SEED·KNOT
中文 English

Self-check

Seed backup self-check

This is not a score for anyone else to see. Ticking is only meaningful to you. Everything is computed locally, nothing is uploaded or stored, and closing the page discards it.

SeedKnot editorial Runs locally · no network Updated
Illustration: photos, cloud, second copy and fire and water arranged on a seed-card grid
To be clear

This page does not, anywhere, ask you to type a seed phrase. It only asks where you keep yours. No tool on this site accepts a seed phrase or a private key — a site about wallet security has no business owning an input box that collects them.

The automatic verdict needs JavaScript. Without it you can still read every item; you simply will not get a summary.

  • Camera rolls sync to the cloud by default. After that, your seed phrase is only as secure as that cloud account's password — and plenty of apps also request photo library access.

  • Those services are built for convenient syncing, not for guarding something directly convertible into money. Breaching them takes far less effort than a seed phrase warrants, and you would not necessarily know.

  • Third-party keyboards can sync typing history and learned vocabulary. Whether what you typed left the device depends on settings most people have never opened.

  • The clipboard is shared system-wide and readable by any running program, and some systems sync it across devices — which means it went to a server.

  • The instinct is "only I can see this." The outcome is that it now lives in an account that can be signed into from anywhere, quite possibly with a password you reuse.

  • A single copy quietly folds fire, flood and losing things in a move into your asset risk. A second copy costs a sheet of paper and five minutes and removes that entire category.

  • An unverified backup is not a backup. A wrong word, a missing one, a scrambled order — all of them only surface during a restore, by which point it is usually too late. Uninstalling and restoring takes two minutes.

  • The order is part of the data; wrong order does not derive the same wallet. A numbered column is considerably more reliable than words written out as a sentence.

  • Paper backups are more often lost to being tidied away than to being stolen. A moisture-proof bag and a fixed location handle most of that.

  • There is no single right answer here. You may deliberately want that. But if you intend this to reach family, it needs an arrangement they can find and a stranger cannot — rather than an assumption that it will be found.

02Fixing what you ticked

Handle by category. Networked-exposure items can only be fixed by changing wallets; storage-quality items can simply be corrected. The severity gap between the two is large.

If you ticked any of the first five

All of those mean the phrase left paper and entered a networked environment at some point. That category cannot be undone by deleting things afterwards — you have no way of knowing whether it was read in the interval.

The only thorough response is: create a brand new wallet, move the assets across, and abandon the old one. Back up the new phrase to the standard below from the outset. It costs a few transfer fees, which beats living with the uncertainty. Process in setting up your first wallet.

If you only ticked items from the second half

Those are quality problems and need no change of wallet:

  • Only one copy — write a second by hand and put it somewhere else.
  • Never verified — uninstall the wallet, restore from the paper, confirm, reinstall.
  • No numbering — rewrite it with numbers.
  • Poor storage environment — a moisture-proof container and a fixed place.

03What a proper backup looks like

Handwritten, numbered, at least two copies in two physical locations, and actually restored from once. All four together, or it is not really a backup.

  1. Handwritten on paper. No photos, screenshots, typing or copying.
  2. Numbered, and checked back word by word against the screen.
  3. Two copies, two places. One at home, one somewhere else you control long term.
  4. Verified. Uninstall and restore from the paper.
  5. No labels saying what it is or how much it holds. You will recognise it.
  6. Storage that accounts for water, fire and being tidied away.

Why each detail matters is in seed phrases and private keys; what actually happens when one is lost is in what happens when a seed phrase is lost.

If you finish this and think you cannot do it

That is a conclusion worth taking seriously rather than a failure. Someone who cannot reliably store a string of words is objectively safer keeping funds somewhere with a recovery process. Who does not need a Web3 wallet exists for exactly that conclusion.

04Common questions

Does this checklist record what I tick

No. Tick state exists only in the current page's memory. Nothing is written to a cookie, nothing goes into local storage, and nothing is sent anywhere. Closing or refreshing the page clears it.

I photographed my seed phrase. Is deleting it enough

Deleting reduces further exposure but cannot confirm whether it was read or synced to a cloud service in the meantime. The thorough response is creating a new wallet, moving the assets, and abandoning the old one.

Is splitting the phrase across two places a good idea

No. Losing either half loses everything, so availability drops, while whoever finds a half has narrowed their search. Two complete copies in two locations you control is the better arrangement.

Is a password manager acceptable for a seed phrase

It is better than a camera roll or a chat app, but it is still networked storage whose security depends on the master password and the service itself. For larger holdings, a handwritten offline backup remains the safer choice.