I was going to paste it at the beginning here but I figured 2048 lines would be annoying.
These words are very important. They are used on many many different networks to secure cryptocurrency. To give the extent of how much we trust these words, let me plug in my Trezor.
As we can see, even the old version of the Trezor hardware wallet supports dozens of coins. In fact, because it supports Ethereum via MyEtherWallet, it in turn supports hundreds of ERC-20 tokens.
My point here is that these 12, 18, or 24 words are all that stand in the way of anyone looking to gain access to our funds. They can be used as the foundation to create a secure wallet across hundreds of chains. I view this BIPS standard as the first widespread example of crypto interoperability. It's a pretty big deal.
We can even use these BIPS words to generate seeds on Graphene based technologies (Bitshares/EOS/Steem/Golos/Hive/Blurt). Graphene allows us to use any string of characters as a master seed, therefore, we could pick the same seed for our Graphene accounts as we have for our Bitcoin/Ethereum accounts.
Account security will be the prevailing top-priority issue going forward as we head into mainstream adoption. I can't tell you how many times I've been nervous about losing my money.
When you are your own bank, security is the number one priority. The best way to secure decentralized digital assets is unironically using decentralized tactics. This means you have to delegate trust to as many places as possible for a maximum hedge factor. This means trusting centralized exchanges with a small amount, having funds secured by physical paper/metal; some of your money should be secured on the cloud encrypted; and some keys should even be memorized by heart.
This is the focus of my post. I believe we can create a system that makes it much easier to straight up memorize a BIPS seed so it never appears anywhere except inside your own memory banks (brain). Would I recommend storing all your money using a seed you've memorized? Of course not! However, this tool would have several advantages to anyone who achieved it.
Imagine being able to sit down at any computer with an internet connection or even pick up anyone's phone and being able to have access to your own bank instantly! This is the advantage to memorizing a BIPS seed. If you were ever in a bind and needed money on demand, you'd have it. Anytime, anywhere. Borderless. In addition, if you were never in such a bind, your key would never be exposed to the internet ever, making it way more secure.
Not only would this be a good way to decentralize assets and have access to funds anywhere, but it could also get around our need to trust a "random" algorithm to generate our master seed for us.
What happens when you download a crypto wallet and start using it? A seemingly random key pops up on the screen and we just assume that is a trustworthy secure source for our own personal bank. Is it really though?
So not only is my goal to help people memorize BIPS master-seeds, it is also to generate that master-seed without the use of an algorithm that could be compromised. How do we accomplish this?
The more ways you experience information, the easier it is to memorize. This means hearing the words, saying them aloud, looking at them, writing them down. Unfortunately you can't smell or taste words... I guess you could touch them if you knew braille :D
Which words we use also matter. Certain words will be easier to remember for certain people. Certain combinations of words will also be easier to remember for certain people. Take this master seed for example that I just came up with off the top of my head while scrolling through the BIPS list:
miracle acid melt unfair social media
unhappy mother move supreme neural network
I created this master-seed with 
I imagine this would be a pretty easy one to remember for him (and anyone really).
What we are doing here is obviously reducing the security of BIPS by creating certain combinations of words, but I don't think it matters that much. Considering Trezor thinks it's okay to just scramble the order and add fake words on potentially compromised machines, the security that I'm proposing here is far better than that.
Someone creates an AI that's really good and guessing common words and combinations people use during this process of proof-of-brain master-seed creation. It manages to hack a few passwords of extremely weak accounts. What we have to remember here, is that it's also harder to hack an account like this depending on how one uses the master-seed.
If you happened to create an easily guessable 12-word master seed, would it get hacked? Maybe not. It depends on how you use that seed. If you used that seed to create a Hive account, the AI probably wouldn't figure it out, because the seed is used in combination with the username. What are the odds that the AI happens to check this master-seed in combination with your Hive username and generates the public key and tries to match it to your public key?
That's a lot of processing power to try to hack an account that might not have much money to steal in the first place (considering powering up and account recovery). Also it implies that this AI has access to a Hive node (and every other node it is hacking). And I'm not talking normal access, I'm talking about the kind of unfettered access one would need to have all the information on site without having to ask for data over a laggy internet connection. They'd have to be running their own nodes and have their brute force algorithm connected directly to them physically on-site.
On the flipside, say you are using the master-seed to store Bitcoin. However, you know your master-seed might be a little bit easier to guess, so you don't use the first 10 wallets generated by the seed. Instead, you leave the first 10 wallets blank with no money and no transactions on the chain. Now the AI that cracked your code would have to check 11 addresses in to even realize it had hacked you.
This is extra processing power would probably never be implemented because it would make the brute-forcing much slower. 10 addresses not enough? Use the 1000th address; use the 10000th address. See what I'm saying? If you do it right, even an easily guessable master-seed will not be cracked. In fact, instead of picking the number, you could just tell your offline device to spend all processing power for say 100 seconds and to use that wallet. Then a brute force algorithm that was trying to hack you would have to use that much processing power for every combination they think you might be using.
But I guess it's an important preface to include for why I think we can trust what comes next. I want to get all these 2048 words into a database. I want to categorize every word, and create a frontend app for offline Raspberry-Pi devices that help users create their own seed phrase in a proof-of-brain style manner so they can be easily memorized. This way of generating master-seeds would make it impossible to hack the 'random' algorithm (because the algorithm is your brain).
These are possible keywords I could add to the BIPS words in order to create a frontend that helps us find words and word-combinations that we would remember. Do you like weapons and hate your mother in law?
execute mother law knife gun hospital
It's quite easy to remember clusters of 6 words strung out in a certain way. Once we memorize 2 of these word clusters we have enough to create a full 12-word master key. Once we memorize 4 word clusters we could use them to create a monster 24-word key and even use them to create six (4 choose 2) 12-word key combinations. In this context, once you memorized 4 clusters your main cold-storage wallet would be all 24 words, while you could make several hot-wallets using other combinations. More likely you'd just create one hot-wallet as to not expose your other 12 words.
