Electrum SEED being used on a HW - project anywhere?

Coin-Keeper

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Quote from: DireWolfM14 on April 20, 2021, 01:16:16 PM

Quote from: Coin-Keeper on April 19, 2021, 08:19:50 PM

It would be bad for them though as I believe maybe 30% of their users are combining Elec with a HW.

Electrum's seed convention has nothing to do with the seed phrase of your hardware wallet. Electrum only has access to the master public key from the hardware wallet, so the the seed phrase never comes into play. Even if Electrum ended support for Bip39 seeds, compatibility with hardware wallets would remain unchanged.

I suspect that Electrum will continue to provide some level of support for Bip39 seeds in one way or another. Even if it's just a way to "sweep" a Bip39 HD wallet into a native Electrum HD wallet. There are so many hardware and desktop-client wallets out there that use Bip39 seeds and eventually many owner of those other wallets will want to import them into Electrum for one reason or another.

I've changed my HW seeds in the past, and it's damn convenient to be able to just import those seeds into an Electrum wallet. I just pack up that wallet and save it in an archive in case I need to access it quickly for some reason or another.

Good points.

For someone advanced like you a "sweep" is OK, but newer users will assume those coins are saved by the SEED used in the original Elec wallet. Then they don't maintain their old wallet and don't really have a good way to restore after a crash or failure of the HDD/SSD. I always recommend creating a new wallet to prevent LOSS due to newbie mistakes, but hey that's my take.

When I started this thread my question really centered around whether or not Elec SEED on a HW would add anything of value to security or industry improvements? Clearly Elec feels their SEED is much better. Is it, or is it hype? A mental exercise, yes!

DireWolfM14

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Quote from: Coin-Keeper on April 19, 2021, 08:19:50 PM

It would be bad for them though as I believe maybe 30% of their users are combining Elec with a HW.

Electrum's seed convention has nothing to do with the seed phrase of your hardware wallet. Electrum only has access to the master public key from the hardware wallet, so the the seed phrase never comes into play. Even if Electrum ended support for Bip39 seeds, compatibility with hardware wallets would remain unchanged.

I suspect that Electrum will continue to provide some level of support for Bip39 seeds in one way or another. Even if it's just a way to "sweep" a Bip39 HD wallet into a native Electrum HD wallet. There are so many hardware and desktop-client wallets out there that use Bip39 seeds and eventually many owner of those other wallets will want to import them into Electrum for one reason or another.

I've changed my HW seeds in the past, and it's damn convenient to be able to just import those seeds into an Electrum wallet. I just pack up that wallet and save it in an archive in case I need to access it quickly for some reason or another.

Coin-Keeper

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Quote from: HCP on April 18, 2021, 04:54:47 AM

Quote from: Coin-Keeper on April 17, 2021, 12:35:24 PM

It would/could really cause havoc if Elec Dev's decided they will no longer accept BIP39 SEED. That would mean Trezor/Ledger users would be out in the cold without getting technical or inventive with non-newbie solutions. Lets hope it never comes to that!

Only insofar that you would be unable to recover your coins using Electrum in the event that your device was lost/stolen/damaged.

However, as long as Electrum kept the Trezor/Ledger plugins, the devices themselves would still be able to continue to function normally. After all, the HW BIP39 seed is never actually used by Electrum for anything (nor should it be except for emergency recovery), so whether the device is using a BIP39 seed or not makes zero difference. Electrum only ever receives an Xpub from the device (for creating the watching-only wallet), so unless the Electrum dev's decided to also do away with BIP32 and xpub support etc, everything should continue to work.

All good points. My thought was IF Elec went on the war path against BIP39 and they dropped the plugins to reinforce their point. It would be bad for them though as I believe maybe 30% of their users are combining Elec with a HW. I suspect it will never happen but I like to plan ahead for paths not expected!

HCP

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Quote from: Coin-Keeper on April 17, 2021, 12:35:24 PM

It would/could really cause havoc if Elec Dev's decided they will no longer accept BIP39 SEED. That would mean Trezor/Ledger users would be out in the cold without getting technical or inventive with non-newbie solutions. Lets hope it never comes to that!

Only insofar that you would be unable to recover your coins using Electrum in the event that your device was lost/stolen/damaged.

