Topic: DIY Seed Storage on a soda can (Read 573 times)

The association between gliph lines and correct bit is difficult to remember. These backups needs to be understandable by a casual user, if we won't there to assist them.
To me, the simpler, the better, and the extra risk of this complication is not worth the extra security it can (pun not intended) offer.

That's a bad idea and that's why I don't like it when people come up with their own ad hoc schemes.  The order of the glyphs or the words is important.  If you lose the order, then you need to use brute force, which is feasible for 12 (not for 24), but I do not understand why getting into all this trouble. 

Looking at this picture, dominoes come to mind. You can cut small pieces of stainless steel to the size of a domino and apply these glyphs to them. One glyph (seed phrases) per domino. Connect the plates to each other using bolts on both sides and you will get a solid, reliable structure that doesn't take up much space. This is how I would modernize this method.

I see the following problem:
You'll have to save the glyph's wordlist. Again on a piece of (big) metal and carefully hidden? Otherwise if lose this wordlist your glyphs become useless.

You can encrypt the seed-phrase in any way, not necessarily using glyphs. But the obvious disadvantage of encryption is the need for a wordlist and the occurrence of errors during decryption. Because of this, I would not use this method as the only one.

No, modern soda cans don't have any iron in them, it's all aluminum alloy with small percent of manganese and magnesium.
There are other material used for food cans but it's steel material, not iron.

No, they probably won't have a clue what the heck that is.
To me it looked liked characters from sci-fi movie, and I prefer having dots with number from words instead.
And if you want to encode something than it's better to use something like Seedkeeper cards from Satochip.

Of course, they are. Add any additional complexity to a standard recovery phrase, and you increase the possibility of losing your bitcoin protected with such a system. It doesn't even have to be this complex to get you in trouble. Add a 13th/25th-word passphrase and loss it, and your coins will be gone, unless the passphrase can be bruteforced. Mess up with your multisig, and you'll lock your coins away from yourself. Use a completely random derivation path (for whatever reason) without writing down what you used somewhere, and you have again lost your coins, unless you figure it out.

Here is my concern with such new ways of storing the Seed.  If something happens to us and a relative of ours finds this sheet.  Is it more likely for our relative to post the full code publicly asking for help than it would be if they found a list of 12 words?

The mystery of finding 12 words or 12 groups of alphabetical letters is easy to solve.

I looked up 'found 12 words on a piece of paper' and the first result was an Atomic Wallet page explaining what a 12 word backup Seed phrase is (https://support.atomicwallet.io/article/35-what-is-12-word-recovery-phrase).
I looked up 'found 12 words on a piece of metal' and the 22nd result is an Unchained article about Seed phrase backup methods (https://unchained.com/blog/seed-phrase-backup-methods-recording-paper-metal/).

Arguably, it is more likely to find the words on a piece of paper than on a piece of metal.  And the most relevant result for metal was already on a position 22 times lower than the relevant result for paper.

This means it is also so much easier to prevent some body who knows nothing about Bitcoin posting the full picture of the coded sheet on the Internet for some stranger to end up stealing the entire balance.

Now as a relative of the deceased who does not have any clue about their Bitcoin holdings or does know they were using Bitcoin but does not know how Bitcoin is actually stored.  How do you look up and find information for the Seed backup method described by OP without particularly mentioning 'Bitcoin soda can seed' among the search terms?  You can not really.  Try it out, I could not find a relevant result even after specifically mentioning 'soda can' in the search query, as I thought it may help tremendously.

So are the chances not higher to end up losing the Coins?

I know, but it may be a lot less flexible.  With the seed phrase, you just write it down and you can store it essentially all over.  Inside your house, within the ground, within the walls, in books... all over and in any size.  The decoding sheets are exceptionally long to be put away in a place that can go unnoticed, I think.  You could ignore the sheets and just write in a small text how to convert the glyphs to bits, but at that point the recovery will be another issue, since no software I know permits you to enter bits rather than words. 

Regarding binary encoding format, I would prefer for SEED words  that one which is based on the clock-dial. Such format is easy for  application at using washers as the storage media. For instance, the washer holding the word "sausage" ( dec number 1534, binary number 10111111110 in BIP39 list) would look like this


Digits near the edge of the washer are placed just for guidance in  the bit positions. Vertical is the setting out line.

