Bitcoin Forum

Author of the idea
https://twitter.com/EnteroPositivo

Convert your BIP39 mnemonic to colors and viceversa
https://enteropositivo.github.io/bip39colors/#biptocolors

Let's say you have a seed phrase, but I generated it on this service
https://iancoleman.io/bip39/#english

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I do not trust any services other than Excel. Don't do this in Google Sheets, I'm doing this as an example.
You can do this on any PC that is disconnected from the Internet


1. Write our seed phrase in this order
https://www.talkimg.com/images/2023/09/11/6XKTT.jpeg (https://www.talkimg.com/image/6XKTT)

2.Find word position in BIP39 word list:
https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0039/english.txt

3.We need to get 4 digits. In lines with less than 4 digits, we add the required number of 0s at the beginning to make 4 digits
https://www.talkimg.com/images/2023/09/11/6Xb1l.jpeg (https://www.talkimg.com/image/6Xb1l)

4.Combine all the digits into 1 large number and we get 48 digits.
141417021419067202161027060618531302116419490515   

5.Split this number into groups of 6 digits   
141417   021419   067202   161027   060618   531302   116419   490515    

6.A sequence number must be added to each group.
You can use a different step, for example 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07  or 00 02 04 06 08 10 12 14  or 00 03 09 .... and so on, but the main thing is not to forget this step. This is necessary when decoding and the important thing is that the colors do not need to be stored in a certain order, because the sequence number is encrypted in the color.
I use 00 02 04 06 08 10 12 14  to make the colors as distinct as possible.
https://www.talkimg.com/images/2023/09/11/6dTy8.md.jpeg (https://www.talkimg.com/image/6dTy8)

7.Next, convert the resulting 8-digit numbers to hexadecimal
8.If we have a 5-digit value, then add 0 in front
https://www.talkimg.com/images/2023/09/11/6dRMZ.jpeg (https://www.talkimg.com/image/6dRMZ)

8.Now finally, after a lot of work, you can add colors to your table.
https://www.talkimg.com/images/2023/09/11/6d6qf.md.jpeg (https://www.talkimg.com/image/6d6qf)


9. To check, you can use a converter and check the result. Use the script on a computer that is not connected to the Internet.

#022869 #1ED82B #3E0F82 #5E0283 #7AFECA #A0B1E6 #B8E1C3 #DD1B93

https://enteropositivo.github.io/bip39colors/#colorstobip39

https://www.talkimg.com/images/2023/09/11/6dmLD.md.jpeg (https://www.talkimg.com/image/6dmLD)

compares phrase seed
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I'm tired for today, if you're interested, I'll show you in the same format how to decipher colors in Excel.

This is a very simple and safe way to store your seed phrase. You can add these colors to any painting and it won't be noticeable.









   

color decoding
1. We use any convenient service
https://sanstv.ru/color#1ed82b
https://www.talkimg.com/images/2023/09/12/6HvuJ.md.jpeg (https://www.talkimg.com/image/6HvuJ)

2 Convert to decimal
3. Add 0
4. Put the numbers in the correct order.
I didn't change the order of the colors, but if you swap the colors, you will need to write them in the correct order according to your step, which you can remember.
5. Remove the first 2 digits
6. We get a sequence of numbers
141417021419067202161027060618531302116419490515
7. Divide the sequence into groups of 4 numbers
   1414 1702 1419 0672 0216 1027 0606 1853 1302 1164 1949 0515
8. Remove 0 if it is in front
9. Find words in the BIP39 word list

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https://www.talkimg.com/images/2023/09/12/6Hfob.jpeg (https://www.talkimg.com/image/6Hfob)

______
I agree with the forum participants that this is not an ideal way to save a seed phrase, but this method has the possibility of being used in practice with other options, such as a passphrase.
And secure storage should only be in digital format.

Problem number one - these colors are not standard, a fixed number of non-standard colors used together is already an easy to spot pattern. There more people use this method, the more hackers will look for this pattern. It's even trivial to write an algorithm that will analyze colors and find sets of these random colors and convert them back to seed.

Problem number two - colors can get corrupted. You draw a picture with these colors, save it in a lossy format, upload it somewhere and it might shift colors and render the seed unrecoverable.

I'm sure there's a lot of problems with this, like the most basic rule that there's no security by obscurity.

Isn't the same with what was presented in this thread? Storing Private Keys with Colors, how safe is this? (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5459371.0)

It might seem like a nice idea to you but as long as we're dealing with anything that has to do with my finance I'll never try something that has not been tested by others for a long period of time to see if it's reliable or not to store my Private Key, no offense but I'd rather store my Private Key in a steel plate and keep in a safe place rather than to try this.

