Personal seed phrase

[Z-tight]

When creating a new bitcoin wallet, the network generates our seed phrase for us which we are expected to back up and protect, and i do not think anybody memorizes their seed phrase as it was not formed by them and will be hard to remember.
1. So i want to know is it possible for me to create my own personal seed phrase to make it easy for me to remember it and maybe i may not have to write it down.
2. What wallet can i do it with, or will any wallet support me to make my own seed phrase.
3. Has anybody done something like that and what was the experience, is it risky?

[1713888979]

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[1713888979]

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[Charles-Tim]

The best is to let your wallet generate the seed phrase, the seed phrase is generated through series of processes which will make you generating yours off hand not possible as it will most likely not a valid seed phrase.

Seed phrase are called mnemonic but it is as best not to even try to trust on your memory, you may forget it at anytime, there are other reasons that this is not recommended at all (I mean memorizing seed phrase generated by HD wallet). Having like two or three backups is the best, having it in different locations.

3. Has anybody done something like that and what was the experience, is it risky?

No, not possible. Although, you can generate your seed phrase yourself but not in a way you will have to be the one that will choose your own seed phrase12 to 24 words. And instead of generating seed phrase from scratch by tossing a coin and writing down the binaries, it is better to use a reputed wallet that can do it for you and also generate the corresponding keys and addresses for you.

[mocacinno]

To set the record 100% straight: the network is not generating your seed phrase...

The network doesn't know you exist, your wallet does not have to contact the network to generate a seed, it generates the seed by itself... You can (and should) even do this on an airgapped offline machine, so you're sure the network doesn't know your seed!

Theoretically you could potentially pick your own (bip39) seed phrase, except the checksum... So you could potentially pick the seed by hand and use (or write) a small tool to know which checksum needs to be added... However, this is a horrible idear... Really... The human mind isn't good at randomness. If you pick a seed phrase by hand, you can rest assured others will have the same idear sooner or later, and you'll lose your funds!

[LoyceV]

you could potentially pick the seed by hand and use (or write) a small tool to know which checksum needs to be added... However, this is a horrible idear...

You can create many seed phrases from your wallet (let's use Electrum), until you find one that works well for you to remember. This way, you still have a properly generated random seed phrase that won't easily be guessed by someone else, and you can end up with words that are easier for you to remember. It's tricky though: after not using it for a wile, chances are you forget some words.

[o_e_l_e_o]

1. So i want to know is it possible for me to create my own personal seed phrase to make it easy for me to remember it and maybe i may not have to write it down.

Yes, it is possible. No, you shouldn't do it. If it is easy to remember, then it is easy to break.

2. What wallet can i do it with, or will any wallet support me to make my own seed phrase.

You can't do this with any wallet because of the checksum requirement. I'm not going to link to sites or tools which will let you do this because it's such a bad idea.

3. Has anybody done something like that and what was the experience, is it risky?

It is incredibly risky. You will be significantly reducing the entropy of your seed phrase and leaving your wallet and all your coins vulnerable to theft. Further, memorizing the seed phrase is an almost guaranteed way to lock yourself out of your wallet in the future.

There is a good reason that every half decent BIP39 wallet generates seed phrases for you and tells you to write them down on paper. Trying to come up with your own solution always ends with problems.

[Charles-Tim]

It's tricky though: after not using it for a wile, chances are you forget some words.

I am very sure someone can be using wallet but not concerned about the seed phrase. This is what I realized about myself, what I did recited daily when I was young till now I did not forget. When I got to like 16 years, I memorized some contents and I recited it daily for like a year, after some months gone without reciting it again, my memory failed me, today now after many years passed, I bearly know a single word from the whole contents now. Seed phrase is not even what we can be reciting. Someone can think he has known it and never recite it again, the person will later forgot it but thinking he knows it until it become an issue of coin loss. Like you meant, it is tricky.

Yes, it is possible. No, you shouldn't do it. If it is easy to remember, then it is easy to break.

My first post will be completely useless if someone can create his own seed phrase with his own words, and I will remove it. I know someone can generate seed phrase from scratch, but it is possible for the person to specifically choose his own 12 to 24 words himself? I think that is what Z-tight meant.

[o_e_l_e_o]

My first post will be completely useless if someone can create its own seed phrase with his own words, and I will delete it. I know someone can generate seed phrase from scratch, but it is possible for the person to specifically choose the his/her own 12 to 24 words?