Save the decoding sheets on your computer. Print them out, laminate the paper, and store them somewhere safely. The condition of seed backups, which most people keep on paper, will also deteriorate with the passing of time. Check their condition from time to time and make new backups if necessary. The way you approach the physical backup doesn't change just because we now have glyphs. The same care should be applied.

Where to download and save?  What electronic device or storage medium does not break after a few years?  I know I don't need BitCan, but that means I will always have this decoding model.  How can I ensure I keep it for the next 10 years?  There is a lot of information that I cannot write down easily, as with a short phrase. 

If you encoded a seed like this properly, you should test decoding it as well. It's no different from any other backup system. If you write down standard words wrongly, your backup won't be valid either. Download and save the decoding template. That's what you need to recover the correct words. Nothing changes if BitCan disappears tomorrow. You don't need them for the recovery. You only need to match the symbols of your seed phrase to the correct words on the template.

Honestly i'm more interested with it's encoding format rather than usage of soda can. It's easy to understand since basically it's just certain line indicate certain position of binary bits.


You could also save the website or website's source code.

I know, but it still makes me anxious!   

There is no need to refer to the site or other,  the glyphs are just a way for writing the BIP39 binaries.. 0 for the first word-> converted to binary numeral system = 0 ,  the last word (2047) converted to binary = 11111111111 .

( Order from right to left )

                             



   You can just remember it, it is pretty easy !

I would add one more drawback.  Only BitCan offers support for it.  For what duration is this project being developed?  To what extent has it been tested?  All I am worried about is that using the glyphs alone will not be enough to recover the seed phrase in the distant future.  Not like BIP39, which is compatible with nearly all HD wallets.  The process of translating glyphs to bits and back again to words has already caused me anxiety.

Also that Cans are note from pure aluminum, they contains Iron too and are subject to rust !

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I talked about it earlier somewhere on the forum.. About writing on metal plates, I wondered that it will be stronger and easier to piercing the plates, but the point is that you can use Morse Code to writing using a smaller and a larger drills. or just one drill and use two non distant holes for the ( -- ) longue character!

F.E the word "WORD" could be written like this:



Or another way that coul be easier is to use the Pigpen or Masonic cipher (Link)

The way to use will be by replacing by (Arrows) and others representings, I explain:


For the firsts grids will representing by arrows:  ↖ substitute for A, ↑ for B, (a single dot for E) !  so will use small and large drill to write the arrow, small hole to point the center and large in the place of the arrow's head. F.E:  [ →  =   ( .   . ) ]

For the second grids could use triangle dots, F.E  (  · :  ) for Y !

Using aluminum for storing anything important is cheap but stupid way of doing it.
Melting point of aluminum is 660°C (1220°F) and thin can foil will melt in a second, with seed backup gone forever.
Stainless Steel melting point is 1375 – 1530°C (2500-2785°F) and it is cheaper than soda can if you buy stainless steel washers in your local store.
I also don't like complicated encoding and decoding system in bitcan.world that looks like something coming from a sci-fi movie  

The output would be something like this which is easier to observe.


Bitcanworld is recoding it to make the wallet seed and instead of representing it using 3 of 11 segments into a form of 1 of 11 segments which makes it harder to observe.

Sure. Any  glyph image consisted of 11 segments can be used to represent the order (in binary form)  of SEED words in BIP 39 list.

On the pictures  you can see two examples of such images that are a bit different from that one proposed by bitcanworld . If  we define that each segment in these  glyph images represents the binary bit in state of "1" when the section is filled and in the state of  "0" when it's empty then we may use them to present any BIP 39 word in the same manner that bitcanworld did.  

Encryption/decryption system depends on the sections' sequence order chosen.


BTW, for the stainless steel washers it's more appropriate to use the binary cipher based on the "clock dial". In this case point  on the dial  would represent  the binary bit  in the of "1" when the point is punched  (let's say with the center-punch tool)  and in the state of  "0"  if it is not punched.

What exactly am I looking at? Maybe you can explain it some more?

It would be disastrous if you lost the decryption algorithm or it disappeared from the Internet with no way to get it back. But I agree with you, I prefer a simpler solution over one that is too complex. You should also think of your heirs and look at things from their perspective.