Bitcoin Forum

Given Multibit HD is going to support up to 24 words...it would make me sleep a little easier if Electrum has this option as well....

There are 340282366920938463463374607431768211456 possible seeds based on 12 words. Why would you want to increase the difficulty remembering these words for only a smidge of added security.

maximum bitcoin security is "only" 160 bits of security.
Electrum already gives you 144 bits. 

We could increase to 160 with 14 words.  No need for 24.

With more, you can add in some error detection and even error correction.  That could be nice.

However, in using words a good bit of human brain error correction is already being leveraged.

care to elaborate?  error correction?

Electrums 12 word seed actually encodes a huge huge number. However, if a user gets it wrong, they're not sure if it's a typo or what. There should be a way to ensure seeds can be checked for errors. So usually, this means create a checksum of the seed, put it to the end, and encode it using the wordlist too.

That way, if the words are entered but checksum doesn't match, there's a problem. Exactly like bitcoin addresses.. This is done using a flavor of BIP0039 anyway.

Also, the wordlist is meant to be chosen in a way that the first 3 letters oh eahc should be enough to confirm if the word is on the list or not.

I've been looking forward to a wallet with HD support, since electrums was meant to be out months ago...

i think the 'checking if words are in the electrum dictionary'
is more valuable than the checksum, because its more
likely you will mess it up that way, plus you can see if
the seed was "in the directionary" but wrong, by the balance.

is anyone implementing the word check?

if I could put it this way

the option would be nice.