A crypto holder's, investor's, or trader's most important duty is to keep their coins safe. Of course, cryptocurrency is decentralised, which ensures that no one manages your funds; as a result, you are solely responsible for the security of your digital assets. Mnemonic phrases and Mnemonic passes are a better way to protect Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Because of the mnemonic pass, you won't have to worry about remembering your bulky private keys to keep your coins secure.
Despite the value of the mnemonic pass in securing cryptocurrencies, most crypto users lack understanding and self-education on the subject, resulting in the loss of their entire crypto portfolio in the event that their hardware wallets are misplaced or their phones or computers are lost or damaged. This guide delves further into the mnemonic pass, including how to create one and how to keep it secure.
Mnemonic Phrase and Mnemonic Passphrase
There is a distinct distinction between the mnemonic word and the mnemonic move, contrary to popular belief. Regardless, they are connected in some way.
Mnemonic phrase
A mnemonic phrase, also known as a mnemonic seed, mnemonic recovery phrase, seed key, or seed words, is a set of words generated when a new cryptocurrency wallet is created. When you make a new crypto wallet, you'll be asked to write down a 12, 18, or 24-word mnemonic phrase or seed words on a piece of paper and store it safely.
If your smartphone is stolen or destroyed, the mnemonic phrase contains all of the information needed to retrieve your wallets and cryptocurrencies. In such cases, you can recover your wallets and all of your funds by entering the mnemonic phrase words in the same order they were created on the same wallet software.
Witch collapse practise feed shame open despair creek road again ice least is an example of a 12-word seed term. Mnemonic phrases have many advantages, including being simple to memorise, safe, and store, as well as being readable by humans.
Mnemonic passphrase
The main security issue with mnemonic phrases is that someone who comes across them can steal a person's entire cryptocurrency portfolio. Although the seed key can be safely stored like cash or gems, it's not always safe and risky to entrust one's entire crypto portfolio to it. As a result, most crypto wallets improve user security by allowing them to encrypt the mnemonic phrase with a password, i.e. Mnemonic pass.
By acting as two-factor authentication or a second factor for a crypto wallet, mnemonic pass provides a second layer of protection to the mnemonic phrase and, as a result, to an individual's wallet. In simple terms, a mnemonic pass is a password for a mnemonic expression that is "something you have" or "something you know."
A user must enter both the seed phrase and the passphrase to recover a wallet in the event of system harm or failure. The 13th/25th letter, seed extension, or extension word are all words used to define a mnemonic move. Slim sugar lizard predict state cute awkward asset tell blood civil sugar is an example of a mnemonic password.
It's important to remember that losing the Mnemonic pass would result in the complete loss of one's wallet. Some crypto wallets, such as Electrum Wallet, which do not use the BIP39 standard, enable users to recover their wallets entirely from their seed keys. To recover their wallets, users must first click the “restore wallet” option on the wallet application startup tab, then select “I already have a seed” and enter the exact seed. Users can select a new password after the restoration is complete. Even then, when both the seed and the pass are lost, it's difficult to retrieve the wallet.
It's worth noting that mnemonic passes aren't supported by all crypto wallets.
Generating Mnemonic phrase and Mnemonic Passphrase
The BIP-39 specification norm creates mnemonic phrases automatically. The BIP39 (Bitcoin Enhancement Proposal) mnemonic words are used to generate hierarchically deterministic keys. In the crypto space, BIP39 is the standard method for producing deterministic keys. BIP39 is used by most crypto wallets, including Keepkey, Ledger, and Trezor, as well as other hierarchical deterministic (HD) wallets, to generate seed keys automatically.
Initial entropy, or random sets of bits (zeroes and ones) created for use in cryptography, is the first step in creating mnemonic phrases. The wallet needs a minimum of 128 bits of entropy and a maximum of 256 bits of entropy to create a mnemonic expression. Depending on the length of the initial entropy, mnemonic phrases are typically 12 to 24 words long. 128 bits of entropy are needed for a 12-word mnemonic expression.
The next step is to encode the initial entropy in words after it has been generated. To detect errors and make the final key more human-friendly, a checksum is added to the entropy. To make the mnemonic sentence special, the checksum is created by hashing the entropy with SHA256. Each 32 bits of entropy is allocated 1 bit of the SHA256 hash.
Converting the mnemonic sentence to the final seed phrase is the final step in creating a mnemonic phrase. This is accomplished by using the PBKDF2 hash function to transfer the mnemonic phrase. To produce the final 64-byte seed, the Password-Based Key Derivation Function 2 (PBKDF2) hashes the mnemonic sentence multiple times. The final seed can then be used to produce a hierarchical deterministic wallet's master extended key (mnemonic pass). The private keys for the wallet are also created using a two-step mnemonic word.
