With only a few exceptions, non-custodial wallets generate 12-24 random words upon creation. This is the wallet’s seed phrase, a mnemonic of the wallet’s private keys that can be used to create a copy of your crypto accounts on another application.
There is a condition for it though. When you use it, your seed phrase has to be in the exact form it was given to you. Otherwise, it is considered invalid, and you cannot use an invalid mnemonic phrase to restore your account.
So, what do you do?
This article will tell you everything you need to know about an invalid seed phrase and how to recover it. To get a better sense of the problem, let’s start with how a valid seed phrase works.
How Does a Seed Phrase Work?
A seed phrase, also known as a recovery or mnemonic phrase, is a human-readable representation of the master seed used to generate all public-private key pairs for a given cryptocurrency wallet. A series of cryptographic processes underlie this tool’s effectiveness.
Without getting into too many technical details, here’s how it works:
Generating a Seed Phrase
The process begins with the generation of a random number and ends with this number converted into the series of words (usually 12 or 24) that you get as your seed phrase. Your wallet:
- Generates a random number.
- Converts this random number into the mnemonic seed phrase.
- Uses the seed phrase to derive the master private key.
- Generates the master public key from the master private key.
- And, can derive additional private and public key pairs as needed.
To ensure consistency across different wallets, words are selected from a standard list of 2048 words. This is typically referred to as the BIP-39 standard. If it is 12 words, the resulting seed phrase might look something like this:
“apple banana cat dog elephant frog gold house igloo jazz kite lion”
Such a phrase looks like a random assortment of words. Nonetheless, it contains all the information needed to rebuild your entire wallet structure.
How does it do that?
How Wallets Use the Seed Phrase
This is what happens when you input a seed phrase into the application to recover your wallet:
- The software converts the words back into a unique 512-bit seed through a standardized process.
- It then uses this seed to generate a master private key.
- From the master private key, it derives a corresponding master public key.
- Using the master keys, the wallet creates a “tree” of private and public key pairs. Each pair corresponds to a different address in your wallet.
- The wallet uses these key pairs to generate the addresses you see and use for transactions.
How an Invalid Seed Phrase Occurs
The 12-24 words that make up your seed phrase collectively contain your wallet’s entire structure. So, losing a single word means losing some of the information needed to rebuild your wallet when the need arises. Therefore, having an incomplete seed phrase is one way mnemonic phrases become invalid.
Having a different word in place of the correct one won’t work. For one, the new word might not be among the 2048 words used in the BIP-39 mnemonic generation. And even if it is, using another word will result in a different combination of words that probably represent an entirely different wallet structure.
But a complete seed phrase is just one of the requirements for validity. It’s also crucial that the words are in the exact order that they were originally generated. If even two words are out of place, e.g., the first word last and the last word first, your seed phrase no longer contains the information needed to restore your wallet.
Even the spelling of the individual words matters. You might have all the words present and in the correct order. But if you get the spelling of one word wrong, your mnemonic is invalid. Thus, a valid seed phrase is only one that has all the original words, in the original order and the correct spelling.
How to Fix It
For this guide, we can group invalid seed phrase problems into two categories: missing words and those with no such obvious error (i.e., you have a seemingly complete seed phrase but it keeps returning an error when parsed into a wallet).
- Missing Words
An incomplete seed phrase is the easiest issue to diagnose. But it can also be the hardest one to solve. This is because you have to find the missing word(s) and their position(s) in the phrase.
If you had memorized your seed phrase, you probably have an idea of which word is missing and its location in the mnemonic. So, you can start this process by brainstorming, guessing, and testing possible word combinations.
If this doesn’t work, the other option is to attempt a DIY seed phrase recovery using specialized cryptographic and wallet recovery tools. These let you provide a partial recovery phrase alongside another piece of information, like the wallet’s address, which they then use to (attempt) to recover the complete seed phrase.
Examples include Ian Coleman’s BIP39 Mnemonic Code Converter, Seed Savior, and BTCRecover.
- No Obvious Errors
It may also be that you have a complete seed phrase. However, for one reason or another, the wallet software keeps rejecting it as invalid. Here are some potential solutions to try:
- Double-check the spelling of every word in the phrase. It could be you’re getting the spelling wrong, which may not be immediately obvious as some words have different spellings, like color and colour, centre and center, flavor and flavour, etc.
- Watch out for similar words, like prey and pray, their and there, hare and hair, etc. You could have unknowingly substituted one for the other, rendering your seed phrase invalid.
If none of these work, the seed phrase recovery tools mentioned above can come in handy. The process is the same. Feed the tool your seed phrase and any other relevant information and it might help you find the correct version.
But what if it doesn’t?
Professional Wallet Recovery
If none of your DIY attempts work, it’s time to call in the cavalry. This means seeking the services of an expert; someone who specializes in helping people recover their cryptocurrency wallets. Drawing on their training, experience, and toolkit, a recovery professional gives you the best chance of recovering your invalid seed phrase.
Professional Crypto Recovery (PCR) is one of the best recovery services in the market. With more than 20 years of experience, our recovery services are quick and efficient. We also charge some of the lowest prices in the market. Contact us today to get started.