What is Blockchains 12 word recovery passphrase process

Hello thank you for looking.

I am trying to discover a simple way of creating blockchains 12 Word Recovery Passphrase, they have a so called help page on this subject which is of very little help and profoundly obscure, your help would be greatly appreciated.

Kind Regards

Richard Norman

Posted 2017-12-19T08:13:26.210

Reputation: 1

Answers

You secret key is a set of 256 random ones and zeros (bits). This is very difficult to remember. So, we need to represent those ones and zeros differently.

Create a checksum of the private key by taking the first (entropy-length/32) bits of its SHA256 hash.
Add the checksum to the end of the random sequence.
Divide the sequence into sections of 11 bits.
Map each 11-bit value to a word from the predefined dictionary of 2048 words.
The mnemonic code is the sequence of words.

Source: https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0039.mediawiki

BlackBeltBob

Posted 2017-12-19T08:13:26.210

Reputation: 447

Your question is not clear as to whether you are interested in recovering a wallet or if you would like to write software implementing a mnemonic HD wallet.

If the latter is true, BIP 39 is the original proposal, explaining mnemonic recovery phrases as a seed for HD wallets, and references some examples in various languages to get you started. Chapter 5 of “Mastering Bitcoin” by Andreas Antonopoulos offers a detailed technical explanation of HD wallets and mnemonic recovery phrases.

As for recovering a wallet from a mnemonic phrase, many popular cryptocurrency wallets offer this option, and can be found through an Internet search (I can not recommend any and would advise you to do your own research on which best suits your needs).

Ivan G.

Posted 2017-12-19T08:13:26.210

Reputation: 133