In the world of crypto, nothing is more important than your private keys. Those long, mysterious, and impossible-to-remember strings are the only proof of ownership that matters. Lose your keys and not even the NSA could recover your assets.
Fortunately, some brilliant minds huddled together not long ago and devised the perfect solution: seed phrases .
Previously, you had to secure a 256-character private key for every single address. Unsurprisingly, the blockchain ledgers quickly became home to billions of dollars worth of unclaimable assets, all thanks to lost keys.
Thanks to seed phrases, securing your decentralized fortunes is now as simple as securing a random combination of words. This word combo can magically represent not one but practically infinite private keys!
But that begs the question: is a seed phrase truly secure? Or did we unwittingly sacrifice security in the pursuit of comfort?
The answer is, it depends. As it turns out, the security of a seed phrase depends on how you made it.
Understanding Entropy: The Degree of Randomness
On the surface, there’s little that distinguishes a good seed phrase from a bad one. The result always looks like a random word salad with 12, 18, or 24 choice items, depending on the application you use.
In reality, a seed phrase is only as secure as the method used to generate it. What truly matters is the degree of randomness, formally known as entropy.
Picking Random Marbles Out of a Jar
Entropy is best understood through a simple example. Imagine you have a jar filled with marbles of colors red, green, and blue. If you were to shake the jar and pull out three random stones, you’d have a random combination.
But would it be hard to guess? Certainly not! Someone could predict your random three marbles in just 27 attempts—and that’s if they had the worst possible luck.
There are many ways to make your secret marble combo more secure. An obvious way would be to introduce more colors. Just six new marble colors will bring your combo’s max attempts up to 729—a wild jump from the previous 27.
You could also throw in marbles of different sizes, different shapes, and perhaps even different materials. You could also pick more than three marbles. Each of those new input layers makes your combo exponentially stronger and more secure.
Entropy in Seed Phrase Generator and Why It Matters
As we established with the marbles example, randomness exists on a spectrum. There are degrees to it. Entropy, then, is the term we use to refer to the degree of randomness in any process.
When we talk about a seed phrase, few things are more important than the entropy of the process used to generate it. An extremely low-entropy process could theoretically assign the same seed phrase to two users. After all, Bitcoin users alone have created over 460 million wallets to date!
More important, and realistic, however, is the risk of brute force attacks. Unlike your email address or bank account, blockchain doesn’t have a centralized authority. If someone tried guessing your email or bank account password, the relevant company would block them after a few failed attempts. There’s no such protection in a blockchain network.
That’s what makes high entropy not just important but critical for your seed phrase.
As we established with the marbles example, randomness exists on a spectrum. There are degrees to it. Entropy, then, is the term we use to refer to the degree of randomness in any process.
When we talk about a seed phrase, few things are more important than the entropy of the process used to generate it. An extremely low-entropy process could theoretically assign the same seed phrase to two users. After all, Bitcoin users alone have created over 460 million wallets to date!
More important, and realistic, however, is the risk of brute force attacks. Unlike your email address or bank account, blockchain doesn’t have a centralized authority. If someone tried guessing your email or bank account password, the relevant company would block them after a few failed attempts. There’s no such protection in a blockchain network.
That’s what makes high entropy not just important but critical for your seed phrase.
MetaMask, TrustWallet, and Blockchain.com are all examples of popular wallet applications trusted by millions of people. Each of these brands supports the generation of seed phrases as a backup measure to recover your wallet in case of software, hardware, or any other kind of failure.
Where things get interesting, however, is the way they generate the seed phrase. These wallet apps use a wholly software-based process to generate a list of random words. But computers are notoriously bad at true randomness, often dubbed as pseudorandom generators.
Entropy by definition is a measure of chaos and randomness. Whereas software is inarguably marked by its logical flow and deterministic processes.
While developers use a bag of tricks to add some randomness to their algorithms—including device input metrics, temperature readings, and voltage fluctuations—the result is still a far cry from the true randomness of the physical world.
