Have You Made This Seed Phrase Mistake?

[ContentWriter]

Backing up your seed phrase may just be a normal routine, but a slight oversight could be costly, very costly. I once wrote down my seed phrases and put the paper safely away. Months later, my laptop had an issue and I tried using the seedphrase to recover my wallet but couldn't. All efforts to import the old wallet didn't work, so I decided to take a closer look at the seed phrases I wrote down. I was struck with horror when I counted them and they were eleven words instead of twelve.

I wondered how I missed a word, a seed.

Days later after fixing my laptop, I accessed the wallet and quickly checked up the seed phrase. The issue was that I misses a word that was consecutively repeated. It was like:

milk honey truffles anger woman kings seed seed bananas oranges action event


It completely eluded me that a seed was repeated.

It could have been worse.

Have you made a mistake such as this?

[retaur]

At least it's an easy mistake to verify and recover from. You could also use recovery tools for that as well.

It used to be possible to make some mnemonics of varying lengths and you still can in some software. Electrum could autogenerate seeds that were 11-13 words without verifying the 12 word length thing.

[BIT-BENDER]

Well everyone with their seed phrase but honestly I have opened several Bitcoin wallets many of them for experimental purposes but never have I seen in those countless Bitcoin wallet over the years there been a repetition of words in the entire seed phrase now imagine how funny it is to have the same word right after the first one.
Ok let's take out the odd thoughts of having same one following each other in your seed phrase, you don't only just write down your seed phrase and then drop it you count the words and ensure it is the accurate amount.

[HustleZ]

Backing up your seed phrase may just be a normal routine, but a slight oversight could be costly, very costly. I once wrote down my seed phrases and put the paper safely away. Months later, my laptop had an issue and I tried using the seedphrase to recover my wallet but couldn't. All efforts to import the old wallet didn't work, so I decided to take a closer look at the seed phrases I wrote down. I was struck with horror when I counted them and they were eleven words instead of twelve.

I wondered how I missed a word, a seed.

Days later after fixing my laptop, I accessed the wallet and quickly checked up the seed phrase. The issue was that I misses a word that was consecutively repeated. It was like:

milk honey truffles anger woman kings seed seed bananas oranges action event


It completely eluded me that a seed was repeated.

It could have been worse.

Have you made a mistake such as this?

i dont know how you didnt realize it right away as most wallets require the seed phrase to be entered right away in order for it to become valid and be used but considering your wallet dont have it or you did that but forgot it whatsoever, but another thing is that i havent seen a seed with 2 consecutive words that are the same or it would be really rare bu what ever the reason sensitive things like this shouldnt be overlooked and should be cross checked multiple times before finalizing.

[Antidote47k]

Days later after fixing my laptop, I accessed the wallet and quickly checked up the seed phrase. The issue was that I misses a word that was consecutively repeated. It was like:

milk honey truffles anger woman kings seed seed bananas oranges action event


It completely eluded me that a seed was repeated.

It could have been worse.

Have you made a mistake such as this?

Yeah many don’t realize that repeated words are perfectly valid in BIP39 seed phrases, in your situation, you got lucky cause you were able to fix your laptop. One thing that is always emphasized is to always verify your backup immediately.

Never assume your backup is correct unless you have verified it. Immediately you write down your seed phrase, try restoring it  on an offline device or in a trusted wallet as a recovery test, if it restores correctly then you can be rest assured that your backup is correct, it’s a simple test that will take little of your time but can ultimately save you from discovering a mistake when you actually need to recover your wallet. Better safe than sorry!

[EL MOHA]

One of the ethics of seed phrase back up is that you should actually re enter the seed phrase again before actually using that wallet. Most of the recent wallets will actually not allow you proceed until you re enter the seed phrase again to confirm.

Personally I haven’t experienced this kind of same words following each other but it’s possible, now let’s look at the possibility of this happening. Should it happen I think one word missing will actually be recoverable through brute force in fact the major obstacle will be the position of that word.

The only similar mistake I made was missing a letter from a word

[promise444c5]

No I haven’t and I will like to ask Which wallet software you used?

I will assume you copied and pasted it  just to access before  writing it down  or you used a wallet app that doesn’t strictly require you to verify your written seed before using the wallet itself..

Mistakes like that are rare in Electrum..but it can happen  if you didn’t enter the seed phrase directly from your written seed backup.. because Electrum will always force you to verify the seed before you continue.


