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<pre>
<pre>
   BIP:     BIP-0039
   BIP: 39
   Title:   Mnemonic code for generating deterministic keys
  Layer: Applications
   Author: Pavol Rusnak <stick@gk2.sk>
   Title: Mnemonic code for generating deterministic keys
          Marek Palatinus <info@bitcoin.cz>
   Author: Marek Palatinus <slush@satoshilabs.com>
          Aaron Voisine <voisine@gmail.com>
          Pavol Rusnak <stick@satoshilabs.com>
   Status: Draft
          Aaron Voisine <voisine@gmail.com>
   Type:   Standards Track
          Sean Bowe <ewillbefull@gmail.com>
   Created: 10-09-2013
  Comments-Summary: Unanimously Discourage for implementation
  Comments-URI: https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/wiki/Comments:BIP-0039
   Status: Proposed
   Type: Standards Track
   Created: 2013-09-10
</pre>
</pre>


==Abstract==
==Abstract==


This BIP proposes a scheme for translating binary data (usually master seeds
This BIP describes the implementation of a mnemonic code or mnemonic sentence --
for deterministic keys, but it can be applied to any binary data) into a group
a group of easy to remember words -- for the generation of deterministic wallets.
of easy to remember words also known as mnemonic code or mnemonic sentence.
 
It consists of two parts: generating the mnemonic and converting it into a
binary seed. This seed can be later used to generate deterministic wallets using
BIP-0032 or similar methods.


==Motivation==
==Motivation==


Such mnemonic code or mnemonic sentence is much easier to work with than working
A mnemonic code or sentence is superior for human interaction compared to the
with the binary data directly (or its hexadecimal interpretation). The sentence
handling of raw binary or hexadecimal representations of a wallet seed. The
could be writen down on paper (e.g. for storing in a secure location such as
sentence could be written on paper or spoken over the telephone.
safe), told over telephone or other voice communication method, or memorized
in ones memory (this method is called brainwallet).


==Backwards Compatibility==
This guide is meant to be a way to transport computer-generated randomness with
a human-readable transcription. It's not a way to process user-created
sentences (also known as brainwallets) into a wallet seed.


As this BIP is written, only one Bitcoin client (Electrum) implements mnemonic
==Generating the mnemonic==
codes, but it uses a different wordlist than the proposed one.


For compatibility reasons we propose adding a checkbox to Electrum, which will
The mnemonic must encode entropy in a multiple of 32 bits. With more entropy
allow user to indicate if the legacy code is being entered during import or
security is improved but the sentence length increases. We refer to the
it is a new one that is BIP-0039 compatible. For exporting, only the new format
initial entropy length as ENT. The allowed size of ENT is 128-256 bits.
will be used, so this is not an issue.


==Rationale==
First, an initial entropy of ENT bits is generated. A checksum is generated by
taking the first <code>ENT / 32</code> bits of its SHA256 hash. This checksum is
appended to the end of the initial entropy. Next, these concatenated bits
are split into groups of 11 bits, each encoding a number from 0-2047, serving
as an index into a wordlist. Finally, we convert these numbers into words and
use the joined words as a mnemonic sentence.


Our proposal is inspired by implementation used in Electrum, but we enhanced
The following table describes the relation between the initial entropy
the wordlist and algorithm so it meets the following criteria:
length (ENT), the checksum length (CS), and the length of the generated mnemonic
sentence (MS) in words.


<pre>
<pre>
CS = ENT / 32
MS = (ENT + CS) / 11
|  ENT  | CS | ENT+CS |  MS  |
+-------+----+--------+------+
|  128  |  4 |  132  |  12  |
|  160  |  5 |  165  |  15  |
|  192  |  6 |  198  |  18  |
|  224  |  7 |  231  |  21  |
|  256  |  8 |  264  |  24  |
</pre>
==Wordlist==
An ideal wordlist has the following characteristics:
a) smart selection of words
a) smart selection of words
   - wordlist is created in such way that it's enough to type just first four
   - the wordlist is created in such a way that it's enough to type the first four
     letters to unambiguously identify the word
     letters to unambiguously identify the word


b) similar words avoided
b) similar words avoided
   - words as "build" and "built", "woman" and "women" or "quick" or "quickly"
   - word pairs like "build" and "built", "woman" and "women", or "quick" and "quickly"
     not only make remembering the sentence difficult, but are also more error
     not only make remembering the sentence difficult but are also more error
     prone and more difficult to guess (see point below)
     prone and more difficult to guess
  - we avoid these words by carefully selecting them during addition


