The best way BIP 39 wallets are created is to mix the passphrase together with the seed phrase (12/24 phrases) to generate a grasp key, which is then used to derive a hierarchical collection of personal and public keys. In Bitcoin, you’re allowed to do all of what you’re asking together with:
- Massive variety of characters (theoretically limitless)
- Particular Characters
- Sequence of areas (2 or extra areas again to again)
Though Bitcoin itself doesn’t have constraints as to what you’ll be able to embrace as a passphrase, many implementations of BIP 39 wallets do. You could encounter passphrase size limits primarily based on the pockets implementation, comparable to Trezor permitting round 50 characters and another wallets allowing extra or fewer characters. It’s really useful to test the documentation of the precise pockets you’re utilizing earlier than creating your passphrase. Typically, software program wallets like Sparrow and Electrum can have fewer constraints than {hardware} wallets like Trezor and Ledger. Additionally, given that almost all {hardware} wallets don’t retailer the passphrase, it could be tedious to re-enter a 250+ character passphrase each time you wish to entry your bitcoin.
Passphrases present an additional layer of safety that’s compelling to anybody severe about maintaining their bitcoin protected. That is as a result of with out the passphrase, an attacker can’t entry your funds even when they’ve the seed phrase. It’s essential to make it possible for your passphrase is safe and memorable and/or safely saved, as a result of dropping it means everlasting lack of entry to the funds tied to the pockets derived with that passphrase. The seed phrase alone is not going to be sufficient to get better the pockets. As beforehand talked about, it is the mixture of the seed and move phrases that creates the pockets, so the seed phrase alone (or the seed phrase together with a distinct move phrase) will create a brand new (most certainly empty) pockets with a distinct grasp seed and completely different addresses, and so on.
