Author: Zac Greenwood 2022-07-09 20:31:22
Published on: 2022-07-09T20:31:22+00:00
Sorting a 12-word seed alphabetically removes approximately 29 bits of entropy, reducing the seed entropy from 128 to 99 bits. This is because a 12-word seed has 479 million permutations or ln(469m)/ln(2) ~= 29 bits of entropy. While it is not possible for the first word to be the last word in the list alphabetically, choosing 11 random words and then sorting them alphabetically before assigning a checksum would significantly reduce entropy. This method would leave one with around 10 trillion combinations to brute force, which could be exhausted within a couple of months with hardware that can do 1 million guesses per second.
Updated on: 2023-06-15T22:22:21.652334+00:00