phrase.
[...]
Note: For your security, use iancoleman offline.

I wouldn't recommend this.
I generally wouldn't trust any javascript with crypto-related operations.

Using a desktop wallet, which uses your OS's RNG relatively directly is better than relying on javascript libraries.


Title: Re: Seeds
Post by: BrewMaster on June 10, 2020, 05:11:50 PM
OP has provoked the following question. Whether it is reasonable for a prudent head to have the same SEED on different wallets? Sure, that is a measure to take down  the  overhead of the wallets management but at once  not at its shiniest to the  safety of the  funds. The last sentence  is in a way my sort of answer to OP.

there is absolutely no reason to do something like that in real world. you will never find any design that needs the same set of private keys in 2 exact places at the same time.
the real world applications are either private keys (which is the seed) in one place, usually offline; and the public keys (the extended pubkey) in another place as a watch only wallet.
or in some complicated scenarios like a company with different layers, an exchange,... you may see extended "child" private keys but no the master key itself. and even the children are still in one place not multiple.