Thanks for your opinion, I wanted to show how it works in Excel without unnecessary scripts.
I agree that if you know what to look for, you can find a pattern, although this is very, very difficult if there are a lot of photos. But we will use the passphrase in Trezor, Ledger or other hardware wallets.

You can use passphrase to extend your seed phrase to generate different keys and addresses which will be the keys and addresses with the high amount of bitcoin.

You can fund the seed phrase addresses generated without passphrase with little amount of bitcoin. Like $10.

If a strong passphrase is used for the one geneted with passphrase where the keys and addresses that controls the main coins are well funded, that is secure. Having the seed phrase backup in two or three different locations is enough while the passphrase should have different backups.

I think this will be a mistake. Such coincidences are unlikely, and therefore the scoundrels will torture you to find out your passphrase.


Paintings by the Artist Kandinsky are ideal for encrypting seed phrases. :)
https://www.talkimg.com/images/2023/09/12/6uPFv.md.png (https://www.talkimg.com/image/6uPFv)

Many problems with this method that is complicated than needed.

With a traditional method, write down seed phrase. If you make a typo, you can check it more easily than with color. With colors, you can not differentiate them with your eyes and even printing does not display a color exactly as it is.

Your table has many columns, what will happen if you lose one of those columns? The printed colors are not trusted because of ink and printing machines.

Using a traditional method, writing down a seed and save your backup safely is good enough.
If you are fearful of physical damage like water, fire, pressure, acid, use metal plates, ...
Securing Your Seed Phrase with Washers (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5389446.0)
Crypto Security - Additional Protection For Your Seed/Private Keys. (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5230920.0)
[LIST] Bitcoin Seed Backup Tools (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5263482.0)

I would simply write the seed phrase too. Some daredevils among us would also make use of the BIP39 password but personally I am terrified at the prospect of losing the password to decrypt the seed.

I have already forgotten some shorter passwords to some smaller wallets with $5, $10 in them I made months ago, but fortunately I had written down the seed phrase beforehand so I just moved them elsewhere. The ones that I do remember are permanently burned into my brain. I never put my wallet passwords inside any password manager. I used to use a super strong GPG encryption with a long password but I deleted all of those because I had never used it and also for opsec reasons.

With BIP39 passphrase, you are not encrypting the seed phrase, you are only extending the seed phrase with additional characters, including space to generate different keys and addresses. It is only useful like encryption but it is not encryption.

If you can backup the seed phrase in two or three different locations, you can also backup the passphrase in two or three different locations. Memorizing the extended word is not accurate at all, do not depend on your brain than offline backups, backup the extended words separately in different locations.

How to back up a seed phrase (https://blog.lopp.net/how-to-back-up-a-seed-phrase/)
Bitcoin Q&A: Why is Seed Splitting a Bad Idea? (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5nSibpfHYE)

If seed splitting is a bad idea, using color to back up seed is another bad idea or more terrible idea.

But you will keep the names of the words of words digitally, and here you will risk, as the hackers can guess that they are wallet seeds or choose a color far from each other so that their output can be distinguished, but I do not think that is possible.
I tried to extract the colors from the image I attached and see what I found.

https://www.talkimg.com/images/2023/09/12/6HS6G.png
https://www.talkimg.com/images/2023/09/12/6HZVD.png

It's a very complex steps to follow with all those random colors to choose from and I do find the idea fascinating due to its aesthetic view when concluded but I don't think I will want to risk my assets for fascination.

A steel plate method of safe keeping my keys will just do fine as it's simple and at same time safe with it's durability as a steel plate method. But for those who will want to give it a try, they should try it with random key words after a mastery then they can make use but with little funds just to be sure they are good at time .

This has been talked about before, and it is an awful idea. It adds multiple steps of unnecessary complexity, where the mistyping of a single character could render your back up useless and mean you lose all your coins. You cannot save or print any images using the colors, since a change in format may change the color, and printing and scanning it back in will definitely change the color. This means you are limited to either backing it up electronically which is unsafe, or writing down the hex codes, which defeats the entire point and is riskier than just writing down a seed phrase.

In short, don't use this. If you need extra protection for your seed phrase, then your options are passphrases or multi-sig.

If you think this is a good idea, then give it a try :D

Just create two or more back up plan, one is you save your seed phrase in HEX color and then the another one is a classic write down your seed phrase in a piece of paper, wait after 1 years or more when you're completely forget about your seed phrase.

Try by yourself, is the color still give a same HEX code? will you able to access your wallet?

Personally I wouldn't do this because it's risky.

This seems like an overly complicated method with many chances of making a mistake, and no benefits at all. It's not as if you can print the colors and find back the exact HEX number later.

