Another thing about hardware wallets is that they should be backed up with cryptosteel, otherwise you could lose access to the funds in case of hardware failure.
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If you want to store a private key in WIF or WIFC format (Binary-to-text encoding - Wikipedia, 51 or 52 characters long), you better not order a Cryptosteel MNEMONIC (where your url is linked to), but a ANYKEY or MIX. You also need numbers, not only letters…
Yeah, the Cryptosteel MNEMONIC is for BIP39 mnemonic codes and that’s what the Ledger Nano S uses for backup at least. Cryptosteel MIX is best if you may want to use it for multiple things.
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That is such a hilarious and underrated point. Luckily, it seems like projects like this are hard at work to make everything safer in general (
… Right? Super excited for the official launch
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That is great to hear.
So now there are two safe alternatives for storing maid - paper and h/w wallet
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Well hey I mean any BTC hardware wallet will do this just fine. There’s many
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thanks for help!!!
It would be easy to brute force if the pass phrase is not strong.
edit: did you mean brute force the 24 words if all you have is the pass phrase? That’d be impossible. Brute forcing the pass phrase when you have the 24 words depends on the strength of the pass phrase
Is it safe to keep maidsafecoin in omniwallet? Is there any risk I can lose my coins? Because i keep my coins in omni and just wondering if I’m safe or not?
The only ‘safe’ way to store really is an offline/paper key. If you have 2FA turned on and it isn’t a huge amount of money then I wouldn’t worry too much. If it is a large sum (relative to you) then I would keep your private key on paper only. If it is a really large sum then I would suggest making sure you ‘air-gap’ it too (create your key pairings offline, there are a few ways to do that).
You can store your public key as ‘address only’ in omni, so you can see your balance there for reference, but private keys really shouldn’t be stored online imo. No counterparty risk means a lot more responsibility for the token owner.
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thanks for help!!!
Is it possible if omni could get off and I lose my coins? Could someone steal them if they dont have my private key?
If you don’t have 2FA turned on then you should be a bit worried. I have heard of a couple of people getting their omni wallets hacked (in both cases they did not have 2FA turned on).
You are not safe while you rely on someone else. You have to own and control your private keys yourself, and the best way to make sure no one else can get hold of them is to store them securely offline.
If you entrust your security to someone else - whether that be a wallet or exchange or whoever - then you have good reason to worry imo.
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I dunno about the Trezor’s functionality, but I am checking out a h/w password storer and it uses a “pin” to unlock it while in use. Now if the PIN is entered wrong 3 times in a row then it zaps its encrypted store of p/ws
I would expect the Trezor to be similar – Is it? Does it lock up after “X” number of invalid attempts?
True, if and only if the trezor doesn’t bomb when you enter “x” number of invalid passwords in a row.
EDIT: Forget what I said, see post below
No, you don’t need the hardware wallet for this. If your hardware wallet breaks, you can import your seed (& passphrase) into Mycelium for example. So similarly, if you had someone’s seed words and were trying to brute force the passphrase (ie 25th word), you just need some bip39 software on the PC. The bottleneck is looking up the balance of addresses, as every passphrase is valid AFAIK, but just generates different addresses. This is complicated by the wallets being capable of supporting multiple coins, so you need to do this for every coin unless you know what you’re looking for. Also, the seeds/passphrases generate HD wallets, so you’d have to decide as an attacker how long to go down the list of derived addresses for that seed/passphrase before giving up and moving on to the next passphrase attempt.
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No, it doesn’t lock up, but each time you enter a wrong PIN, the wait time increases by a power of 2. See this FAQ on brute forcing the Trezor PIN.
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@mav interesting point regarding simplicity vs. complexity.
I have several forms of coin currently on Bittrex, and am desiring to hold them long-term as investments.
What is the simplest and easiest way for a novice like myself to store these various coins in cold storage so that I can easily retrieve them in the future and ‘cash out’ if need be?
Thanks.
Best combination of security and simplicity is hardware wallets
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Does anyone know if the Ledger Blue can hold MAID?