[Off]
The one word is just going to be the combination of the entire wordlist count (2,048 in your case), assuming you know the position.

While if you don’t know the position.. you have to use your basic combination math formula nCr × (wordlist count)^r, where n is either 12 or 24 or ..  and r is the missing word count.

I hope nothing is on that wallet, if that’s truly your seed lol.

[Charles-Tim]

I have not made this mistake before, I make sure I cross check the seed phrase again very well before I completely agree that I have the seed phrase back up.

The other thing that I do is that I test it on another wallet to make sure that it is actually correct by checking some of the addresses that it generates.

So it will be that I backup the seed phrase, from where I back up the seed phrase, I import it on another wallet and making sure the addresses of the two wallets are the same.

[Cookdata]

Days later after fixing my laptop, I accessed the wallet and quickly checked up the seed phrase. The issue was that I misses a word that was consecutively repeated. It was like:

milk honey truffles anger woman kings seed seed bananas oranges action event

How do you not know that the seed phrase or recovery phrase should be 12, 15, or 18 and 24, but 12 and 24 are more common among wallets. You should have counted the words before assuming that your seed is complete. That is your mistake, knowing about the seed phrase should have made you curious about the words and the numbers.

It could have been worse.

Have you made a mistake such as this?

Did you back it up from the wallet, or did you write it down as it shows it to you? The norm and tradition of most wallet backups is that when you want to back up the seed phrase, you have to write down the words, the app will ask you to input the seed phrase back to confirm if you wrote down fewer words and if they are also correct. Some do randomly ask for 3-4 words, this should have helped you avoid the mistake.

Yeah many don’t realize that repeated words are perfectly valid in BIP39 seed phrases, in your situation, you got lucky cause you were able to fix your laptop. One thing that is always emphasized is to always verify your backup immediately.

I hope you know that there are other type of seed phrase, electrum seed phrase is different from BIP39 and so is SLIP39 and all are valid seed phrase. I didn't see anywhere OP mentioned of BIP39 that is why I'm making reference to that part from your post.

[Donneski]

When I saw the content of what the Op said, I had to take a moment to make a little research about it because it was completely strange to read that two words(seeds) can be  consecutively repeated. From my findings it's very possible though, "astronomically unlikely".

Now, this is a lesson to everyone to treat their seed phrase with zero assumptions. Regardless of how many times a word is repeated, be intentional enough to write them as seen. The same sequence a wallet generates is the exact thing it'll accept to confirm your ownership regardless of how ugly it appears.

 Also, it's important to know that verifying your seed phrase backup word to word before storing it is more important than down in the first place.

[Cryptomultiplier]

Such an incident has never happened to me and I don't pray to encounter such because it is minor mistakes like this that hurt the most and while it was recovered by OP, someone else could begin to entertain suicidal thoughts mostly if they have invested a lot in Bitcoin and this happens all of a sudden. Just imagine the drama and chaos and transfer of aggression that could happen.

It is good to be careful and triple check when trying to keep our seed phrases safe, mostly when we have to replicate it into several safe points as backup Incase we lose one.

[Antidote47k]

I hope you know that there are other type of seed phrase, electrum seed phrase is different from BIP39 and so is SLIP39 and all are valid seed phrase. I didn't see anywhere OP mentioned of BIP39 that is why I'm making reference to that part from your post.

Good catch, it was my mistake to assume that it was BIP39 seed phrase since OP never stated which Wallet or mnemonic standard being used.
My main point was that repeated words although not common has a possibility of appearing in a valid seed phrase and most importantly not to assume that duplicate word is an error. Thanks for pointing that out.

[lionheart78]

I have not encountered this problem since I always count the words to check whether I missed one or not.  Then checking the spelling and placement.  I believe almost all of us here do this kind of checking after writing the seed phrase.  @OP, are you drunk or bz with other stuff when you created the wallet, and at the same it is very intriguing to hear that there is a seed phrase that repeats the word, this is my first time reading it actually.

[Itz-prisigold]

Honestly, that's one of those errors that might might look small until you realize that you could've been completely locked out from using your wallet altogether. Personally, I use to be very careful about spelling each word, but not as careful with checking the number and how the words are arranged. The double use of the same word in a row may be enough to fool someone's brain into believing that it's already written.

