Replies (45)
Bookmarked, will look in a bit
NVK's mistake is minor compared to Thiel and Musk's self-custody farce.
Cryptography adoption accelerates as fiat's purchasing power decays, exemplified by the 75% decline in USD value since 1971.
We need to stop listening to these people about how to hold our coins
View quoted note βHaven't dug into this yet, but glad to see. We need new ideas.
View quoted note βI'm so with you on the checksum bit being an annoying thing preventing users from fully creating a seedphrase without use of a computer, and I too find it strange that devices go through the more complex dice rolling algo to generate a seed for you.
Did you use AI to write this? I've read the first few paragraphs and they sounded smart but took forever to get to the actual point.
I've let my Air summarize it and agree with a lot of points. General Purpose Hardware has been unjustly ignored by the influencer class. But I still think classical hwws can be a valuable addition to a multisig setup or just as a tool to check if your diy setup actually calculates what you think it does (I'm actually thinking about vibecoding a tool for that if I find the time).
Lastly since you only mentioned seed signer I thought it might be appropriate to also give a shutout to krux and specter diy/shield. Both projects allow you to build your own signingdevice form general purpose hardware, but offer more functionality than the seed singer.
Thanks @YODL. Strange indeed.
Or just don't trust a device.
View quoted note βSeparation is the key.
View quoted note βI brought this up in a private chat of bitcoiners. I suggested we create a BIP for a standard that doesn't use checksums but still targets easy reading, entry and storage etc.
First reactions were "interesting but I think I like having a checksum".
What do you think?
I summarised my question in the chat with a question: should we bend over to create a seed phrase for wallets based on a spec designed for wallets, or should wallets bend to the needs and wants of its human users?
There are checksums everywhere else, but when we make our own seeds, do we need it? Can we at least append the checksum later as an optional addition for those who want it?
I don't disagree. At least from a personal position.
I have helped a small handful of people set up a wallet. As simple as it is, when given the option to skip dice rolls, they take it every time.
Of course I'm going to be more insistent going forward... Either you have time, or you aren't ready to start saving in bitcoin yet.
But convenience tools can be useful once you have verified it (and per physical device + firmware, my seed signer is not the same as yours).
Precisely. Making it easy forhumansa to bring their own entropy is more important. And if entering a seed is common enough for the checksum to be a worthwhile convenience, then the operational model is already broken
I honestly don't like the checksum part. If I input a wrong seed phrase, then I won't see any funds. That's all the checking I need to know I should try again. Sure, it can sometimes be handy, but I think it was just a clever use for the extra bits without regard for the whole COMPLETELY offline secret generation taken into consideration (which I value far more).
What's the safest way to do a checksum without risk of leaking, in your opinion? I know you included a script here, but as someone who has no cyber security knowledge, that seems scary. Like you said, it'd be nice if HWW let me enter 23 words and display for me the remaining possible 8. Do none of them do this? I would prefer this, plus it would let me do simple coin flips which is easy to understand.
You may want to use AI less until your attention span recovers. I'd love to hear your feedback and questions if you actually read it.
SeedSigner allows you to do coinflips i believe.
Security theater is killing us.
View quoted note βYou might find this interesting
View quoted note βthere far more bigger ASSHOLES in bitcoin space n maxi cult than NVK
just point finger only to NVK never make others clean.
I recently went to a meetup where they showed that you could us@npub17tyke9lkgxd98ruyeul6wt3pj3s9uxzgp9hxu5tsenjmweue6sqq4y3mgl to enter 11 words and and then the remaining ones and zeros and you would get the final word from it.
Thanks
@The Wrathful βΏuddha βΈοΈYour logic is as flawless as your grammar.
Open source is not fairy dust, true.
View quoted note βur anal hole bigger than ur mother's hole
Responsibility needs to be taken
View quoted note βIf you self-custody Bitcoin, watch this video and read this essay.
View quoted note β
View quoted note βDo you know if it takes coin flips and runs them through sha256, like how it does dice, or if it converts them directly (11 at a time) to words in the list?
BTW, I don't see your reply on Damus. It seems you're possibly only connected to one relay, at least that's what it's showing me on your profile.
His relays look good on my end. Sounds like a damus issue, probably due to not supporting outbox. Too bad that never got implemented when it had funding.
The script to convert dice rolls to seed words is public. Run it off-line and check with Ian Coleman tools offline.
Ah ok, thanks for checking. I wasn't sure enough to say with certainty. Sigh...
Yeah, that's what I've heard, and it's a decent solution, but I wouldn't run it with my actual seed phrase, and instead just test device matches website on a dummy one, in which case I don't have to worry about offline anyway, and I'd just be trusting the device behaves consistently from then on when I do my real seed phrase.
I'd still however prefer to be able to do coin flips 11 at a time to pick words, since that's just more transparent to me, and I trust I can flip a coin without enough bias that it would matter (hence don't really care about the sha256 step with the dice rolls).
Like was mentioned in the article above, the checksum makes it not possible to completely generate your seed phrase offline. Just from a grug brain point of view, I'd like it if I were able to do that. Instead, I have to use a computer which opens me up to all the paranoia of things I don't understand as well. So, what would be nice, since we're not gonna change the bip and lose the checksum, is if a device helped me calculate the viable 24th word after I input the first 23 (there should only be 8 options). That's all.
As for what set up I will ultimately change to, I'm still not sure, and I wouldn't post about the details anyway.
Your grug brain is a good cryptographer. Even if you know a ton about computers, keeping devices out of the middle between you and your entropy is less to trust. Simple is better.
Right? I like that in the world without a checksum I could do at least this part of things in a way I FULLY comprehend. That's all. So, short of that, would like it if my offline hardware device helped me with that one step of the checksum, instead of what I consider more complicated dice rolls plus sha256 thing. Like you mentioned in article, seems like they should offer it π€·
Exactly. And the idea that a seed is something you are handling frequently enough that a checksum is worth it is wrong too. A seed should be something you do once, secure for disaster recovery, and barely ever touch again. We should stop thinking of a seed as a wallet and start thinking of it as an identity. Ideally, one per person for life
Oh, it does do this? I should have checked when you said you thought it might, but I didn't. That is awesome, and reason enough imo to build one. I'm WAY more comfortable doing checksum on something offline than trusting I know enough about computer security to try and do it on a laptop "offline." Thanks!
You might find this article I wrote helpful.
View quoted note βSeedSigner has been handling this exact thing for years!
Build it yourself for optimal opsec :)
Glad to hear it. Will look into it
Didn't you know dice are for experts?
View quoted note βThanks. Good to see. Though I think this only verifies that the mechanism of the bug was not the big lesson. "Make no mistakes."
View quoted note βI get it but I think we need to hodl the line.
View quoted note β
