Most of us who have been here for a long time know the importance of backing up our seed phrase for our wallets. Doing it online is as risky as leaving your house key open in front of the door. One can find it if they try hard enough. Or maybe someday a guy comes across it by accident. However you put it, it is risky. So as everyone, I will also suggest you back up your key offline. Write it down on a piece of paper, wood, metal or something that can't be destroyed easily. Also, keep them in a safe place out of everyone's reach.
But my question is, how safe is it? Even if you keep it safe in a locker, one can break it through to access it. Once they get their hands on that piece of paper or whatever you have used to back up your key, your wallet is compromised.
What I really want to talk about here is how you can also prevent this from happening. I am talking about encrypting your seed phrase before backing it up. I know there are more topics about this out there. But this is something that I came up with and I would like to share it with you guys.
First thing first
What is encryption?
Encryption is the method by which information is converted into secret code that hides the information's true meaning.
You can read the full article in the given link. If you already know it, then let's move on.
So imagine you have a 12-word or 24-word seed phrase. In this method of encryption, we are going to make groups with these words. I am using a 12-word seed for this example. Here is the actual seed phrase to a wallet.
praise fee short glance merge actual hollow visual spy produce flush razorNow if we group them by even or odd numbers of words, we will get something like this.
Example: 1Group 1: [praise fee short glance]
Group 2: [merge actual hollow visual]
Group 3: [spy produce flush razor]
Or something like this.
Example: 2Group 1: [praise fee short]
Group 2: [glance merge actual]
Group 3: [hollow visual spy]
Group 4: [produce flush razor]
For more security, you can go like this.
Example: 3Group 1: [praise fee]
Group 2: [short glance]
Group 3: [merge actual]
Group 4: [hollow visual]
Group 5: [spy produce]
Group 6: [flush razor]
To keep it short, I am going to use example number 2.
Now we can randomize the number to our liking. For my case, I will use
2143.These numbers correspond to the group number.
So if we put these all together the seed becomes like this:
glance merge actual praise fee short produce flush razor hollow visual spyNow the seed phrase has been randomized. All you need to do at this point is to put it all back together. If there are 4 groups, we can be sure that if it's a 12-word seed phrase, each group will have 3 words in them. [12/4=3]
Now if we group them again with 3 words per group, we will again get 4 groups.
[1=glance merge actual] [2=praise fee short] [3=produce flush razor] [4=hollow visual spy]. But they are still randomised. So if we remember the number 2143 we can easily get back our original seed phrase.
So, 2143 = [2=praise fee short] [1=glance merge actual] [4=hollow visual spy] [3=produce flush razor] ___
The actual seed phrase. But it is still too easy to decrypt if someone knows your method. So to make it harder to crack, we are going to add some random words in between those groups.
As the randomized group number was 2143 we can add more words between them.
i.e. 2 [news proof album civilian letter] 1 [responsibility concept stereotype national bad] 4 [cutting forestry mechanism abuse duty] 3 [year plant offender history owl]or
[news proof album civilian letter] 2 [responsibility concept stereotype national bad] 1 [cutting forestry mechanism abuse duty] 4 [year plant offender history owl] 3. You can start with the random words or you can start with the group's words.
Now if we put it all together, we get
List 1.glance merge actual news proof album civilian letter praise fee short responsibility concept stereotype national bad produce flush razor cutting forestry mechanism abuse duty hollow visual spy year plant offender history owl
Remember, whatever random number you put in between, their amount should be the same. In my case, after each group, I put down 5 random words. You can put as much as you want. If you remember how many words you put, you can always remove that out from that list and get the random number group. i.e 2143.
From the beginning of the list, we get our first group of 3 words. And after that, we take out 5 words out of that list. Then the next 3 words are going to be our 2nd group. We keep doing this until we get all of our groups. Just filter out whatever number of words you put in.
If you followed the 2nd method of putting words first then groups, in this case, remove 5 words first then the next 3 words are going to be your first group.
So when you finally get the full seed phrase filtered out of that word list, you just rearrange them based on your code. Then you get your actual seed phrase.
You can backup this seed and even if someone gets their hands on it, they will be unable to decrypt it. All you need to remember is the code and the number of random words between them.
2143..5 This is all I need to remember to recover my seed phrase from a huge word list.
[Note: All the numbers can be randomised to your liking. Everything shown here was for an example. Do it on your way.]Let me know if you have any confusion about this. And if you have any suggestions, be sure to comment it down below. Sorry for making it long, but I tried to explain everything so everyone can understand it easily.