c) sorted wordlists
c) sorted wordlists
   - wordlist is sorted which allow more efficient lookup of the code words
   - the wordlist is sorted which allows for more efficient lookup of the code words
     (i.e. implementation can use binary search instead of linear search)
     (i.e. implementations can use binary search instead of linear search)
   - this also allows trie (prefix tree) to be used, e.g. for better compression
   - this also allows trie (a prefix tree) to be used, e.g. for better compression


d) localized wordlists
The wordlist can contain native characters, but they must be encoded in UTF-8
  - we would like to allow localized wordlists, so it is easier for users
using Normalization Form Compatibility Decomposition (NFKD).
    to remember the code in their native language
  - by using wordlists with no colliding words among languages, it's easy to
    determine which language was used just by checking the first word of
    the sentence


e) mnemonic checksum
==From mnemonic to seed==
  - this leads to better user experience, because user can be notified
    if the mnemonic sequence is wrong, instead of showing the confusing
    data generated from the wrong sequence.


==Specification==
A user may decide to protect their mnemonic with a passphrase. If a passphrase is not
present, an empty string "" is used instead.


<pre>
To create a binary seed from the mnemonic, we use the PBKDF2 function with a mnemonic
Our proposal implements two methods - "encode" and "decode".
sentence (in UTF-8 NFKD) used as the password and the string "mnemonic" + passphrase (again
in UTF-8 NFKD) used as the salt. The iteration count is set to 2048 and HMAC-SHA512 is used as
the pseudo-random function. The length of the derived key is 512 bits (= 64 bytes).


The first method takes a binary data which have to length (L) in bytes divisable
This seed can be later used to generate deterministic wallets using BIP-0032 or
by four and returns a sentence that consists of (L/4*3) words from the wordlist.
similar methods.


The second method takes sentences generated by first method (number of words in
The conversion of the mnemonic sentence to a binary seed is completely independent
the sentence has to be divisable by 3) and reconstructs the original binary data.
from generating the sentence. This results in a rather simple code; there are no
constraints on sentence structure and clients are free to implement their own
wordlists or even whole sentence generators, allowing for flexibility in wordlists
for typo detection or other purposes.


Words can repeat in the sentence more than one time.
Although using a mnemonic not generated by the algorithm described in "Generating the
mnemonic" section is possible, this is not advised and software must compute a
checksum for the mnemonic sentence using a wordlist and issue a warning if it is
invalid.


Wordlist contains 2048 words (instead of 1626 words in Electrum), allowing
The described method also provides plausible deniability, because every passphrase
the code to compute the checksum of the whole mnemonic sequence.
generates a valid seed (and thus a deterministic wallet) but only the correct one
Each 32 bits of input data add 1 bit of checksum.
will make the desired wallet available.


See the following table for relation between input lengths, output lengths and
==Wordlists==
checksum sizes for the most common usecases:


+--------+---------+---------+----------+
Since the vast majority of BIP39 wallets supports only the English wordlist,
| input  |  input  | output  | checksum |
it is '''strongly discouraged''' to use non-English wordlists for generating
| (bits) | (bytes) | (words) |  (bits)  |
the mnemonic sentences.
+--------+---------+---------+----------+
|  128  |    16  |    12  |    4    |
|  160  |    20  |    15  |    5    |
|  192  |    24  |    18  |    6    |
|  224  |    28  |    21  |    7    |
|  256  |    32  |    24  |    8    |
+--------+---------+---------+----------+


Algorithm:
If you still feel your application really needs to use a localized wordlist,
use one of the following instead of inventing your own.


Encoding:
* [[bip-0039/bip-0039-wordlists.md|Wordlists]]
1. Read input data (I).
2. Make sure its length (L) is divisable by 32 bits.
3. Compute the length of the checkum (LC). LC = L/32
4. Split I into chunks of LC bits (I1, I2, I3, ...).
5. XOR them altogether and produce the checksum C. C = I1 xor I2 xor I3 ... xor In.
5. Concatenate I and C into encoded data (E). Length of E is divisable by 33 bits.
6. Keep taking 11 bits from E until there are none left.
7. Treat them as integer W, add word with index W to the output.
 
Decoding:
1. Read input mnemonic (M).
2. Make sure its wordcount is divisable by 3.
3. Figure out word indexes in a dictionary and output them as binary stream E.
4. Length of E (L) is divisable by 33 bits.
5. Split E into two parts: B and C, where B are first L/33*32 bits, C are last L/33 bits.
6. Make sure C is the checksum of B (using the step 5 from the above paragraph).
7. If it's not we have invalid mnemonic code.
8. Treat B as binary data and return it as output.
 