Crypto’s Cautionary Tales of Poor Entropy
Seed phrase generation with weak entropy will expose you to many attacks and your crypto assets to outright theft. This is not a theoretical issue but a real possibility, as proven by many such attacks in crypto history:
Blockchain.com Hacks: Previously known as Blockchain.info, the popular web wallet service saw many users hundreds have their Bitcoins stolen overnight. The cause? The entropy of their seed phrase generation was far lower than claimed, a weakness that attackers were quick to exploit!
BitcoinJS , a popular library used by web developers for crypto functionality, made countless wallets created between 2011 and 2015 vulnerable due to shoddy entropy. It was used by many popular web wallet applications. Researchers estimate millions of wallets with potentially hundreds of millions of dollars of assets remain vulnerable to this date. And yes, this is the same vulnerability that plagued Blockchain.com wallets.
TrustWallet offers a more recent example, as the popular service saw over 2100 Ethereum users lose over 1360 ETH, along with millions of dollars worth of losses across other assets. Results showed a clear pattern: most hacked wallets were created in 2018/2019 using TrustWalled. Experts at SECBIT Labs diagnosed the issue quickly, and unsurprisingly, the culprit was poor entropy.
Millions of dollars worth of losses across other assets. Results showed a clear pattern: most hacked wallets were created in 2018/2019 using TrustWalled. Experts at SECBIT Labs diagnosed the issue quickly, and unsurprisingly, the culprit was poor entropy.
Cuvex offers the gold standard seed phrase generator with its dice and coins feature. Marked by an ideal balance between bulletproof security and ease of execution, the system generates a powerful 24-word seed phrase.
Seed Phrase Generator by Cuvex How it Works:
As the name implies, the process involves dice rolls and coin tosses to bring some true randomness and control:
Secure Environment: First, you’ll need to find a quiet and private space free from spying eyes.
Prepare Items: Grab your phone, install the Cuvex app, disconnect the network, and remove the SIM card. Additionally, bring four dice and one coin.
Rolls and Flips: The app will prompt you to roll all four dice and flip the coin. Record the data by selecting the relevant on-screen options.
Truly Random Words: The system will use this entropy to grab truly random words from a random list from the BIP 39 dictionary. You’ll repeat this process 23 times to get 23 truly random words for your seed phrase.
Last Word: The system will automatically generate the 24th word as per the BIP 39 standard to add another dimension of randomness (software-based entropy).
Just like that, you’ve got a truly random, 256-bit seed phrase.
Practical Implications of this Process
On the surface, the generated seed phrase may resemble any typical wallet generation. All you’ll see is a word salad of 24 items that don’t mean anything.
Yet the importance of generating your own seed phrase using your own entropy cannot be overstated. By following this simple and fun process, you’ve unlocked powerful benefits such as:
Maximum Protection: Unlike the typical 12-word seed phrases, your seed phrase will contain 24 words, making it a 256-bit generation. It would require over 10^77 attempts to crack your code. For perspective, that’s basically the number of atoms in the entire observable universe!
Air-Gapped System: Your seed phrase is only as secure as the system you use to generate it. With Cuvex, the entire process is carried out offline using the secure elements of your phone. The app will prompt you to disconnect all networks and even take out the SIM card. No records will be kept on the phone once the process is complete.
Truly Yours: Using a third-party system comes with a major problem: bad actors only need to find one flaw to hijack thousands of devices. But with Cuvex’s dice and coins feature, your entropy and seed phrase will be truly yours—keeping you safe from any broad attacks.
Concluding Thoughts
Not all seed phrases are made equal. As randomness exists across a spectrum, entropy is critical to protect yourself against brute force attacks that are possible and common with crypto.
The dice and coins method is the gold standard of entropy when generating seed phrases. Not only does it actively involve you in the process, but it also leverages the true chaos of the real world through dice rolls and coin tosses.
Not all seed phrases are made equal. As randomness exists across a spectrum, entropy is critical to protect yourself against brute force attacks that are possible and common with crypto.
The dice and coins method is the gold standard of entropy when generating seed phrases. Not only does it actively involve you in the process, but it also leverages the true chaos of the real world through dice rolls and coin tosses.
While that may sound like a cumbersome task, Cuvex can make the whole process effortless, ultra-secure, and potentially even fun—yielding a truly unique seed phrase at the end.