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It reminds me of another project I started more than a year ago: "100 dots" ! I never completed it (due to the lack of clean sheet metal), but it's time to post it (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5466510.0) :)

An interesting concept but I feel like it adds a lot of complexity and use of a computer. I am reminded of a saying "complexity is the enemy of security" and this seems like a lot of complexity that will potentially lock you out of your wallet while also opening up a lot of attack vectors.

I think the best way is to stamp words into steel and use a passphrase. If you're super paranoid, you can use multisig.

I like to see fun projects like this and to better understand how encoding data works across multiple mediums but I think the best way is to reduce complexity and to me, the simplest way is stamped into stainless steel or titanium.

I see what the author is trying to achieve with this however I like to keep things simple and less complicated, even though this is just a fun experiment, I would never try to convert my seed phrase to a piece of rainbow x 2. I will keep my phrases, as phrases and I recommend you all to do that too. And sure, you can enjoy this by trying it on a new wallet or a throwaway wallet. Also, someone recommended that the best way to keep your phrase save is steel and I can confirm that.

First time I hear about colorSeed , looking interesting but very complicated and we have to go through many step to get it. Not easy and not fir everyone especially when one have more more wallets than one. Multisig is best choice to save wallet safely. I am using this method for saving so that if my phrase leaked, I hope no one will able to access my wallet.

My own Method for Hiding key:

Let suppose This is key I want to hide
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I will add three extra words to make it 15. First one after three words, second after 4 words, third after three words.

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Now ti become more complex, I will change the place of one word

fault start rally dutch radar brain leopard entry obey travel pencil multiply release vicious doctor

I think , now it is safe and accessing to the fund will not easy, what do you think about this method?

I've seen many topics from people who don't remember how to access their Bitcoins 10 years later. You may end up being one of them some day.

No , don't worry I will not be among these because I have written all phrase in hard copy in two places and written all methods too which i will used to recover. The above method is just to save phrase online for accessing fast in case i out of my city.

That opens up a whole new can of worms.

This is incredibly dangerous.

There are 455 ways to pick 12 words in the same order from the 15 words you have given. For each one of those, there are 132 ways to swap two words. This gives a total number of possibilities of just over 60,000. My not particularly powerful hardware at home can test BIP39 seed phrases at around 100,000 per second, meaning I could crack your method in under a second.

Even if you assume the attacker just wants to pick 12 words in any order from the 15 you have given, that's still only about 218 billion combinations. I could break that in less than 13 days on average, and an attacker with good hardware could do it in hours.

You shouldn't save your seed phrase online ever.

There is nothing simple about this, and let me explain why.
I don't like the idea of using color for this because it's not universal solution that is working for everyone.
First thing I thought was about Color Blind people ^{(1 in 12 men are color blind, or about 8%)} that simply don't see some colors, but even people with normal eyesight can interpret same color differently.
Even monitors need to be calibrated to show each color correctly, and to calibrate exactly you need special devices, that is another spin ball in this experiment.
Maybe they people can remember color codes, but that is way more complicated for anyone to remember.
I would never use this myself.

Color-blinded or normal, people eyes can not see slight differences among many colors. Electronic devices even can not scan all colors and recognize them exactly.

Remember seed phrase with words is more easily and more memorable than remember color codes.

Seeing the colors is irrelevant. Even someone with perfect eyesight cannot pick out the difference between this color or this color or this color or this color, and yet all four have different hex codes and therefore would generate different seed phrases. The hex codes must be backed up, which is more difficult, more time consuming, and more error prone than just backing up a seed phrase in the first place.

You shouldn't be remembering anything, hex codes or seed phrases. Relying only on your memory is risky and unsafe. Just write down your seed phrase on paper and store it somewhere safe, like every good wallet tells you to do.

I used a tool to extract the HEX code of colors, and out of 8 colors, I obtained 4 colors that were extracted correctly and with the same HEX code, two colors with a different HEX code in the last number, and two colors with a completely different HEX code.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5466467.msg62832538#msg62832538

This method does not require all HEX code to be correct, this is 6/8, but I did not print it and tried to extract the colors using the phone camera, which may produce more errors, not to mention all the complications.

OP, i like the whole process but it is time consuming and complicated to achieve. All this process just to keep your seed phrase secured, If this is the only way yo back up seed phrase, then i believe that newbies wouldn't have access to their wallet anymore, if they forget their password or change of phone because they wouldn't have all the knowledge and create out time to try it. Colors are hard to duplicate exactly how it is, because there will be a slight difference in it.  it is better to use the writing of seed phrase on papers with three backups in different places or on a steel plate, as this way is very easy for a beginner or for someone who can read or write. Let one not be over securing his wallet and unknowingly to him that he is creating more than way to loss his funds.