</pre>


==Test vectors==
==Test vectors==


<pre>
The test vectors include input entropy, mnemonic and seed. The
input:    00000000 (32 bits)
passphrase "TREZOR" is used for all vectors.
mnemonic: abandon abandon abandon (3 words)


input:   7f7f7f7f (32 bits)
https://github.com/trezor/python-mnemonic/blob/master/vectors.json
mnemonic: legal wing taxi (3 words)


input:   80808080 (32 bits)
Also see https://github.com/bip32JP/bip32JP.github.io/blob/master/test_JP_BIP39.json
mnemonic: lethal adult bundle (3 words)


input:    ffffffff (32 bits)
(Japanese wordlist test with heavily normalized symbols as passphrase)
mnemonic: zoo zoo zone (3 words)


input:    0000000000000000 (64 bits)
==Reference Implementation==
mnemonic: abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon (6 words)
 
input:    7f7f7f7f7f7f7f7f (64 bits)
mnemonic: legal wing taxi yard water salad (6 words)
 
input:    8080808080808080 (64 bits)
mnemonic: lethal adult bunker absurd also dog (6 words)
 
input:    ffffffffffffffff (64 bits)
mnemonic: zoo zoo zoo zoo zoo young (6 words)
 
input:    000000000000000000000000 (96 bits)
mnemonic: abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon (9 words)
 
input:    7f7f7f7f7f7f7f7f7f7f7f7f (96 bits)
mnemonic: legal wing taxi yard water salmon worry urge lecture (9 words)
 
input:    808080808080808080808080 (96 bits)
mnemonic: lethal adult bunker absurd also domain achieve aunt lens (9 words)
 
input:    ffffffffffffffffffffffff (96 bits)
mnemonic: zoo zoo zoo zoo zoo zoo zoo zoo year (9 words)
 
input:    00000000000000000000000000000000 (128 bits)
mnemonic: abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon (12 words)
 
input:    7f7f7f7f7f7f7f7f7f7f7f7f7f7f7f7f (128 bits)
mnemonic: legal wing taxi yard water salmon worry urge legal wing taxi worth (12 words)
 
input:    80808080808080808080808080808080 (128 bits)
mnemonic: lethal adult bunker absurd also domain achieve aunt lethal adult bunker abandon (12 words)
 
input:    ffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff (128 bits)
mnemonic: zoo zoo zoo zoo zoo zoo zoo zoo zoo zoo zoo worth (12 words)
 
input:    0000000000000000000000000000000000000000 (160 bits)
mnemonic: abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon (15 words)
 
input:    7f7f7f7f7f7f7f7f7f7f7f7f7f7f7f7f7f7f7f7f (160 bits)
mnemonic: legal wing taxi yard water salmon worry urge legal wing taxi yard water salmon winner (15 words)
 
input:    8080808080808080808080808080808080808080 (160 bits)
mnemonic: lethal adult bunker absurd also domain achieve aunt lethal adult bunker absurd also domain abandon (15 words)
 
input:    ffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff (160 bits)
mnemonic: zoo zoo zoo zoo zoo zoo zoo zoo zoo zoo zoo zoo zoo zoo winner (15 words)
 
input:    000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 (192 bits)
mnemonic: abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon (18 words)
 
input:    7f7f7f7f7f7f7f7f7f7f7f7f7f7f7f7f7f7f7f7f7f7f7f7f (192 bits)
mnemonic: legal wing taxi yard water salmon worry urge legal wing taxi yard water salmon worry urge legal wave (18 words)
 
input:    808080808080808080808080808080808080808080808080 (192 bits)
mnemonic: lethal adult bunker absurd also domain achieve aunt lethal adult bunker absurd also domain achieve aunt lethal abandon (18 words)
 
input:    ffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff (192 bits)
mnemonic: zoo zoo zoo zoo zoo zoo zoo zoo zoo zoo zoo zoo zoo zoo zoo zoo zoo wave (18 words)
 
input:    00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 (224 bits)
mnemonic: abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon (21 words)
 
input:    7f7f7f7f7f7f7f7f7f7f7f7f7f7f7f7f7f7f7f7f7f7f7f7f7f7f7f7f (224 bits)
mnemonic: legal wing taxi yard water salmon worry urge legal wing taxi yard water salmon worry urge legal wing taxi yard usage (21 words)
 
input:    80808080808080808080808080808080808080808080808080808080 (224 bits)
mnemonic: lethal adult bunker absurd also domain achieve aunt lethal adult bunker absurd also domain achieve aunt lethal adult bunker absurd abandon (21 words)
 
