What Is a Mnemonic Phrase? BIP39 Word List

What is a mnemonic phrase? This is a question our customers often ask us. Let’s figure it out.

A mnemonic phrase is a group of words that provides access to your assets and serves as a backup for your crypto wallet. It is also often called a seed phrase or BIP39 phrase. A phrase can contain 12, 18, or 24 words. The most common options are 12-word and 24-word phrases.

How important is a mnemonic phrase?

Let’s imagine that you did not create a backup of the crypto wallet you used on your smartphone, and then you lost that smartphone. How can you access your funds? Unfortunately, the answer is: you cannot. In the world of cryptocurrency, there is no centralized authority that can help restore access to your assets the way a bank can help with a bank account. Losing access and losing the backup in crypto means the end for your assets. They will remain forever on the wallet you lost. The only thing you will be able to do is look at them in a blockchain explorer.

At the moment, 4.8 million BTC are no longer in circulation, which is around 25.5% of all Bitcoin. Unfortunately, there is no exact statistic on how many people have lost their assets, but news websites often publish loud headlines about someone losing a large amount of money because of carelessness.

A securely stored mnemonic phrase is the number one thing you should take care of after creating your crypto wallet. It allows you to restore access to your funds on another smartphone or hardware wallet if needed.

Unfortunately, this technology also has its drawbacks. Anyone who gets access to your phrase can also get access to your funds. That is why it is extremely important to keep your phrase secret and never share it with third parties.

How to store a mnemonic phrase securely?

There are several storage options:

• Paper backup.
• Mnemonic backup plates.

The most reliable method is to store it using a mnemonic backup plate. A mnemonic backup plate is usually made of durable metal plates that are resistant to corrosion and high temperatures.

Which wallets support the BIP39 mnemonic phrase?

BIP39 word list

The BIP39 word list contains all the words that can and will appear in your mnemonic phrase. There are 2048 words in total.
You can view the word list in the Bitcoin repository, where it originally appeared.

https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0039/english.txt

We have also prepared the word list for you in document format. You can download the current word list from our website.
https://lwallet.com.ua/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/BIP39_Wordlist.pdf

Is it possible to guess a mnemonic phrase?

First, imagine a 4-digit PIN code. For each digit, we can use a value from 0 to 9.
Let’s calculate how many attempts would be needed to guess the code.

10^4 = 10,000 combinations.
This kind of brute force is possible even manually. If we are talking about a computer, such an operation would take no more than 1 second.

Now let’s do the same thing, but this time we do not have 4 digits. We have 12 mnemonic words.
And instead of values from 0 to 9, we have the BIP39 dictionary, which consists of 2048 words.

2048^12 = 5,444,517,870,735,015,415,413,993,718,908,291,383,296 combinations.
In theory, brute forcing is possible, but for that you would need to rent a supercomputer for several hundred thousand years.

And what if your mnemonic phrase has 24 words?
2048^24 = 29,642,774,844,752,946,028,434,172,162,224,104,410,437,116,074,403,984,394,101,141,506,025,761,187,823,616 combinations.
In this case, even a supercomputer is powerless.

In addition to these calculations, an attacker would also need to make an additional request to check the balance of the wallet linked to your mnemonic phrase.
That means just as many additional operations. So we recommend not worrying about this.

Summary

A mnemonic phrase is extremely important data that requires special care. A backup made in time will protect you from losing your assets and save your time and nerves.
We hope you have already made a backup and stored it in a safe place.