Passphrase, concerns/questions

9 thoughts on “Passphrase, concerns/questions”

1. Please bear in mind that no one from the Trezor team would send you a private message first.
   If you want to discuss a sensitive issue, we suggest contacting our Support team via the Troubleshooter: https://trezor.io/support/

   No one from the Trezor team (Reddit mods, Support agents, etc) would ever ask for your recovery seed!
   Beware of scams and phishings: https://blog.trezor.io/recognize-and-avoid-phishing-ef0948698aec

   I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

2. Seed + passphrase makes a new wallet at the time of entering the passphrase. Wrong passphrase? Just close it and reenter the correct one.

   It does not erase or change any wallet.

3. 1. It does what you tell it to. EXACTLY what you tell it to. Cant tell accidents from intent
   2. Never says “incorrect” but it will warn of the wallet is empty, fresh, unused. This is to warn you that this may be a typo, or could be the first use
   3. In theory yes. But if you use weird Unicode or emojis in your passphrase, coldcard may not encode them the same. Read the manual and know trezors encoding and limits on passphrase use

   Personally, I don’t advice passphrases for security. T3 is not susceptible to the STM32 hack that popularized them. I’ll use them for account isolation, but I employ safeguards that reduce the errors that eat coins.

4. Hello, mister or miss Trezor Safe 3 (LOL)
   It’s easier you don’t use a passphrase.

5. Note down the BTC addresses

   Then get out of the passphrase and reenter with the passphrase to compare the BTC addresses.

   Do if for at least 3 times in total.

   Then your passphrased wallet is ready to go.

   *Make your passphrase between 20 to 35 characters. Don’t overcomplicated it.

   Seeds phrase account for 95% of your assets security. Passphrase just the 5%.

6. Seedphrase is BIP39, and passphrase is BIP38 –
   In case you want to learn exactly how they work. They are standards across all wallet providers.

   I recommend using (at least) two passphrases with your Trezor. Store the vast majority in one, while using the others in case you are physically attacked (“the $5 wrench attack”) – you can give your attackers something and still keep the rest secure. You can create infinite wallets using infinite passphrases.

7. The hardware wallet cannot know you typed an incorrect passphrase because it does not know what passphrase your accounts are under, and all passphrases are syntactically “correct” since a passphrase is an arbitrary string, so it can be anything.

8. > 1. What happens if I type wrongly a wallet passphrase?

   You will create a valid wallet with the “wrong” passphrase as the passphrase.

   > If I understand, it creates a new wallet? why?, why not just ask to type again or something?

   Someone might use passphrases as a way to create separate “account” wallets. For example, they might create a separate passphrase for each year (i.e. “2022” “2023” and “2024”). The software has no reason to think the single different digit is a mistake and not intentional.

   > but more important: if creates a new wallet, what happens with the original wallet tied to that passphrase? it dissapear or be deleted or something wrong? you know! that wallet possibly have coins, or simply the wallet is safe and you only need type again to have access to.

   The wallet is safe and you only need to type the correct passphrase to access it.

   > 2. there’s some people claiming that they type correctly the passpharse but trezor says “incorrect”!

   As the video you linked states, “There’s no incorrect passphrase. Each passphrase (even one with a typo) always creates a new wallet.” So if someone says they trezor says “incorrect,” it could be in reference to the PIN but not a passphrase. Or perhaps they are using their terms loosely, and they mean to say they either incorrectly remembered the passphrase or they typed it in incorrectly; in neither case would the Trezor itself say the passphrase they tried was incorrect; it would simply open the wallet corresponding to their seed phrase + the passphrase they actually typed.

   > I can correctly type my passphrase but if Trezor software have issues, I can lose everything. Again that was 3 years ago, maybe is fine now?

   You can’t lose everything because of Trezor issues. Use the same seed words + same passphrase in a Ledger or even a hot wallet and you’ll get the same private keys. Your coins are there waiting for someone to use the right private key.

   > 3. Related with point 2, as far I know the seed + passphrase are NOT tied to Trezor, I can recover to another hardware wallet brand like ColdCard or other?

   Yes, but with caveats. Anyone who follows the same protocol (e.g. BIP39 for Bitcoin) gets the same results. But from time to time a platform uses a novel derivation path that will access a different wallet. Sometimes one derivation path is used for one coin, and another derivation path is specified by another token’s standard. Fortunately, Trezors use standard derivation paths.

9. > there’s some people claiming that they type correctly the passpharse but trezor says “incorrect”!

   there’s been, I believe, two separate bugs in Trezor Suite that could report “incorrect passphrase” even on correct passphrase.

   Basically, the Trezor device has no concept of “invalid passphrase”. Every passphrase is valid.

   Suite tries to be a little clever and catch some mistakes. This cleverness can, very rarely, fail, and you get a scary warning. There is never anything wrong with the wallet itself.

   In both situations, clicking Forget on the affected wallet resolved the problem. I also believe that both mentioned bugs are solved now.

Comments are closed.