It's also important to note that even if you can't remember the order of the words, as long as you can remember what they are you could easily use this program to hack your own key and figure it out (because 12! factorial is only half a billion combinations for a 12 word seed). Computers are fast.
Need more help remembering your master-seed or afraid you'll forget it if you don't write it down? Acronyms can be a great tool. By using a 6-letter word to represent your 6-word cluster it will be easier to remember. Take this acronym for example:
save amazing noble tribe another solution
hero exist lock police enemy rebel
Now you can write the words santa's helper wherever knowing full well no one is going to realize that is actually the key to you remembering how you store your assets. Even if they did, hacking the correct word combination is highly unlikely. What are the odds that someone who finds clues to your key actually has the resources to crack the code? Spoiler alert: It's near zero; even for law-enforcement.
The biggest issue I've run into on this front is that you aren't allowed to use any combination of 12 words you want. The vast majority of word combinations seem to produce an invalid seed. I don't know what the rules are for creating these seeds, so I'll have to figure it out eventually and adjust accordingly. If anyone has any information on this front, do tell. I'll go ahead and put a 10 Hive bounty on it. Higher roller.
I just downloaded MyEtherWallet to my phone just to test it out... Let's type in the words and see if it works. 90%+ chance that it doesn't.... and it doesn't work. So again, I'm not really sure how the rules for these master keys fully operate yet, but I'll figure it out and modify my strategy accordingly. It probably has something to do with the word's order in the list, as these words might not actually technically be words, but rather converted into their associated index value:
It might just be "1863" (technically position [1862] if they are stored in a hash starting at 0).
This would be represented by 0x746 in hexadecimal, so perhaps it has something to do with that.
While not an acceptable form of security to trust with 100% of our assets, I believe memorizing BIPS keys will become common-place and hope to be a part of the standard of how this is achieved. The obvious solution will be to use an offline device that can be wiped later that helps the user not only create a valid Master-seed but also remember it using various techniques. It should even be able to help users hack their own key should they forget it exactly but still have a lot of the pertinent information (like acronyms, knowing all words, associated public key, etc). Should be interesting.
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smooth
snack
snake
snap
sniff
snow
soap
soccer
social
sock
soda
soft
solar
soldier
solid
solution
solve
someone
song
soon
sorry
sort
soul
sound
soup
source
south
space
spare
spatial
spawn
speak
special
speed
spell
spend
sphere
spice
spider
spike
spin
spirit
split
spoil
sponsor
spoon
sport
spot
spray
spread
spring
spy
square
squeeze
squirrel
stable
stadium
staff
stage
stairs
stamp
stand
start
state
stay
steak
steel
stem
step
stereo
stick
still
sting
stock
stomach
stone
stool
story
stove
strategy
street
strike
strong
struggle
student
stuff
stumble
style
subject
submit
subway
success
such
sudden
suffer
sugar
suggest
suit
summer
sun
sunny
sunset
super
supply
supreme
sure
surface
surge
surprise
surround
survey
suspect
sustain
swallow
swamp
swap
swarm
swear
sweet
swift
swim
swing
switch
sword
symbol
symptom
syrup
system
table
tackle
tag
tail
talent
talk
tank
tape
target
task
taste
tattoo
taxi
teach
team
tell
ten
tenant
tennis
tent
term
test
text
thank
that
theme
then
theory
there
they
thing
this
thought
three
thrive
throw
thumb
thunder
ticket
tide
tiger
tilt
timber
time
tiny
tip
tired
tissue
title
toast
tobacco
today
toddler
toe
together
toilet
token
tomato
tomorrow
tone
tongue
tonight
tool
tooth
top
topic
topple
torch
tornado
tortoise
toss
total
tourist
toward
tower
town
toy
track
trade
traffic
tragic
train
transfer
trap
trash
travel
tray
treat
tree
trend
trial
tribe
trick
trigger
trim
trip
trophy
trouble
truck
true
truly
trumpet
trust
truth
try
tube
tuition
tumble
tuna
tunnel
turkey
turn
turtle
twelve
twenty
twice
twin
twist
two
type
typical
ugly
umbrella
unable
unaware
uncle
uncover
under
undo
unfair
unfold
unhappy
uniform
unique
unit
universe
unknown
unlock
until
unusual
unveil
update
upgrade
uphold
upon
upper
upset
urban
urge
usage
use
used
useful
useless
usual
utility
vacant
vacuum
vague
valid
valley
valve
van
vanish
vapor
various
vast
vault
vehicle
velvet
vendor
venture
venue
verb
verify
version
very
vessel
veteran
viable
vibrant
vicious
victory
video
view
village
vintage
violin
virtual
virus
visa
visit
visual
vital
vivid
vocal
voice
void
volcano
volume
vote
voyage
wage
wagon
wait
walk
wall
walnut
want
warfare
warm
warrior
wash
wasp
waste
water
wave
way
wealth
weapon
wear
weasel
weather
web
wedding
weekend
weird
welcome
west
wet
whale
what
wheat
wheel
when
where
whip
whisper
wide
width
wife
wild
will
win
window
wine
wing
wink
winner
winter
wire
wisdom
wise
wish
witness
wolf
woman
wonder
wood
wool
word
work
world
worry
worth
wrap
wreck
wrestle
wrist
write
wrong
yard
year
yellow
you
young
youth
zebra
zero
zone
zoo
satoshi
Talk about words that don't belong :D
That's a bit on the nose.
Every other word is a basic one from the dictionary.
I'll let it slide.