input:    ffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff (224 bits)
mnemonic: zoo zoo zoo zoo zoo zoo zoo zoo zoo zoo zoo zoo zoo zoo zoo zoo zoo zoo zoo zoo usage (21 words)
 
input:    0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 (256 bits)
mnemonic: abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon (24 words)
 
input:    7f7f7f7f7f7f7f7f7f7f7f7f7f7f7f7f7f7f7f7f7f7f7f7f7f7f7f7f7f7f7f7f (256 bits)
mnemonic: legal wing taxi yard water salmon worry urge legal wing taxi yard water salmon worry urge legal wing taxi yard water salmon worry team (24 words)
 
input:    8080808080808080808080808080808080808080808080808080808080808080 (256 bits)
mnemonic: lethal adult bunker absurd also domain achieve aunt lethal adult bunker absurd also domain achieve aunt lethal adult bunker absurd also domain achieve abandon (24 words)
 
input:    ffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff (256 bits)
mnemonic: zoo zoo zoo zoo zoo zoo zoo zoo zoo zoo zoo zoo zoo zoo zoo zoo zoo zoo zoo zoo zoo zoo zoo team (24 words)
 
input:    19458fe8dace41e60617c6667874f6be (128 bits)
mnemonic: bless cloud wheel regular tiny venue birth web grief security dignity language (12 words)
 
input:    2d8fc7c27a52995bc165a0dcead7c169f301652f0b5db145 (192 bits)
mnemonic: sketch flavor eyebrow height youth rope various pet fish little embryo arena just chicken jump mourn advance unique fork knock general slice short caught (24 words)
 
input:    ea88c6efbc4028994b8b4ebc0345a474 (128 bits)
mnemonic: try educate robust joke act erosion color hedge rock blow hat tribe (12 words)


input:    bb8e02d2c0fe4c18f60e173bc38724902395b63b1b47bf18 (192 bits)
Reference implementation including wordlists is available from
mnemonic: river ignore recycle like tobacco armor straw season despair bosnian sibling burden defy sunset typical harvest sad shadow (18 words)
 
input:    0b57161fd701c6c6548db5a71df70166965eec2f16a675acad3ed3460cb3e72f (256 bits)
mnemonic: approach response map protect both glass fabric remember place upset satisfy slave gravity irish romance squad involve grain excuse pioneer gauge flight open white (24 words)
 
input:    666fbb72dada90d6c8f627d77450f366 (128 bits)
mnemonic: grief last swamp reject pond history car sentence stone patrol diamond slam (12 words)
 
input:    29932c2887ff2c72dd8f9cff1b7ee498119f330d1dd81659 (192 bits)
mnemonic: chunk oak another audit vendor degree iron very year surprise retreat cook blossom obey crowd riot belt slogan (18 words)
 
input:    869e2bc8286611bce2159b89c5a8a4029666dc186bbfe8756ac505a4e89f481e (256 bits)
mnemonic: magnet vacuum van exotic gear tactic march ready matrix coat chin after grief huge genuine jet travel prepare race approach evil excuse burial skirt (24 words)
 
input:    d0263588b1deee8186818319515c6691 (128 bits)
mnemonic: soda country ghost glove unusual dose blouse cope bless medal block car (12 words)
 
input:    48754ef698334cf9cc5494ccca6a0294bf30224066576a7c (192 bits)
mnemonic: embrace poverty royal cope cruise lake cotton movie slam false letter chuckle venue awesome accident sing hen tight (18 words)
 
input:    ee9e8ce85eadcdf0f5473d7490816d9b1335f7204e7776597ac99f9e29186364 (256 bits)
mnemonic: unlikely victory dentist round swear weapon squeeze traffic insist logo force custom create win liberty snack island skate range display thought merchant migrant nasty (24 words)
</pre>
 
==Reference Implementation==


Reference implementation including wordlists is available from http://github.com/trezor/mnemonic
http://github.com/trezor/python-mnemonic

Latest revision as of 15:27, 25 April 2024

This page describes a BIP (Bitcoin Improvement Proposal).
Please see BIP 2 for more information about BIPs and creating them. Please do not just create a wiki page.

Please do not modify this page. This is a mirror of the BIP from the source Git repository here.

