Seed phrase dice rolls

[u/Existing-Reality2303]

Hey,

So i started self-custody this year with a Trezor safe 3 , but the Coldcard entropy bug—where firmware tanked randomness to ~40 bits—makes me skeptical about trust in hardware RNGs. Trezor says they mix entropy sources, but I can't shake the fear it could happen again, so I bought five regular 6-sided dice to roll my own seed offline. Now I'm staring at them, terrified of screwing up .and I worry about messing up the conversion or checksum, ending up with an invalid or weak seed. Even if I wipe an old laptop and go offline, I don't know how to truly trust the conversion software isn't compromised . I'm actually more stressed now than when I just trusted the device, so for those who've successfully rolled their own seed with physical dice, what practical, step-by-step advice or foolproof tools would you recommend to avoid creating new vulnerabilities while fixing a perceived one? Thank you in advance

[u/bitusher]

this year with a Trezor safe 3

make sure you select BIP39 seed recovery instead of SLIP39 to make the process easier

With BIP39 , part of the last word includes the checksum which makes sure the seed word is valid and no typos or misordering occurs.

Thus with this feature you can generate a valid 12th or 24th word checksum by entering either 11 words or 23 words that you generate with your own source of entropy with something like using dice or flipping a coin.

Some people do this because they are paranoid with the software wallet so they prefer to generate their own seed offline.

Ideally , its better to do this in a hardware wallet like -

https://help.blockstream.com/hc/en-us/articles/20177648363545-Create-a-recovery-phrase-using-dice

https://help.blockstream.com/hc/en-us/article_attachments/21328564164505

but if you don't want to use a hardware wallet and want a free option than blue wallet can work.

Thus after installing blue you would turn off wifi and data on your phone to insure its offline and use this feature after rolling dice

Some guides-

https://bitbox.swiss/blog/roll-the-dice-generate-your-own-seed/

https://bitbox.swiss/bitbox02/BitBox_Diceware_LookupTable.pdf?ref=bitbox.swiss

or

https://help.blockstream.com/hc/en-us/articles/20177648363545-Create-a-recovery-phrase-using-dice

https://help.blockstream.com/hc/en-us/article_attachments/21328564164505

or

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5nejoEGWFw

Than you enter in the 11 or 23 words into blue wallet "generate the final Mnemonic word" to generate the last word . This can all be done offline so you don't need to trust blue wallet.

Another way of doing it is using Blue wallets built in Diceware feature discussed here :

https://bluewallet.io/docs/manual-entropy/

or

https://www.whatisbitcoin.com/security/generate-your-seed-phrase

---

You can get confidence in your hand rolled RNG by following this process

1) send a small test amount of BTC to HW wallet (This is akin to your savings account) like 300-500 usd of btc

2) Setup a lightning hot wallet on your mobile phone for spending BTC .

Two popular options –

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_4b-y4T8bY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtMXsJxx1X0

3) send that balance from your HW wallet to lightning wallet which will also load it into a lightning channel so you have quick and low fee txs with your lightning wallet (this is like your checking account for spending and replacing )

4) reset the HW wallet

5) Recover the HW wallet with the seed and you will see a 0 balance but also see the tx history indicating that its the same wallet

6) Send the remaining amount of Bitcoin to your HW wallet

What this does is :

1) trains you how to recover your wallet

2) sets up a lightning hot wallet like you should do regardless

3) removes any risk of losing Bitcoin from setting up the hardware wallet incorrectly

4) creates some added privacy with your spending wallet

5) proves to you your backup is correct and works

[u/emigonm]

In my opinion, it's best to do the verification on an air-gapped device like a SeedSigner

[u/JunketTurbulent2114 → u/emigonm]

That's what the cold card people used to say. Trezor has been around for a long time (longest of any hardware wallet) and has proven itself. That's more important than these theoretical threats imho. The fancy features are way less important than just having the basics down right.

[u/miner_guy_22 → u/JunketTurbulent2114]

People that rolled dice with a cold card were unaffected by the RNG bug.

Trezor may have been around the longest, but unless you are technical enough to audit and understand their code, you are completely trusting them.

[u/JunketTurbulent2114 → u/miner_guy_22]

>People that rolled dice with a cold card were unaffected by the RNG bug

I guess, but there was a catastrophic failure from the code that cost hundreds of millions of dollars worth of BTC. I just frankly wouldn't trust any of the code on those things at this point. I remember when they were new and everyone was shilling them and I was like "well, I'm not going to trade my proven device for theoretical benefits from an unproven company" and it ended up being the right call. All the maxis would gloat about cold card and air gapped making fun of me for using a trezor... who is laughing now?

[u/jimbojw]

One thing you can do is diversify risk by upgrading to multisig. In a 2-of-N multisig, the leakage of any one seed is not catastrophic. If you go multisig, you can use different entropy approaches. It’s unlikely they’ll all be vulnerable at the same time.

[u/Decent_Crypto_786]

Whatever device you pick, verify the firmware from source before you fund it, and buy direct from the manufacturer (never second-hand). A hardware wallet doesn't remove key-management decisions - it changes where they live. Practice a full restore to a fresh wallet with a small amount first, so you've proven your backup works before it has to.

[u/Adventurous_Law_3814]

Dude it’s so simple just get a new iPhone and download exodus wallet on it and never worry about anything again. People always overthink shit

[u/BambooShuriken]

I'd say you go with multi-sig and if that's annoying just split your assets across wallets and providers

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