Restoring a hardware wallet

Sure this asked many times before and is available but I cannot find it! I understand that all that is stored on a hardware wallet is private and public keys etc. My lack of understanding arises when the need to recover a lost hardware wallet occurs. How is it that entering my seed words on a new device regenerates the essential data which was on the original. Is it encoded in the seed sequence? Seems like a simple question but I cannot see it anywhere explicitly stated. Been through Trezor manual and nothing! Much obliged if you have been able to bear with my ignorance (stupidity) and can stand to reply

I am now aware that data reconstructed from seed. Where else? Sorry to have had to ask the obvious. Got this off your forum.

hardware-wallet

uktouche

Posted 2017-11-01T14:48:35.990

Reputation: 1

Answers

The 12, 18, or 24 word mnemonic that you have (colloquially referred to as the seed) is a BIP 39 mnemonic. This encodes a 256 bit number which is then used to derive the private keys in your wallet.

All of the private keys in your wallet are derived using the method described in BIP 32. This allows for private keys to be derived from a fixed seed (which is encoded by your BIP 39 mnemonic) and to be done so deterministically, i.e. the same keys are always derived.

So when you restore a hardware wallet or any other wallet that supports BIP 39 and BIP 32, you are really just setting a fixed seed which is then later used to derive all of your private keys.

Andrew Chow

Posted 2017-11-01T14:48:35.990

Reputation: 40 910