One thing I have learned and I've made it an habit is to check the backup right after I jot it down by either pretending that I am restoring the wallet on a different device or by comparing each word individually with the original. It will take a little longer, but it will be better than finding out your mistake some months or years later.

Thankfully, in your case the wallet was still accessible and you were able to find the missing repeated word, perhaps that was a relief!

[Livingleged]

I wondered how I missed a word, a seed.

This could  literally happen to anyone because from my experience on all the wallets I’ve created before i haven’t seen a situation where a word is repeated among the seed phrase not to talk of the words should be next to each other other, I think op must have thought he was the one that repeated the word from his back up because he’s not use to such and then probably didn’t count the whole phrase after the backup. I also think the backups on the device was correct but the one on the paper was wrong and he didn’t notice until he needed to use the back as he’s trying to import the wallet after fixing his device.

Have you made a mistake such as this?

Not at all, Infact this is my first time seeing such cases of repeated word among the seed phrase, but then again I don’t think it would have happened to me even if there was a repetition of word I will dictate it because I take my time to examine the seed phrase when ever I am doing my back up because I understand what it means by not your keys not your coin.

[Furious 7]

For something like that I never seem to do it because I always number each phrase to minimize misses.

But I don't know if this is considered a mistake or carelessness because earlier in the beginning I was in bitcoin I always save seed on the computer and once I did not want the situation to happen when my PC error and require a reinstall that makes all the data is lost. I can still open because I still remember but after that incident I changed to writing rather than saving on the PC especially with some recent cases where my PC could have been hacked so I don't consider this option anymore for now.

[Ayers]

Backing up your seed phrase may just be a normal routine, but a slight oversight could be costly, very costly. I once wrote down my seed phrases and put the paper safely away. Months later, my laptop had an issue and I tried using the seedphrase to recover my wallet but couldn't. All efforts to import the old wallet didn't work, so I decided to take a closer look at the seed phrases I wrote down. I was struck with horror when I counted them and they were eleven words instead of twelve.
I wondered how I missed a word, a seed.
Days later after fixing my laptop, I accessed the wallet and quickly checked up the seed phrase. The issue was that I misses a word that was consecutively repeated.

Yes, absolutely correct, in the case of wallet recovery just keeping the backup safe on pc is not enough. It is equally important to write the seed phrases manually on paper.

But BIP39 does not prohibit the repetition of same word. The same word can appear more than once in a valid seed phrase. So you have to be very careful while writing.

After writing a seed phrase, I myself point to each word with a pen or finger and match all the words one by one. And I manually write it down several times separately, so that even if I make a mistake in one place, I can find the correct word in another.

These extra five minutes can save you from many years of regret in future. In the case of self custody Bitcoin itself is not big risk the biggest risk is our small mistake.

[GeorgeJohn]

Backing up your seed phrase may just be a normal routine, but a slight oversight could be costly, very costly. I once wrote down my seed phrases and put the paper safely away. Months later, my laptop had an issue and I tried using the seedphrase to recover my wallet but couldn't.

Are you sure that you wrote the seed phrase accurately, because if you miss the arrangement or words, you will not have access, that's why it's good to write it out accordingly and especially the way it was arranged...

All efforts to import the old wallet didn't work, so I decided to take a closer look at the seed phrases I wrote down. I was struck with horror when I counted them and they were eleven words instead of twelve.

That means the mistake is from you, keeping seed phrase is good, but you have to write it out the way it's given from the wallet, secondly, we don't need to be in a haste when writing the seed phrase..

I wondered how I missed a word, a seed.

Because your were not careful, if you were careful you would have notice that one word is missing...

[I_Anime]

I think I’ve also made similar mistake too , sometimes I might even spell some of the words wrongly . That’s why nothing is like 100% safe even storing your seed phrase offline is also risky to some extent , your seed phrase can be expose to some physical damages like it getting burn or wet and also misplacing it . All these are possible when come to keeping your seed phrase offline, one just have to be careful cause you can never be too careful any mistake can cost you a fortune.

[GreatArkansas]

Are you guys not double-checking it? Or even try to re restore it; let's say the wallet is already set up. Before funding it, try to remove that wallet first and restore using the words you just wrote.
Last time I set up my wallet, I did and so far so good.
This is for sure commno problem, there are some Bitcoin wallets after backing it up, they will ask you again to enter so they are sure what you wrote are all correct.