Case Sensitive custom Seed

[rogertb]

I was playing around with making a new wallet by restoring from a 32-character hex string and found that it is case-sensitive.  That kinda surprised me since I thought that the seed was just a big number.  Does it take a hash of that 32-char hex string or something?

[OmegaStarScream]

I was playing around with making a new wallet by restoring from a 32-character hex string and found that it is case-sensitive.  That kinda surprised me since I thought that the seed was just a big number.  Does it take a hash of that 32-char hex string or something?

Either I'm missing something or you are not talking about Electrum , what numbers man ? As far as I know seed is 13 words (not sure if you can change that) and the length of each word is random .

[rogertb]

I tested it again and it turns out that while it outputs the same seed, it gives different addresses.  I don't know why.

---------------------------

I start electrum.
I go to file New/Restore.
I choose to restore a standard wallet.
I enter  "1181F86F935A0064541EF354477F921D" into the box.
My seed is "about wrong since belief hurl flash very north lead drive paradise fact".

I repeat this procedure.
I enter "1181f86f935a0064541ef354477f921d" into the box. (Same as above, but lowercase.)
My seed is "about wrong since belief hurl flash very north lead drive paradise fact".

So the seed is the same, but when i check my addresses tab I have different addresses.

First Wallet receiving addresses:
12idacvvUzZ9HwJLQtUNMuYovgYxT9djvN
16Msu11MLTMLWUqPuPBkco5AXXZVgtXDzV
1A2cMiEnopXwqwAUWireFZ343joq1pJQuR

Second wallet receiving addresses:
15k7MBqJQEvHPXBQuGSeZ1wkyZoNAkGvmx
15Ej2msk15ZvfscPQSz9Ch5d7Vwy6ARABH
1JMecGKcJ7LTkxrSaip9rxq5WXspz2gZGP


Does anyone know why this happens?

[OmegaStarScream]

But why the hell you enter that weird code instead of the seed itself ? It make no sense . If you want to recover your wallet , you use the seed and not that weird thing you posted . how you got it on the first place ?

[rogertb]

I want to use the hex code because I'm trying to make an m-of-n backup of it with the ssss utility in TAILS.  If I use the standard 13 word seed I get a huge secret that I then need to write down on a piece of paper.  If I can use hex I get something like 1/4th as long.

If electrum had an m-of-n feature I wouldn't need it, but it doesn't so this is my only option.

Also I don't know if i can trust the initial entropy of a live TAILS without persistence.

[Abdussamad]

For OmegaStarScream and others who don't understand what's going: This is a legacy feature from back when Electrum wasn't HD. Back then seeds were generated differently and one encoding of them was in hex.

To rogertb obviously this is not working how it should. I don't think it is wise to rely on this old feature for a new electrum wallet. It has only been included for backwards compatibility with old wallets.

Electrum does have native m of n support. It's called multisig. I suggest using that instead.

If for some reason you need to create your own custom length seed then use the command line option for that. The new type of seeds cannot be crafted by hand. They have a checksum in them so it requires a computer to do it.

[rogertb]

I looked into the multisig, but it doesn't seem like it was really intended to work like that.

To clarify, I want to have a relative gain control of my funds if I die or something.  Right now I believe my coins are safe from attackers, but if something happens to me personally the coins are just lost forever.

With the electrum multisig I made a wallet, but I can't restore it with just 2 pieces of information.  It may be 2-of-3 in terms of signing the transactions, but is it 2-of-3 in terms of restoring the entire wallet?

If I wanted a 2-of-3 backup I guess I could make a 3-of-4 multisig, then give each relative the master seed with 3 xpub keys so in effect they have a watching-only copy.  Then treat the 3 respective xprv keys as the 3 shares needed to sign transactions and distribute them. Is that what you meant?  It wouldn't make much sense to do it that way though. It's way more cumbersome than using the 13 seed words electrum makes by default and passing it through ssss. Plus my relatives would then have to deal with a multisig wallet which is less intuitive than a standard one.

Also the commands on the website initially didn't work for me with electrum 2.6.  I had to add the options after "make_seed" for it to work.
So "electrum --nbits=256 make_seed" had to be changed to "electrum make_seed --nbits=256"
and "electrum --entropy=123456 make_seed" had to be "electrum make_seed --entropy=123456"
maybe double-check and update the webpage?

[Abdussamad]

With the electrum multisig I made a wallet, but I can't restore it with just 2 pieces of information.  It may be 2-of-3 in terms of signing the transactions, but is it 2-of-3 in terms of restoring the entire wallet?

It should be 2 seeds and 1 xpub. That should be enough to restore the wallet.

Ok so I just tried it and this is exactly how you would restore if you didn't have all the seeds. 2 seeds and one xpub. If you have just one seed then 1 seed + 2 xpubs would create a watch only wallet.

Also the commands on the website initially didn't work for me with electrum 2.6.  I had to add the options after "make_seed" for it to work.
So "electrum --nbits=256 make_seed" had to be changed to "electrum make_seed --nbits=256"
and "electrum --entropy=123456 make_seed" had to be "electrum make_seed --entropy=123456"
maybe double-check and update the webpage?

Thank you for that. I've corrected the page.