shamir backup
This new security standard, Shamir Backup, counteracts the two greatest risks involved with protecting your recovery seed: theft and destruction.
How it works
Generate
Choose how many recovery shares you want to generate, and decide how many of them you want to use for recovery.
Distribute
Distribute those shares however you want, among people and/or secure locations.
Relax
Sleep peacefully knowing that your private keys are secured by Shamir Backup, safe from theft or accident.
“
Innovating existing standards and driving progress in the security field is our commitment.
— Marek “Slush” Palatinus, CEO SatoshiLabs
Single Backup vs. Shamir Backup
Single Backup
Shamir Backup
Master Seed
A single recovery seed
Up to 16 recovery shares
Seed Words
12, 18 or 24 word recovery seed
20 or 33 words in each share
Advantages
Easy to manage
Choose your threshold
Recovery
Independent control of recovery seed
Administrative control of master seed
Independence
Autonomous control of assets
Autonomous control of assets
Security
Secure offline backup of private keys
Secure offline backup of private keys
Extra Security
Eliminated risk of theft or loss
“
Shamir Backup is considered to be a revolutionary development which may usher in a new era of hardware wallet security altogether.
— JP Buntinx, The Merkle Hash
Got questions?
How is Shamir Backup different from the single recovery seed backup?
Shamir Backup lets you generate up to 16 recovery shares - sequences of 20 or 33 words. Single backup recovery seeds consist of 12, 18, or 24 words.
Shamir Backup also uses a different wordlist than the BIP-39 recovery seeds. In other words, some of the words used in Shamir backup recovery shares are never used in single seed backups and vice-versa.
Is Shamir Backup available for Trezor One?
Shamir Backup is currently available only for Trezor Model T.
What happens if some of the shares get lost or stolen?
Shamir Backup offers a significant advantage compared to the single recovery seed. Individual shares do not leak any information about the shared secret, as long as the number of compromised shares does not reach the required threshold. In other words, if you use a 7-of-10 scheme and 5 of your shares get compromised, the attacker has no chance to reconstruct your wallet and cause trouble.
What happens if I lose so many recovery shares that I can’t meet the required threshold?
If you can’t meet the required threshold, your wallet will become unrecoverable. For example: if you use a 3-of-4 scheme, where 3 is the required threshold to recover the wallet, and you lose 2 or more of the recovery shares, your wallet will be unrecoverable.
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