Absolutely. All the words do is encode entropy. You can absolutely pick your own 11 or 23 words, if you then have a method of calculating the correct checksum for those words and using that to pick one of the valid 12th or 24th words. You can even just pick your own 12 or 24 words and have a seed phrase with an invalid checksum, as there is nothing stopping you from using a seed phrase with an invalid checksum to generate a wallet except your wallet software not liking it. The problem is that human beings are not random at all. Any words picked manually by someone will be exponentially less secure than seed phrases encoded from a proper source of entropy.

We have seen literally tens of thousands of examples of brainwallets and other human sources of so called "entropy" being hacked and having all their coins stolen. Anyone who tries to create their own "entropy" in this way will lose their coins.

[jackg]

Have you just tried writing out the phrase a few times (8-20)? That's worked for me to be able to remember some of mine (I obviously have them written down too as the main backup).

[dkbit98]

So i want to know is it possible for me to create my own personal seed phrase to make it easy for me to remember it and maybe i may not have to write it down.

It's possible to create your own seed phrase, but I don't suggest using easy to remember phrases that can reduce your security and make it easier for someone else to break it down.
Best way for generating your own seed words is using dices to achieve true randomness, something our brain is not doing very well, and than just calculate the last word.
My suggestion is that you don't trust your brain memory long term because it's not reliable, so it's better to write down seed words and keep in in multiple location safe places as backup.

2. What wallet can i do it with, or will any wallet support me to make my own seed phrase.

Most wallets are supporting BIP39 seed words so all of them will be supported including Electrum and hardware wallets.
Electrum is using their own system but it can import BIP39 seed phrases.

3. Has anybody done something like that and what was the experience, is it risky?

It can be risky if done incorrectly and I already explained it why above.

[Lucius]

Further, memorizing the seed phrase is an almost guaranteed way to lock yourself out of your wallet in the future.

When I see how many people have written down their seed on paper and then found themselves in trouble after a few years because they realized they had mixed up the words to the point that only some special tool could (theoretically) help them, then I find it hard to understand that someone is trying to store such information in their head. Some people can't remember their 4-digit bank card PIN, let alone 12 or 24 words.

1. So i want to know is it possible for me to create my own personal seed phrase to make it easy for me to remember it and maybe i may not have to write it down.

If you want a challenge, you can try to fit the words you get with Electrum into the song you're going to write - and then memorize the song verse by verse. Of course be careful not to sing loudly in the shower or in a public place, someone might like the song

My lyrics is always nice,
be good and check it always twice.

I like coffee, but also a tea,
drive to my home and visit me.

[LoyceV]

If you want a challenge, you can try to fit the words you get with Electrum into the song you're going to write - and then memorize the song verse by verse.

Unfortunately, your sample song is much easier than the real words Electrum produces.
Try to make a song with this:

Code:

antique industry anxiety pluck walnut unlock urban matrix myself ivory oyster enlist

[Lucius]

Unfortunately, your sample song is much easier than the real words Electrum produces.
Try to make a song with this:

Code:

antique industry anxiety pluck walnut unlock urban matrix myself ivory oyster enlist

That's not the point, I just wanted to give an idea to OP how he can try to memorize his seed if he really wants to. In case I dedicate a little more time, I could write a song with the words you mentioned in your post. Not my masterpiece, but without a lot of time invested.

In antique city where the industry has not existed for a long time,
anxiety could pluck with pliers as hard as a walnut.

Unlock my urban matrix resurrection, help me be myself,
join me on the ivory coast, share the oyster with me,

enlist for the journey of a lifetime.

[masulum]

But memorizing the lyrics will also be difficult to remember the word position of the phrase that we have. For me this is very impossible, maybe I still need a clue to be able to understand the exact position ^{this corresponds to my low memory}.

unless I use it with a mix of local languages, maybe it will be easier to remember, because every different language on lryris is a phrase. as far as, the local language is not English it should be work.

[hatshepsut93]

i do not think anybody memorizes their seed phrase as it was not formed by them and will be hard to remember.

Some people do memorize the randomly generated seeds, it's entirely possible. It's just not a good idea in general to rely on your memory, it can fail in the long run. You can keep your seed in memory for weeks or months, and then suddenly realize that you forgot a large part of it when you try to repeat it.

The best way to protect your seed is create many backups, both physical and digital (USB sticks, CD, SD cards, etc.) and have multiple trusted places for storing them.

