Bitcoin Border Wallets

If you have not familiarised yourself with what Border Wallets are, how they are created using the Entropy Grid Generator, and how to use and handle them, please visit our website before starting. As per our Best Practices guidance, we advise users to transfer this HTML file to an offline, air-gapped computer before generating any Entropy Grids.

Generate
Final Word
Regenerate
Encryption

Type of grid

Type of entropy

Use the drop-down menu above to select the type of Grid and type of Entropy you wish to use for the grid.

As a minimum, you will want to download two grids:

A Pattern Grid (for mapping out/drawing your preferred 11 or 23-cell patterns or co-ordinates)
An Entropy Grid, featuring either Words, Numbers, Indices and/or Hexadecimals.

Most users will opt for Word Grids, which produces the first four letters of each BIP39 seed word in a randomised order using the Fisher-Yates Shuffle algorithm and your browser's built-in cryptographically secure pseudorandom number generator. When you hit "GENERATE GRID", your chosen grid(s) - formatted in a 2-page PDF - will be sent to your downloads folder.

We offer users the ability to employ two types of entropy when generating their Entropy Grids - 128-bit and 19580-bit:

The 128-bit option provides users with deterministic entropy grid reproducibility - i.e. the ability to backup grids in plain text as 12 words and regenerate later them using the Entropy Grid Generator.
The 19580-bit option provides users with the maximum level of entropy. Because of the randomness of these grids, regeneration is not possible. These grids must therefore be saved and stored safely as there is no way to regenerate them later from backup words.

Input your chosen seed words. The final (checksum) word will be calculated for you automatically. The words on your Entropy Grid that are longer than 4 characters have been truncated down to 4 characters in order to fit it on 2 pages. This is safe to do as the first 4 (at the most) characters of all words are unique.

As you type in your word, you will be offered suggestions. You can use your arrow keys to highlight the correct suggestion and press enter or just click on the correct suggestion.

Wallet Seed Format

12 Words 24 words

Input Your First 11 Seed Words

Your Final Word is:

Final Word Number

Input Your First 23 Seed Words

Your Final Word is:

Final Word Number

ERROR!

"clos" is not in the BIP39 word list, did you mean "close"?

There are two times you need to use this part of the tool.

Creating your seed for the first time.
Recreating your seed on the "other side of the border"

In both cases you will need the complete seed phrase to enter into a Bitcoin Wallet in order to receive or send money to it.

In the first case, strong entropy is used to generate a random number. For a 12th word, it will be between 1-128. For a 24th word it will be between 1-8.

You can then just remember that number, or record it on your Entropy Grid, text it to someone, email it to yourself, whatever you want. The number doesn't give anything away about the other words in your seed. Without the other words, the number is absolutely useless.

When the time comes to recreate your seed phrase, you can input the Final Word Number and your 11 or 23 words, and our tool will present you with the same final word. If you do not wish to use this feature, then you need will just need to remember the final word itself when you first create your wallet.

NOTE: It is much more secure to use the randomly generated number provided than to scroll through numbers to choose the word you prefer!

12 Words (Best Practice) Own Passphrase (Advanced)

WARNING!

Here be dragons!

This is an advanced feature and your funds may be at risk if this is used improperly!

You have chosen to generate an Entropy Grid from your own passphrase. Entropy is about RANDOMNESS! There is no randomness involved in creating your Pattern Grid as you need to make a pattern that is not random and easy to remember. This means that all the entropy for your seed should come from the Entropy Grid (hence the name!)

Cryptographers highly recommend (perhaps even insist on) a minimum of 128-bits of entropy to generate Bitcoin seeds. We have included a tool that will calculate the minimum potential entropy of your passphrase, based on the length and set of characters used. This is NOT a measure of the entropy in your passphrase and how you generate randomness is up to you when using this advanced feature.

We recommend the EFF's Diceware Long Word List if you wish to do this yourself. Note that you will need to generate a 10 word passphrase to have at least 128 bits of entropy. Our built in solution uses 12 words from Bitcoin's, much shorter, BIP39 word list from 128 bits of entropy in the same way that wallets make seeds

If you generate your own 128-bit entropy and input your passphrase here, the tool may say that your potential entropy is higher. You can safely ignore it in this case, safe in the knowledge that you have generated sufficient entropy on your own.

Note well that the tool will not generate an Entropy Grid if the potential entropy of your passphrase is below 128 bits. This is for your own protection and for the integrity of the Border Wallets concept as a whole.

If you generate your own 128-bit entropy and input your passphrase here, the tool may say that your potential entropy is higher. You can safely ignore it in this case, safe in the knowledge that you have generated sufficient entropy on your own.

Minimum Potential Entropy

0 bit

Type of grid

Entropy Grids generated using the Deterministic (128-bit entropy) option feature a 12-word Regeneration Phrase. This may seem counter-intuitive to the concept of Border Wallets, but the ability to save 12-words in plain text can serve an important backup and/or decoy purpose for some users.

Whilst this Regeneration tab does allow users to enter their own passphrase to generate (and thus regenerate) grid entropy based on their own choice of words, this is strongly discouraged - humans are very bad at entropy and your funds may be at risk if you do this.

NB: Entropy Grids which are generated using the Maximum Entropy (19580-bit) option are not able to be regenerated using similar words (and therefore do not include a Regeneration Phrase when produced).

Passphrase

Confirm Passphrase

Drag and drop a file here for encrypting or decrypting, or click here to select a file.

Some users may want to save their Entropy Grids in digital format, e.g. USB keys, portable digital devices, secure cloud storage. As an extra layer of protection, we give those users the option to encrypt their Entropy Grids using their choice of preferred passphrase.

Please ensure that you choose a suitably secure passphrase; whilst this passphrase is not used to generate entropy in the randomness of the Entropy Grid, it is used to secure your digital file, so please choose carefully.

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