Metal Seed Plates:
Metal seed plates are one of the Offline/ Cold Storage devices used for the safe storage of your crypto seedwords. It has many benefits compared to other offline/ online storage devices such as safety from hardware failures and online hackers, resistance from fire, water, rust and corrosion etc. Moreover, it requires no counterparty trust and can be handed over to third parties.
Types of Metal Plates:
You can use any type of Metals for storing keywords like Aluminium, Brass, Titanium, Stainless Steel, and Copper. The selection of the best metal depends upon many factors such as price, quality, storage procedure, resistance to fire, water and corrosion etc.
The various types of Metals with melting points are given below:
Galvanic Scale of Different Metals:
From where do we get SEED WORDS?
These words are taken from the BIP39 wordlist which includes a specific list of 2048 words. Upon start up, wallets will provide you a 12–24 word phrase randomly chosen from the standard BIP39 wordlist. After that, you have to write your seed phrase down and keep it safe.
For eg., Suppose the 12-word seedwords & their corresponding numbers in BIP 39 List are as follows:
Here, the seedword is “abandon adult bundle better crisp corn decide demand enable enjoy fashion file” and it’s number form is “1 31 243 173 414 388 455 466 587 598 667 690”.
Different ways of punching the SEED WORDS?
You can punch your seedwords in different ways:
- Punch Full Seedwords directly in metal plate (here, you are punching the seed word “abandon adult bundle better crisp corn decide demand enable enjoy fashion file” directly in the metal plate).
The risk is that the person getting the seed plate can easily get your keywords.
- Punch the first 4 letters of the Seedwords directly in the metal plate (here, you are punching the first 4 letters of the seed word “aban adul bund bett cris corn deci dema enab enjo fash file” directly in the metal plate).
The risk is that the person getting the seed plate can easily guess your keywords with the BIP39 list.
- You can punch the numbers associated with these keywords instead of directly recording the same. (here, you are punching “1 31 243 173 414 388 455 466 587 598 667 690” in the metal plate).
Here, the risk is less than the first & second case as here keywords are coded on the basis of BIP39 list.
But in all these cases, the risk is high if the keywords or its number form are kept in one plate.
Step by Step Procedure for Punching on Metal Plates:
You can punch your metal plates in different ways based on your requirement – you can either punch your seedwords or can use numbers instead of passwords etc.
In all these cases, you have to punch your metal plates by using different tools.
In this article, we have discussed the different methods of punching on Metal Plates.
You can use any of the metals of your choice and the procedure for punching is the same for all these metals.
General Procedure:
Step 1: Clean the surface to remove dust or any other substance from the plate
Step 2: Place the metal plates on a hard surface like Jewellers Block
Step 3: Then use tools for punching seed words like scribing pen, stamps (no:/ alphabets), electric engraver etc.
Step 4: Repeat the process until each word/ number finishes.
SITUATION 1: Punching Full Seed Words Directly in Metal Plates:
Suppose your seed word is “abandon adult bundle better crisp corn decide demand enable enjoy fashion file”
(a) Using Stamps & Hammer:
Step 1: Clean the metal surface
Step 2: Place the metal plate on Jeweller’s Block
Step 3: Count the letters of the seed phrase and select corresponding stamps
Step 4: Apply a small amount of pressure on stamps and tap it with a hammer
Step 5: Repeat the process until each word has finished
(b) Using Scribing Pen:
Step 1: Clean the metal surface
Step 2: Place the metal plate on Jeweller’s Block
Step 3: Take the scribing pen and starts writing the keywords on to the metal plate
Step 4: Repeat the process until each word has finished
(c ) Using Electric Engraver:
Step 1: Clean the metal surface
Step 2: Place the metal plate on Jeweller’s Block
Step 3: Unscrew the engraving pen and insert batteries
Step 4: Start engraving by pressing on/off button (you have to make it sure that the plate is not moving while engraving the plates)
Step 5: Repeat the process until each word has finished
SITUATION 2: Punching the first 4 words of the Seed Phrase Directly in Metal Plates:
Suppose your seed word is “abandon adult bundle better crisp corn decide demand enable enjoy fashion file”
If you are taking only the 1st 4 words, then it will be like “aban adul bund bett cris corn deci dema enab enjo fash file”
(a) Using Stamps & Hammer:
Step 1: Clean the metal surface
Step 2: Place the metal plate on Jeweller’s Block
Step 3: Count the letters of the seed phrase and select corresponding stamps
Step 4: Apply a small amount of pressure on stamps and tap it with a hammer
Step 5: Repeat the process until each word has finished
(b) Using Scribing Pen:
Step 1: Clean the metal surface
Step 2: Place the metal plate on Jeweller’s Block
Step 3: Take the scribing pen and starts writing the keywords on to the metal plate
Step 4: Repeat the process until each word has finished
(c ) Using Electric Engraver:
Step 1: Clean the metal surface
Step 2: Place the metal plate on Jeweller’s Block
Step 3: Unscrew the engraving pen and insert batteries
Step 4: Start engraving by pressing on/off button (you have to make it sure that the plate is not moving while engraving the plates)
Step 5: Repeat the process until each word has finished
SITUATION 3: Punching Seed Words in Number Form:
If you want to punch the seedwords in number format ie. “1 31 243 173 414 388 455 466 587 598 667 690”, you can do the same by using stamps & hammer, scribing pen or electric engraver.
(a) Using Stamps & Hammer:
Step 1: Clean the metal surface
Step 2: Place the metal plate on Jeweller’s Block
Step 3: Count the numbers of the seed phrase and select corresponding stamps
Step 4: Apply a small amount of pressure on stamps and tap it with a hammer
Step 5: Repeat the process until each number has finished
(b) Using Scribing Pen:
Step 1: Clean the metal surface
Step 2: Place the metal plate on Jeweller’s Block
Step 3: Take the scribing pen and starts writing the corresponding numbers of the keywords on to the metal plate
Step 4: Repeat the process until each number has finished
(c ) Using Electric Engraver:
Step 1: Clean the metal surface
Step 2: Place the metal plate on Jeweller’s Block
Step 3: Unscrew the engraving pen and insert batteries
Step 4: Start engraving by pressing on/off button (you have to make it sure that the plate is not moving while engraving the plates)
Step 5: Repeat the process until each number has finished
How can we increase the security of Seedwords?
- Split Seedwords into 2 or more metal plates: In both these cases, we can improve security by splitting the metal plates into 2 or more numbers as per your choice.
- Hand over to Friends & Families: You can hand it over to your friends or families in such a way that the wallet will work only if all the keys come together.
- Add Passphrases to your seed words: Passphrase is an extra word which is added to your seed. For 24-words recovery phrases the passphrase is referred to as the 25th word. It can be any word, phrase, any set of letters, or even a sentence up to 50 characters long. As regards storage, you can either store it in your memory or in a different location.
But storing in your memory is risky because there is a chance of forgetting the passphrase.
- Encrypt your recovery seed words: Encryption is the conversion of data from a readable format into an encoded format. You can read encrypted data only after it is decrypted.
Here, the method of keeping the seedwords depends on your choice and you can adopt any of the above said methods for storing the keywords.