  BIP: 39
  Layer: Applications
  Title: Mnemonic code for generating deterministic keys
  Author: Marek Palatinus <slush@satoshilabs.com>
          Pavol Rusnak <stick@satoshilabs.com>
          Aaron Voisine <voisine@gmail.com>
          Sean Bowe <ewillbefull@gmail.com>
  Comments-Summary: Unanimously Discourage for implementation
  Comments-URI: https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/wiki/Comments:BIP-0039
  Status: Proposed
  Type: Standards Track
  Created: 2013-09-10

Abstract

This BIP describes the implementation of a mnemonic code or mnemonic sentence -- a group of easy to remember words -- for the generation of deterministic wallets.

It consists of two parts: generating the mnemonic and converting it into a binary seed. This seed can be later used to generate deterministic wallets using BIP-0032 or similar methods.

Motivation

A mnemonic code or sentence is superior for human interaction compared to the handling of raw binary or hexadecimal representations of a wallet seed. The sentence could be written on paper or spoken over the telephone.

This guide is meant to be a way to transport computer-generated randomness with a human-readable transcription. It's not a way to process user-created sentences (also known as brainwallets) into a wallet seed.

Generating the mnemonic

The mnemonic must encode entropy in a multiple of 32 bits. With more entropy security is improved but the sentence length increases. We refer to the initial entropy length as ENT. The allowed size of ENT is 128-256 bits.

First, an initial entropy of ENT bits is generated. A checksum is generated by taking the first ENT / 32 bits of its SHA256 hash. This checksum is appended to the end of the initial entropy. Next, these concatenated bits are split into groups of 11 bits, each encoding a number from 0-2047, serving as an index into a wordlist. Finally, we convert these numbers into words and use the joined words as a mnemonic sentence.

The following table describes the relation between the initial entropy length (ENT), the checksum length (CS), and the length of the generated mnemonic sentence (MS) in words.

CS = ENT / 32
MS = (ENT + CS) / 11

|  ENT  | CS | ENT+CS |  MS  |
+-------+----+--------+------+
|  128  |  4 |   132  |  12  |
|  160  |  5 |   165  |  15  |
|  192  |  6 |   198  |  18  |
|  224  |  7 |   231  |  21  |
|  256  |  8 |   264  |  24  |

Wordlist

An ideal wordlist has the following characteristics:

a) smart selection of words

  - the wordlist is created in such a way that it's enough to type the first four
    letters to unambiguously identify the word

b) similar words avoided

  - word pairs like "build" and "built", "woman" and "women", or "quick" and "quickly"
    not only make remembering the sentence difficult but are also more error
    prone and more difficult to guess

c) sorted wordlists

  - the wordlist is sorted which allows for more efficient lookup of the code words
    (i.e. implementations can use binary search instead of linear search)
  - this also allows trie (a prefix tree) to be used, e.g. for better compression

The wordlist can contain native characters, but they must be encoded in UTF-8 using Normalization Form Compatibility Decomposition (NFKD).

From mnemonic to seed

A user may decide to protect their mnemonic with a passphrase. If a passphrase is not present, an empty string "" is used instead.

To create a binary seed from the mnemonic, we use the PBKDF2 function with a mnemonic sentence (in UTF-8 NFKD) used as the password and the string "mnemonic" + passphrase (again in UTF-8 NFKD) used as the salt. The iteration count is set to 2048 and HMAC-SHA512 is used as the pseudo-random function. The length of the derived key is 512 bits (= 64 bytes).

This seed can be later used to generate deterministic wallets using BIP-0032 or similar methods.

The conversion of the mnemonic sentence to a binary seed is completely independent from generating the sentence. This results in a rather simple code; there are no constraints on sentence structure and clients are free to implement their own wordlists or even whole sentence generators, allowing for flexibility in wordlists for typo detection or other purposes.

Although using a mnemonic not generated by the algorithm described in "Generating the mnemonic" section is possible, this is not advised and software must compute a checksum for the mnemonic sentence using a wordlist and issue a warning if it is invalid.

The described method also provides plausible deniability, because every passphrase generates a valid seed (and thus a deterministic wallet) but only the correct one will make the desired wallet available.

Wordlists

Since the vast majority of BIP39 wallets supports only the English wordlist, it is strongly discouraged to use non-English wordlists for generating the mnemonic sentences.

If you still feel your application really needs to use a localized wordlist, use one of the following instead of inventing your own.

Test vectors

The test vectors include input entropy, mnemonic and seed. The passphrase "TREZOR" is used for all vectors.

https://github.com/trezor/python-mnemonic/blob/master/vectors.json

Also see https://github.com/bip32JP/bip32JP.github.io/blob/master/test_JP_BIP39.json

(Japanese wordlist test with heavily normalized symbols as passphrase)

Reference Implementation

Reference implementation including wordlists is available from

http://github.com/trezor/python-mnemonic