[pooya87]

Have you just tried writing out the phrase a few times (8-20)? That's worked for me to be able to remember some of mine (I obviously have them written down too as the main backup).

The problem isn't only the memorizing step, the biggest problem is not forgetting it after some time passed. Even if you create a poem like what @Lucius skillfully did, you have to recite it everyday if you don't want to forget the details otherwise in a couple of years you'll start doubting the details and a couple of words missing could easily make it impossible to recover the funds.

[o_e_l_e_o]

In case I dedicate a little more time, I could write a song with the words you mentioned in your post.

Here's the problem with that, though. The following words in your song are also on the BIP39 word list:

Code:

city where exist long time hard help join coast share journey life time

So you you memorize that song, then you now have 25 possible words and you are trying to pick 12 of them. This gives you 2.5*10¹⁵ possible combinations, which is a number very similar to another one I was discussing in another thread just yesterday, which would be impossible to brute force: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5386805.msg59326897#msg59326897. In short, you've lost your coins.

The problem isn't even necessarily long term forgetfulness as is being discussed above. There are definitely people reading this who will think "Well, I'll just recite it every single day for the rest of my life and I'll never forget it". 1 in 6 people have a stroke at some point in their life. 70 million people a year suffer a traumatic brain injury. 10 million people a year develop dementia. Seizures. Aneurysms. Infections. All of these things can hit anyone, of any age, at any time, with zero warning, and lead to memory loss.

[Z-tight]

The problem isn't even necessarily long term forgetfulness as is being discussed above. There are definitely people reading this who will think "Well, I'll just recite it every single day for the rest of my life and I'll never forget it". 1 in 6 people have a stroke at some point in their life. 70 million people a year suffer a traumatic brain injury. 10 million people a year develop dementia. Seizures. Aneurysms. Infections. All of these things can hit anyone, of any age, at any time, with zero warning, and lead to memory loss.

Thank you o_e_l_e_o for clarity on the whole issue, in finality it is a terrible idea to try something like that, like relying on our brain or memory as back up for our seed phrase. I do not want to start another thread, so what do you think: i want to back up my seed through seed splitting and keeping each of them safe. From what i understand, there is no perfect way to store your seed, though some methods will be stronger than others, what can easily be the best way to keep your seed phrase secured. Thank you o_e_l_e_o.

[o_e_l_e_o]

I do not want to start another thread, so what do you think: i want to back up my seed through seed splitting and keeping each of them safe.

This is certainly preferable to trying to commit it to memory, but I don't like splitting seeds up either. The main problem is that it probably doesn't achieve what you want it to achieve, which is that if someone compromises one part of your seed phrase they cannot steal your coins. If you split up a 12 word seed phrase in to a 2-of-3 system, then each share has 8 words, meaning only 4 words need to be brute forced which is easily doable. If you split up a 12 word seed phrase so that each share only has 4 words, then you need to create at a minimum 6 shares (but preferably 9) and hide them all separately but securely, which will be a significant challenge.

If you want a set up where an attacker would need to compromise more than one back up to be able to steal your coins, then the preferred solutions would be to either use a multi-sig set up with the individual seed phrases backed up separately, or to use an additional strong passphrase(s) with your seed phrase, again backed up separately.

[Lucius]

Here's the problem with that, though. The following words in your song are also on the BIP39 word list:

It's a bad idea anyway, but I just wanted to show our AI that it's possible to do something like that, in a very short time. If the whole thing were approached more seriously and with more time, the extra words from the BIP39 word list could be avoided, so that there would be no doubts in the case of backup recovery.

The way I did it would even be good if someone found that backup and figured out what it was about, but couldn’t so easily figure out the word combination. The song can have an additional backup so that each verse is marked with a number with the first letter of the word that is important to us.

1. AI (antique industry)
2. APW (anxiety pluck walnut)
3. UUMM (unlock urban matrix myself)
4. IO (ivory oyster)
5. E (enlist)

[OcTradism]

You can create many seed phrases from your wallet (let's use Electrum), until you find one that works well for you to remember.

I disagree.

I don't think using brain to remember seed phrases is a good approach because we can not put all our money into our brain memory. We can not control what will happen with our life, brain, memory so we should have backup solution in case our brain is broken or member lost partially and in bad case, lost memory on the wallet seed phrases.

In case we just have memory lost, we lose our Bitcoin. In case we unfortunately pass away, our loved ones can not inherit our Bitcoin.