Thread by @GhostofMTC

*Introducing*

🧠🔑 Border Wallets 🏃‍♂️💨

For the last few months, @superphatarrow and I (with a touch of magic from @BitcoinQ_A) have been hammering out a way to make memorising secure #Bitcoin seed phrases easier and more reliable.

A quick thread 🧵👇🏻

THE PROBLEM

Seed phrases used for generating and backing-up #Bitcoin wallets can be difficult to memorise and recall – especially over time, or in dynamic situations. This leads to most users writing down their seed phrases in plain text and storing them safely.

Whilst this approach is fine for those who live in secure accommodation and politically stable countries, it can present a risk for people who struggle to protect their private property, have limited access to trusted 3rd parties, live in areas of conflict, or frequently travel.

WORDS vs PATTERNS

Imagine having 10 seconds to memorise A or B.

Which one is easiest and most likely to be recalled after a few days?

Some formally conducted studies have shown that we are far more capable of recalling patterns/shapes vs words after prolonged periods of time. This phenomenon is called the Picture Superiority Effect en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picture_s…

Being able to recognise shapes more easily than words bears out anecdotally too - we tend to remember faces more easily than names (which makes sense, given that our eye sight and facial recognition abilities predated our use of language).

Let’s see if this works.

In the spaces provided, have a go at recalling the missing words and the missing pattern from the example above. No cheating!

THE SOLUTION

Border Wallets exploits the Picture Superiority Effect to make memorising seed phrases easier using:

1. A randomised grid of all 2048 BIP-39 seed words (an ‘Entropy Grid’)
2. A user-generated ‘Pattern’ (or set of cell co-ordinates)
3. A final checksum word (or #*)

Using our tool - the ‘EGG’ - users can make their own entropically-secured, randomised grid of all BIP-39 compliant seed words, and then apply a memorable pattern (which only they know) to create a wallet. The EGG can also calculate checksums.

Using this method, memorising seed phrases becomes much easier and more robust, whilst massively increasing the difficulty for an evil maid attack (where seed words are discovered by an attacker).

To learn more, visit and follow @borderwallets ✌️🚀BorderWallets.com

Also, thanks to @BitkoYinowsky for the killer logo and @WorldofRusty for the thumbnail.

Also, a word of thanks to @ZLOK @KeithMukai @SeedSigner @hodlhodl @GunnPoor @giacomozucco @nathan_day @openoms @dergigi @DaveDustpan @glennhodl @RD_btc @SatoshiMelange for checking out the idea when we were building and sharing insights/feedback/comments. Appreciate you all 🙏