The way in which 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 sequence of personal and public keys. In Bitcoin, you might be allowed to do all of what you might be asking together with:
- Giant 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. Chances are you’ll encounter passphrase size limits based mostly on the pockets implementation, resembling Trezor permitting round 50 characters and another wallets allowing extra or fewer characters. It’s really useful to examine the documentation of the precise pockets you’re utilizing earlier than creating your passphrase. Typically, software program wallets like Sparrow and Electrum may have fewer constraints than {hardware} wallets like Trezor and Ledger. Additionally, given that the majority {hardware} wallets don’t retailer the passphrase, it might be tedious to re-enter a 250+ character passphrase each time you need 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 vital to ensure that your passphrase is safe and memorable and/or safely saved, as a result of shedding it means everlasting lack of entry to the funds tied to the pockets derived with that passphrase. The seed phrase alone won’t be sufficient to recuperate the pockets. As beforehand talked about, it is the mix of the seed and go phrases that creates the pockets, so the seed phrase alone (or the seed phrase together with a unique go phrase) will create a brand new (almost certainly empty) pockets with a unique grasp seed and totally different addresses, and so forth.
