Passphrase: What is it & when to use it (or not to)

[Cleanshit]

I get where you're coming from man, but I don't agree. If the goal's an extra security layer against coldcard-like situations though, then why not also take the opportunity to protect it physically yea the chance's low but what if...? It's really just 2 things to hide instead of 1, not like 100, it's not such a big deal imo

Exactly, physical protection is very important. As an extra layer is useful so a passphrase also, most importantly if the seed phrase is being ever exposed but this introduce things that will be backup correctly. Personally I don’t see passphrase as the important thing only, but also making sure you have a proper backup abd a recovery plan for both passphrase abd seed. The risks of theft should be reduce by security, without having to create any risk or even losing access

[DYING_S0UL]

It should be noted that some HW device wallets have limits in Passphrase, and that if a Passphrase is created with strong entropy, it is better than a Passphrase with long word characters, as the probability of forgetting it or writing one of the characters incorrectly is high, and then you will not be able to know which character is incorrect since there is no checksum.

What kind of limitations exactly? Like not supporting additional passphrase importation?

I never got curious about passphrase before, but now i am. I know we can add an additional passphrase when creating a wallet, but I was thinking like, can a passphrase contain multiple words separated by a space? Or will the whitespace still counts as part of a single passphrase? I only ever tried adding one additional phrase/string but never multiple words (separately). Or are the rules like either 12 or 13 or either 24 or 25? Just a curious question (or maybe two )..
 

[Pumpsta]

Thx guys, I learned something new now I tried to make the electrum passphrase longer than just a few chars.... +15k characters later it still lets me to write more

My tested passphrase:

Code:

12345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890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But I found out Trezor & Ledger has a character limit (50 for trezor, 100 for ledger). That's not cool I'll add these to my thread & if anyone knows more HWs with limits I'd appreciate if u share it here!

[satscraper]

~

No sense ^{and even dangerous}in using 155-character-long passphrase consisting entirely of digits.

Make it shorter, but have it consist of the mix of uppercase, lowercase, digits, and special characters. What really matters is entropy. Read here for details.

P.S. Entropy is roughly the size of the search space, and you might want to learn about Gibson's trick to increase this space without adding complexity to the passphrase itself.

[Ethan151]

A passphrase can improve security, but it also creates another thing the wallet owner must protect. If the passphrase is forgotten or lost, access to the wallet can be lost even if the seed phrase is still available.
This makes me think that using a passphrase is not only about adding security, but also about having a safe way to manage and remember it. I would be interested to hear how experienced users balance these two risks.

[Pumpsta]

No sense ^{and even dangerous}in using 155-character-long passphrase consisting entirely of digits.

Make it shorter, but have it consist of the mix of uppercase, lowercase, digits, and special characters. What really matters is entropy. Read here for details.

P.S. Entropy is roughly the size of the search space, and you might want to learn about Gibson's trick to increase this space without adding complexity to the passphrase itself.

You're right, electrum being unlimited is still cool imo though & that makes HWs not as cool!
I'd say it's like really easy to mess up after about 20-25 chars speaking from my own mishappenings with veery long passwords in the past. I added all this stuff to OP, I need to remove the orange color from trezor & ledger's name tho, makes it look like it's better to have 100 characters minimum

[Coyster]

I would be interested to hear how experienced users balance these two risks.

It is really not rocket science, you back up your passphrase, just like you do your seed phrase and then store both of them in different locations. There is a risk of storing them together, which you must avoid, and so they must be stored separately. Because if they are both exposed at the same tme, the attacker would easily steal your funds. Though, what's most important about a passphrase is that you understand it well before using it, so you don lose your funds from your own error.

[Stalker22]

I never got curious about passphrase before, but now i am. I know we can add an additional passphrase when creating a wallet, but I was thinking like, can a passphrase contain multiple words separated by a space? Or will the whitespace still counts as part of a single passphrase? I only ever tried adding one additional phrase/string but never multiple words (separately). Or are the rules like either 12 or 13 or either 24 or 25? Just a curious question (or maybe two )..

Yes, a passphrase can definitely be multiple words separated by spaces, and every single space counts as an actual character.  (I think that is why it is called passphrase and not password.)  That means spaces, special characters, capital letters, and numbers are all valid.  Just keep in mind: because spaces count, spacing matters too.  For example, "blue sky" (one space) and "blue  sky" (two spaces) will generate two completely different, unrelated wallets.

[arwin100]

I would be interested to hear how experienced users balance these two risks.

It is really not rocket science, you back up your passphrase, just like you do your seed phrase and then store both of them in different locations. There is a risk of storing them together, which you must avoid, and so they must be stored separately. Because if they are both exposed at the same tme, the attacker would easily steal your funds. Though, what's most important about a passphrase is that you understand it well before using it, so you don lose your funds from your own error.

Correct on that because the passphrase is not something that they add then forget. By the time they use that, then basically they are just creating another key in their wallet. So same with their seed phrase it also need to be protected.

People often overlook the risk and they didn't notice that mistakes usually happen the way how they handle those things and not on the passphrase itself. If they used it without trying to understand how this thing work. There's a chance that they might lost it and cannot retrieve the funds inside on their wallet. So best prioritize to learn the basic and try to secure those important things to avoid losing their money.

If they master those basic way to make their wallet safe. Adding passphrase will became their strong extra layer of protection.