Brainwallet

Revision as of 15:58, 23 December 2019 by Mike Rae (talk | contribs)

Brainwallets are similar to the mnemonic seeds generated by hardware wallets, only the human user generates the words themselves and memorise them without any written record.

The mnemonic seed/ passphrase is never written down. It is 'stored' in the holders brain.

If the holder forgets the passphrase (or becomes incapacitated), the money is likely lost forever - not a very secure storage method.

Creating randomness in passphrase words is extremely difficult to do by hand, therefore security is again compromised.

It is possible to use a [BIP 39] passphrase generator to get strong entropy/ randomness and optionally add a salt value to this for additional security, however storing anything in the human brain carries inherent risks.

Use a brainwallet at your own (high) risk.