Keep Metal Restore with only 4 letters?

Security About seeds and wallet
1

Hi all,

firstly want to say that I love the Keep Metal restore product… if you have used and felt it, you will know it is a first quality, well thought through product…amazing!

So I have seed phrases that have been created from different hardware wallet providers. I have been playing around with some of these recently restoring accounts using only the first 4 letters. What I have noticed is in some cases, the first 4 letters results in only one word being suggested/available, but in other cases the first 4 letters results in more than one word.

So, I understand that the device can be used with any hardware wallet, but is it the case that the seed phrase words created (and recognised) on Trezor devices will only result in one suggested seed word when restoring, and that if the seed phrase is created on other hardware wallets and you use the Keep Metal to save those seed words, then when restoring you may have more than one word that matches the first 4 letters?

I think it is a very important topic to get clarity on, as there might be some people who don’t ‘test’ this before they use the product and they also don’t keep a paper copy in the keep metal as well (or it get’s burnt in the case of a fire).

Appreciate anyone (including Trezor’s) input on this…

Maybe I have missed something though.

Thanks

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2

no, they don’t.

both BIP-39 and SLIP-39 wordlists are selected so that there’s always only one option for the 4 starting letters.

if you get a seed from some random wallet for some weird altcoin, it’s possible that they are using a different word list. But all hardware wallets that I know are BIP39 or SLIP39 compatible, meaning they are using the usual wordlists.

If you have 4 letters that result in more than one word, please post them here, along with the words that match. I am somewhat sure that when double-checking, you’ll see that there’s actually just one option :slight_smile:

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