3 years ago, I lost part of my seed phrase in a fire.

But with special techniques, I managed to restore it.

Here’s how you can recover your private keys too.


Due to a gas problem, a fire ravaged part of my apartment.

Thank God there were no human casualties, but many valuable items were burned.

Among them was a part of my seed phrase containing all my funds.

I finally managed to restore it with this technique👇


Seed phrases typically use the BIP 39 standard.

This is a list of 2048 words that are used in all seed phrases.

The probability of finding a complete seed phrase is 1 / 2048^24 = 1 / 2^264 = 4.3 * 10^-80.

This is an extremely low probability.

To give you an idea, the observable universe contains 10^80 atoms.

I mean the entire universe, not just Earth.

This means that finding a 24-word seed phrase by chance is less likely than selecting a specific atom in the entire observable universe.

It is therefore impossible to find a complete seed phrase from scratch (fortunately), but it is possible to recover a seed phrase if a few words are missing.

• 1 missing word: probability of 1 / 2048 (0 seconds for a PC)
• 2 missing words: probability of 1 / 2048^2 (4 seconds for a PC)
• 3 missing words: probability of 1 / 2048^3 (2 and a half hours for a PC)
• 4 missing words: probability of 1 / 2048^4 (6 months for a PC)

If you try to recover 5 missing words in your seed phrase, it will take you more than 1000 years.

Beyond 5, we can say that it is definitely lost.

But if it’s less than 5 words, you can still restore them.

For your information, I lost 4 words, and here’s how I found them



There are actually 3 methods to recover them, I will present them to you in order of difficulty (from easiest to hardest).

I used the third method (the hardest) because it was the one that ensured the most security.


Github project

There is a well-known Github project called mnemonic-recovery (Google it).

• Download the zip
• Open the file called mnemonic-standalone
• Disable your wifi
• Enter your seed phrase into the tool, replacing the lost words with "?"

The tool suggests some words, search for your address with ctrl+F to find the corresponding word.


BTCRecover

BTCRecover is another more complete and efficient Github project.

It is therefore suitable for the loss of 2, 3, or even 4 words.

BTCRecover includes several tools, but the one suitable for our needs is seedrecover.


• Google “Github BTCRecover”, you will find it easily
• Download the zip and unzip it into one of your folders.

To use the tool, you need to have Python installed; the easiest way is to install Anaconda, as it comes with Conda, a library manager.


The tool runs with an old version of Python (Python 2). The easiest way is to create a virtual environment running this version.

• Launch a terminal

• Run the command: “conda create -n myenv python=2.7”

• Then “conda activate myenv” Make sure of the version by running “python –version”.


• Launch the tool with: “python http://seedrecover.py”

• Provide the first address for which you want to recover the seed

• Provide the seed with “?” for the words you lost After a few seconds, the tool returns the completed seed with the lost words.



ChatGPT

This is the most secure method.

The previous two methods work like black boxes; you don’t really know what code is actually being executed.

Even though they are very well known and widely used, you can never be too careful!



This method consists of asking ChatGPT to generate a Python code for you to recover the missing words in your 12-word seed phrase.



• Install Anaconda following the instructions above [logo]

• Disable wifi or unplug the Ethernet cable

• Open Spyder

• Copy/Paste the code provided by ChatGPT, enter the address and the incomplete seed phrase

• Execute the code

This method is a bit longer than the others, but at least all the executed code is visible.


If you lose part of your seed, you can use one of the previous methods to complete it.

Beyond 4 words, know that it is impossible to complete your seed.

The best is to prevent, secure your seed, and plan a backup of your backup




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