Guide For Your Seed Backup Kit
Learn how to use the seed backup kit you got for free when you went to Web3FC 2023 in Barcelona
One very worrying thing I noticed while building Web3Family, Web3FC and mingling with thousands of crypto folks: they may all have a hardware wallet, they often store their seed phrase very badly.
So here comes this idea of building an easy-to-use and inexpensive kit to giveaway to community members.
If grassroots communities don’t get this right. Then who will?
Heads up: this is by no mean a perfect product. More of a beta version. If you feel you can do better, check out the articles just below. They contain tons of links where to buy seed plates, engravers and so on. By all means my friend, go for it.
Curious How This All Works?
Dive deeper into my article series
Guide For Your Seed Backup Kit 📙 YOU ARE HERE 📍
Wanna Get Started Right Away?
Sure. Let’s go!
As a reminder: make sure you are alone when doing this, in a place where you feel safe — ideally at home totally alone.
1. Add Batteries To The Engraver
We gave the engraver without battery.
Why? Because I definitely do not want anyone to use this in a public space. Having people bringing their seed phrases at my events? lol. Yeah, that’s totally stupid and irresponsible.
Find 2 AA batteries and put them inside the engraver. The “plus” towards the bottom.
2. Prepare Your Plates
You will put 12 words per plate, each plate is 70mm long. Put a line every 5mm so you can have space for 12 words AND a title. The title will be the name of your plate, think of it as an ID or code name.
Yes, you do want a code name for each of your plates otherwise it can get extremely confusing.
3. Find Your 24 Words
Get your seed phrase made of 24 words. You’re either getting it from a new hardware wallet device during the set up, or from a seed phrase you already store somewhere (maybe one you wrote on a stupid piece of paper and put in your stupid cupboard).
At this point, being totally paranoid is ok, anyone viewing your seed phrase could then drain your funds. So be extra careful.
4. Engrave The 24 Words
I recommend to always write in upper case.
For the 1st copy of 24 words
Engrave a code name to each plate, i.e. E1 and E2
Engrave the first 12 words on plate E1
Engrave the last 12 words on plate E2
For the 2nd copy of 24 words, do the same
Engrave a code name to each plate, i.e. W1 and W2
Engrave the first 12 words on plate W1
Engrave the last 12 words on plate W2
FYI: yes, seed splitting in 2 is ok if it is a 24 words seed. Read my article on Brute Forcing, 12 vs 24 Words, Seed Phrase Splitting.
In the picture below, the title is “DEMO” and the first words of the seed phrase (of course, fake seed phrase) are “BTC”, “ETH” and so on. See, crafty!
5. Hide The Plates
I explain various strategies in my article on Where To Store Your Seed Phrase. I highly recommend you take 3min to read it.
For the 1st copy of 24 words, code names E1 and E2
Find a place near you to hide them
Make sure you do not store them in the same place whether building, apartment, or whatnot.
For the 2nd copy of 24 words, code names W1 and W2
Find a place to hide them that is +1km away from where you stored E1 and E2
Same thing here, make sure W1 and W2 are not stored in the same place, whether building, apartment, or whatnot.
Again, follow the tips given in my article on Where To Store Your Seed Phrase. You might underestimate how easy it can be for others to find where you intend to hide you seed plates.
Voila! Or Almost
What’s next? Well actually a very good idea is to put these reminders in your calendar:
in 3 months, reminder with title “Find my E1 and E2”
in 4 months, reminder with title “Find my W1 and W2”
in 9 months, reminder with title “Find my E1 and E2”
in 9 months, reminder with title “Find my W1 and W2”
You probably guessed what’s coming: you will have to test your own setup.
As in, there are a number of reasons why you could mess it up. Maybe you stored your plates in an unsafe place. Maybe you will simply forget where you put them.
So yeah, as a good practice, you test out your setup. And only with time, your confidence will grow. And trust your setup, you will.
Closing Thoughts
This may seem trivial but following these steps and reading through my article series will probably make you more educated than 99% of crypto holders. No BS.
Only a few percent of crypto holders own a hardware wallet. What fraction do you think know how to store their seed phrase even in an average way? Probably not even 30%.
Putting this figures together, it means probably 1% of crypto holders know how to store their seed phrase in an average way. What part of these 1% does the storage in that average of above average way? Maybe 50%? That means 0.5% of all crypto holders.
By following this guide, you’re now part of the 0.5% of crypto holders doing things properly.
FAQ
Q: Why are the plates so small?
A: We tried several sizes. This size great because by being small it means light (stainless steel is heavy), hence easy to transport even if you have 4+ of them. Being small also means easy to hide, that’s a crucial point.
Q: What’s Web3Family and Web3FC?
A: Web3Family is a crypto events community in Barcelona. Web3FC is our largest gathering. More on linktr.ee/web3family
Q: Wanna share some feedback?
A: Feel free to drop me a message linktr.ee/adrienbe
All the articles of the series:
Guide For Your Seed Backup Kit 📙 YOU ARE HERE 📍
More to follow in the coming weeks ⚡️
Follow me twitter.com/AdrienBe_