SteelPhrase

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What to Actually Write Down With Your Seed Phrase

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Most people write down twelve or twenty-four words and stop. Then, years later, somebody — possibly them — holds a card of correct words and still cannot open the wallet, because a phrase on its own does not always say which wallet it belongs to.

The words are necessary. They are occasionally not sufficient. Here is what belongs on the backup, what belongs somewhere else, and what must never be written at all.

On the backup itself

Keep this minimal. Everything here is either the secret or something needed to use it.

  1. The words, numbered. Block capitals, 1 to 12 or 1 to 24. The numbering is not decoration — order is part of the secret, and an unnumbered card that gets shuffled is a failed backup.
  2. The word count, written out: “12 words” or “24 words”. This tells a future reader immediately whether anything is missing.
  3. Whether a passphrase is in use — the fact, never the passphrase. A single mark reading “passphrase: YES” is the difference between a successful restore and an heir concluding the wallet is empty.

That is the whole list. Anything else on the same object weakens it.

The “wallet card” — kept separately

This is the part almost nobody makes, and it is what turns a phrase into a usable wallet. None of it is secret, so it can live with your important papers rather than in the safe:

  • Which wallet software or device created it, and the model. “Trezor Safe 3”, “Base App”, “Sparrow”. Restores are usually cross-compatible, but knowing the origin resolves most problems in seconds.
  • Which coins are in it. Someone restoring your wallet needs to know whether to look for Bitcoin, Ethereum, or both.
  • The derivation path, if it is non-standard. Almost always unnecessary — but when it is necessary, its absence produces the worst failure mode there is: a clean restore showing a zero balance. If you did anything unusual, or used a Bitcoin-only wallet with account types, write the path down.
  • The date created, and the date each backup copy was last verified.
  • Where the copies are. Described well enough for a specific person to find them, without naming the contents.
  • An approximate value and why it matters, so nobody dismisses it as a hobby artefact.

Keep this with your will or your household documents. It is the map, not the key: on its own it opens nothing, which is exactly why it can be stored somewhere findable.

What must never be written down

  • The passphrase beside the words. Its entire function is to be a second, separately-held secret. Written on the same card, it protects nothing.
  • The device PIN with the phrase. Same reasoning.
  • The word “crypto”, “Bitcoin”, or a wallet brand on the container. Anonymous metal is safer than labelled metal.
  • Anything, ever, in a photo, cloud note, email or password manager. That is not a written backup; it is a digital one wearing a disguise.

A template you can copy

For the backup object:

  1 ______   2 ______   3 ______   4 ______
  5 ______   6 ______   7 ______   8 ______
  9 ______  10 ______  11 ______  12 ______

  TOTAL WORDS: 12          PASSPHRASE IN USE: YES / NO

For the separate wallet card:

  Created ................  by ................ (wallet / device + model)
  Holds ..................  (which coins)
  Derivation path ........  (only if non-standard)
  Backup copies at .......  (location 1) and ....... (location 2)
  Passphrase in use ......  YES / NO   -- stored separately at .......
  Last verified ..........  (date)
  Notes for whoever finds this: ................................

Neither of these should be typed into anything. Write them by hand. And to be explicit, since the subject invites bad actors: no page or tool on this site will ever ask you to enter a recovery phrase, template or otherwise.

Handwriting, tested by someone else

The most underrated check: hand your written backup to a person who does not know the words and ask them to read it aloud.

You can read your own bad handwriting because you know what it says. A stranger cannot, and neither can you in fifteen years, and neither can your heirs. Ambiguous characters are the usual culprits — l against 1, 0 against O, u against v, a against o in a hurried hand.

If you would rather not show anyone the real words, write out a decoy set of twelve BIP-39 words in the same hand and have them read those instead. You are testing your handwriting, not your secret.

Then test that the backup actually restores, which is the only check that proves the whole thing works.