However, as long as Electrum kept the Trezor/Ledger plugins, the devices themselves would still be able to continue to function normally. After all, the HW BIP39 seed is never actually used by Electrum for anything (nor should it be except for emergency recovery), so whether the device is using a BIP39 seed or not makes zero difference. Electrum only ever receives an Xpub from the device (for creating the watching-only wallet), so unless the Electrum dev's decided to also do away with BIP32 and xpub support etc, everything should continue to work.

Coin-Keeper

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Great comments and thoughts on this subject. I have been using BIP 39 with HWs for years now. I don't really have any concerns I am just trying to lean into whether or not this division between Electrum and BIP 39 is ever going to come to a head somehow! It would/could really cause havoc if Elec Dev's decided they will no longer accept BIP39 SEED. That would mean Trezor/Ledger users would be out in the cold without getting technical or inventive with non-newbie solutions. Lets hope it never comes to that!

My unrelated project is studying the math on bc1 address construction and security with better checksums. After reading and studying I now see why Electrum made the smart decision to vacate legacy as a normal user offering.

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Quote from: NeuroticFish on April 16, 2021, 05:30:34 AM

Going to another standard may be somewhat tricky because the older customers' devices will work by old rules, newer device with the new seed and the user may have to know which standard/BIP his seed has, which may be difficult for the average Joe, for which using Electrum is already pretty much tricky.

You can generate a seed with a checksum that is only valid by Electrum's standards while invalid for BIP39 and follow the version bytes for that. Something like this could be done with a firmware update, depending on the kind of hardware wallets and make it possible to generate/restore Electrum type of seeds.

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Going to another standard may be somewhat tricky because the older customers' devices will work by old rules, newer device with the new seed and the user may have to know which standard/BIP his seed has, which may be difficult for the average Joe, for which using Electrum is already pretty much tricky.

This being said, if a migration to a superior standard of mnemonic will happen, then why would the rather old Electrum standard and not something newer that can cover, once for all, all the possible scenarios? Maybe this proposal can be a good candidate too: [Experimental-2] Better mnemonic

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Quote from: DireWolfM14 on April 15, 2021, 05:39:45 PM

I'm not sure the Electrum dev team think their seeds are "better," but are they?

They do. BIP39 was also marked as discouraged for implementation.

Quote from: DireWolfM14 on April 15, 2021, 05:39:45 PM

They still use the same word list, and I imagine the provide the same level of entropy as a bip39 seeds for given phrase length. I thought the re-configured checksums of Electrum seeds are only meant to allow the phrase to define the type of wallet it creates, ie segwit vs legacy. Is there more to it than that?

The version bytes are defined at the start. Checksum has nothing to do with the type of seed it was meant to be. Electrum seeds doesn't require a fixed word list.

Trezor's SatoshiLabs were involved with BIP39 development. I don't think it's impossible to implement something like this in their firmware but there isn't any problems with security or anything that urgent which would require something like this.

While there's still a small chance that an Electrum seed is a valid BIP39 seed as well, Electrum will ensure that they won't inadvertently generate valid one that is compatible with both in the new release.

DireWolfM14

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I'm not sure the Electrum dev team think their seeds are "better," but are they? They still use the same word list, and I imagine the provide the same level of entropy as a bip39 seeds for given phrase length. I thought the re-configured checksums of Electrum seeds are only meant to allow the phrase to define the type of wallet it creates, ie segwit vs legacy. Is there more to it than that?

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If there's a use case for it, it's probably been discussed. I can imagine it being done with the trezor-on-a-raspberry-pi-approach as it's probably an equivelant to do it with (if it can be done).

But I think the alternative of doing the offline air-gapped machine with an online one that is in the readthedocs is probably better and potentially cheaper/similar priced.

Coin-Keeper

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I know the answer is NO for now, but then comes the question. I have been reading through the "thinking" whereby Elec Dev's create a version specific SEED "flag" in their project. They claim their SEED is way better than BIP 39 standalone SEED. Does anyone here have any good reading/links where maybe an organization like Sat Labs, would even consider employing or allowing for the option to create an Electrum type SEED on a Trezor? I know the global standard, but Elec's approach is not without merit. I am not worried specifically because I still use 24 word SEED. I would participate in a Trezor with Electrum SEED IF the HW generated the SEED, but not by me copying SEED generated OUTSIDE of my HW! Anyone here privy to discussions on this issue?

Maybe originally such a SEED could be coded into bitcoin-only firmware so that issues with Alt's would not be a factor of any kind. Just an idea.

Topic: Electrum SEED being used on a HW - project anywhere? (Read 186 times)