Reading seedphrase

How i can see my 24 word seedphrase on my trezor. I guess my battery is soon empty and i lost the paper i wrote them on? On my coins are on this trezor. Pleasem someone can help me?

Hi @jobro68,

First, I would like to mention that it is important to understand that coins are not stored in your Trezor. Coins are stored on the addresses and these addresses are stored in blockchains. Private keys for these addresses are stored in the Trezor device and only the owner of these private keys can manage coins that are on these addresses.

You can find a detailed description in this post from our official blog: Where in the world are my coins?. Back to Basics | by SatoshiLabs | Trezor Blog

These private keys are backed up by the recovery seed. The recovery seed is displayed on the display of your Trezor device only once during the creation of the backup of your recovery seed. It is not possible to display the recovery seed again.

If you lost the recovery seed backup for your current wallet, the best thing to do is to move all your funds into a new wallet with a new seed. If you have another Trezor device, you can follow the steps in this guide: https://trezor.io/learn/a/move-crypto-to-a-wallet-with-a-new-seed

If you have only one Trezor you have to use a temporary SW wallet that supports coins you need to move. After you wipe your Trezor and create a new Trezor wallet with a new recovery seed, you can move the funds from the temporary SW wallet to the newly created Trezor wallet.

It is really important to keep your seed words safe since only the recovery seed backup can be used to recover your wallet if your device gets destroyed or misplaced.
Feel free to learn more about the importance of the recovery seed at https://trezor.io/learn/a/how-to-use-a-recovery-seed

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why is that? what are the (security) reasons?

Hello foo,

Trezor, like most hardware wallets, is designed with top-notch security in mind. The recovery seed is shown only once during setup for these key reasons:

  1. One-Time Display: This minimizes the risk of digital exposure. It’s a security measure to encourage you to store the seed offline and securely.
  2. Protection Against Malware: If the seed were accessible again, it could be vulnerable to malware or hackers when connected to a computer.
  3. Physical Security: Not storing the seed in a readable form on the device prevents anyone with physical access from retrieving it.

This approach is a standard among hardware wallets, emphasizing security and responsibility in handling the seed for the safety of your digital assets.

in human terms:

If you back up your seed phrase yourself, you can rest assured that you are the only one who has it.

If someone backed up the seed before you, and gave you a preseeded Trezor, you could tell because you wouldn’t be able to make the backup.

And if someone “borrows” your Trezor and steals your PIN, they can send out coins on that day, but not after they return it to you. (If it were possible to show the seed words again, this person could grab your seed, wait for you to stack more sats, and take everything at any time in the future.)

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I’m putting aside that using Trezor without password is inappropriate for any scenario except “hobby”/testing purposes and all these arguments mentioned are pretty weak when password (and common sense) is involved

let’s ignore shamir for a while and assume 12 words seed

as trezor supports additional passwords (especially important for plausible deniability) it means there must be the recovery seed stored inside in readable form to be able to create the master key based on password on demand

under these circumstances it appears to me like “security via obscurity” and it’s simply a matter of choice whether to allow to display the seed to the user or not

in case the recovery seed is lost (yes, it’s a mistake) and one has let say hundreds or UTXOs on working trezor and knows the pin and password(s) - I wonder is that a bigger evil for force him (unnecessarily) move everything to a new wallet or let the user simply recover the seed? what option involves more cost and risk?

There is nothing “by obscurity” about it. It is a deliberate security choice (as opposed to implementation limitation, yes).

This is absolutely a valid point of consideration. I’m not going to comment on whether this particular tradeoff is the best choice, I will just point out that changing it now is also problematic, as a lot of people expect the current behavior.

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is there a way how to submit a change request? I believe this deserves at least thorough consideration if there should not be an option… current implementation looks like classic protection against one’s interest…

that’s what you are doing by posting it on the forum :slight_smile: The Product team is always listening.

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