Lost/damaged Ledger nano s-passphrese

[kiragaz]

Hello
I set up Ledger Nano S with Passphrase (custom 12 words -not BIP)
If hardware wallet lost/damaged ,can I recover old passphrase wallet on new hardware wallet?

Regards

[Zaguru12]

If it’s a custom seed as you have said then you can recover the wallet by importing those seeds to only the wallet that supports that custom seed phrase. For example only few wallet can recover electrum custom seed phrase

But I am curious that you have non-standard Bip39 seed phrase on ledger because ideally Bip39 is the standard on ledger wallet, if it is not the standard Bip39 ledger or most of the wallets won’t recover it.

But if you mean that the wallet was extended with passphrase but the seed phrase is still bip39 then yes there are multiple wallets that can recover that wallet for you. A very good example is the Trezor hardware wallet

[kiragaz]

any hardware wallets support custom 25th word(passphrase)?
If passphrase created on Ledger,do new Ledger wallet will support it?

[LoyceV]

If hardware wallet lost/damaged ,can I recover old passphrase wallet on new hardware wallet?

Try it! Before funding any wallet, test your backup to recreate your wallet and see if it creates the same addresses again. Don't trust, verify!

[Zaguru12]

any hardware wallets support custom 25th word(passphrase)?
If passphrase created on Ledger,do new Ledger wallet will support it?

Yes a standard bip39 seed phrase with pass phrase is supported by many hardware wallet. Yes new ledger hardware wallet will recover that seed phrase ( although I will advice you ditch ledger hardware wallet).

Also there are multiple other hardware wallets that supports it too from Trezor (all trezors) to passport to keystone or even electrum as an offline wallet.

[kiragaz]

I mean not bIP passphrase

[promise444c5]

I mean not bIP passphrase

What do you mean by not bip passphrase?

Create a cold wallet  and import the seed with the passphrase if you don’t have new hardware wallet yet and you don’t want to risk wiping the old before re-importing. This is what you ought to have done before sending funds on the wallet itself..

Normally, a reputable wallet should allow using passphrase  so the problem can only come from having a wrong or incompatible seed +passphrase..

[Zaguru12]

I mean not bIP passphrase

Ok if I understand your post, your passphrase is not part of the 2048 standard words of bip39 mnemonic phrase? You choose your passphrase using custom words?

If that’s so there is still no problem, you can actually choose your own passphrase outside the bip39 words, in fact it’s the best choice for passphrase. If that’s what you did yes ledger and other hardware wallets will perfectly recover that wallet for you as long as the seed phrase is actually a bip-39 standard.

But for verification sake, import it to the new wallet and verify the addresses to see if it’s same wallet that got recovered before you send in funds into.

For the custom word ( passphrase) be cautions of every character including even their cases (uppercase or lowercase) and even space as they are considered different characters too

[Charles-Tim]

You can not create a seed phrase that is not BIP39 on Ledger Nano wallets. It has to be BIP39 seed phrase.

As you add passphrase to it, you thought it is not BIP39 seed phrase? It is still BIP39 even if you extend the seed phrase with passphrase.

You can recover the wallet on another Ledger Nano wallets or any other BIP39 wallets. And even on Electrum because you can import BIP39 on Electrum. I am just saying, Electrum is an online wallet, but you can go airgapped if you want it as a cold wallet.

[Emjay24]

Hello
I set up Ledger Nano S with Passphrase (custom 12 words -not BIP)
If hardware wallet lost/damaged ,can I recover old passphrase wallet on new hardware wallet?

Regards

I took your question directly to ledger on X, here's their reply

Hi, Ledger devices support BIP39/BIP44 standard secret recovery phrases.
You would need to choose the correct length of your recovery phrase.
More information can be found here: https://support.ledger.com/article/4404382560913-zd

Hope you find this helpful.

[kiragaz]

Thank all for replys

Im pretty sure I used not BIP passphrase(is phrase with English letters ,but on English wards)
And I created ledger nano s wallet (transferred some funds on/from it)
Tried accessing that wallet with temporary fake passphrase(didn't succeed)

So how can I be sure that if I lost my hardware wallet I can restore it on another one?
Can I try to create same wallet on Trezor?

Ok,so I created new Trezor wallet with same 24words seed as Ledger and same passphrase(but as said -im 99.9 sure this is not big phrase)
And I see now the wallet I created on ledger on Trezor(with same amount $ and transactions  and all)
Weird...Any thoughts?

[nc50lc]

Ok,so I created new Trezor wallet with same 24words seed as Ledger and same passphrase(but as said -im 99.9 sure this is not big phrase)
And I see now the wallet I created on ledger on Trezor(with same amount $ and transactions  and all)
Weird...Any thoughts?

Not weird at all.
That's to be expected, you've used the same seed phrase and passphrase, so the restored wallet should be the same.

And since you've already reproduced it in another wallet, that should assure you that your wallet can be restored to another wallet.

Im pretty sure I used not BIP passphrase(is phrase with English letters ,but on English wards)

Looks like this is where you got confused.

You're thinking that a BIP39 passphrase should be one of the BIP39 word list, no?
Anyways, it's not, BIP39 passphrase will also take symbols and numbers or even space, it's not limited to those words.
Only the seed phrase use it.

[BitMaxz]

Ok,so I created new Trezor wallet with same 24words seed as Ledger and same passphrase(but as said -im 99.9 sure this is not big phrase)
And I see now the wallet I created on ledger on Trezor(with same amount $ and transactions  and all)
Weird...Any thoughts?

That's not weird; it should work with any hardware wallet that supports a 24-word seed phrase since you import a similar seed phrase, including your passphrase. It shows a similar wallet with all of your funds and transactions.

The only weird thing is if it shows a different wallet after importing a similar seed and passphrase. So that's totally normal.

Since you already have a two-hardware device, you don't need to worry if you are going to replace the ledger with the new ledger wallet.
Just do the same when importing, and it should show a similar wallet.

However, for me this is risky; you are exposing your seed phrase to another device. It's way safer if you generate a new wallet with different seed and passphrase.

[Cricktor]

Just to be sure we're talking about the same stuff, I mostly use following nomenclature:
(mnemonic) recovery words = commonly 12 or 24 words representing initial random entropy that start the BIP39 derivation
mnemonic passphrase = (optional) extension of recovery words, can be anything, commonly at least sanitized to UTF-8, IIRC, see BIP-0039 for details

OP should document very carefully and redundently analog copies of his mnemonic passphrase (and separately his recovery words, too, of course), because the smallest error in the mnemonic passphrase yields an empty wallet.

Any unique mnemonic passphrase derives an unique and therefore different wallet when added to the same set of mnemonic recovery words. There's absolutely NO margin for error with the mnemonic passphrase.

I highlight this as I've learned my lessons when I screwed up with one or two Testnet bitcoin wallets that used a less well documented mnemonic passphrase (only written hints instead of character for character; apparently I was careless because it were only Testnet coins... , oh well, thank the Bitcoin gods it wasn't a Mainnet wallet).

It can't be repeated often enough: always verify that you can properly recover your wallet from scratch, your analog documentation! Do not rely on digital copies, do not rely on your human memory. The latter will inevitably fail you after some time, I've first-hand experience with this, too.

It might not be well known: BIP39 always uses a mnemonic passphrase, where the default is "mnemonic" when the mnemonic passphrase is empty, i.e. none is provided by the user.