Seedkeeper — How to safely store and manage your seedphrases

6 min readMay 13, 2024

Hello and welcome to this new tutorial dedicated to Seedkeeper. Let see how to safely store your seedphrases using a Seedkeeper card.

Seedkeeper by Satochip, your seedphrase manager

Introduction

If you’re embarking on your crypto adventure and want to keep your assets yourself, the question of how to keep your seedphrase will arise fairly quickly.

What is a seedphrase ?

The seedphrase is the only element that allow you to recover access to your funds if :

Your wallet is lost or stolen (if you use a hardware wallet);
If you have to use a new device (or if you currently use a hot wallet).

Of course, we can’t recommend enough that you opt for a hardware wallet for your main portfolio and to protect your most valuable assets.

Naturally, buying a Satochip card for €25 is a particularly good choice for long-term ownership, as this wallet is secure, open-source and on a durable medium (smart card).

All the code is freely accessible on GitHub.

Natively supported by Sparrow Wallet, Satochip keeps your bitcoins safe. For those of you who wish to immerse themselves in the world of DeFi, you can also use Uniblow Wallet and the Wallet Connect protocol.

Be careful, however: the hardware wallet protects you by adding friction to prevent tampered hardware from emptying your wallet, but it doesn’t protect you from the transactions you sign if you authorize a fraudulent transaction yourself (believing you’re on the official site when in fact it’s a fake, for example). So always be extremely vigilant.

Now that you’ve decided which harware wallet to use, you’ll need to work out how to secure your seedphrase. Of course, your seedphrase must remain personal to you, so don’t write it down on media you’re not absolutely sure is reliable, or share it with a third party (even a close one).

How to store your seedphrase?

If you do a quick search on the Internet, which we encourage you to do, you’ll quickly discover that all methods (even the most extreme) are out there when it comes to securing your seedphrase (aka mnemonic or seed) and keeping it as safe as possible.

Seedphrase storage management on pieces of metal

Generally speaking, it’s always advisable to have several backups of your seedphrase. Just as it’s advisable to have several backups of your hard disks when they contain sensitive information, so as not to lose access to them permanently, it’s just as important to ensure that you never lose access to your seedphrase.

It is therefore possible to use a variety of storage methods, as long as they offer adequate security.

One of the simplest methods is to use Seedkeeper to save your recovery phrases.

First steps — Download the app

Here’s a complete tutorial on how to use your Seedkeeper, so that you can start backing up your recovery sentences without any problems.

The first thing you need to do is download the Seedkeeper application from our official website.

Choose the installation package that corresponds to your system (Windows, Linux, MacOS), but make sure you’re still on Satochip.io every time you want to download an application related to our products.

Launch the app

Launch the app. This brings you to the Seedkeeper menu. Which gives you several options :

Generate secret on-card;
Import a secret;
Export a secret;
Make a backup;
List secrets.

Now it’s time to insert your Seedkeeper card into your card reader. The first time you use the card, you’ll be asked to enter a PIN code, which will be used to unlock the card. Any other person who knows 1/ your PIN and 2/ has access to your Seedkeeper will not be able to access your wallets. You should also be particularly careful about keeping your PIN. Without it, you won’t be able to access your seeds, so you need to be able to remember it at any time.

You can also give your Seedkeeper a name to make it easier to find your way around if you have several (we recommend you have at least 2 to minimize the risk of losing one).

Before starting any operation, we recommend that you click on “About” and then “Verify Card” to make sure that your Seedkeeper is genuine.

You can check whether your card is genuine or not.

How to save your seedphrase in your Seedkeeper

Now let’s say you want to secure two seedphrases. One is a 12-words phrase, the other a 24-words phrase (for your Metamask wallet and your Ledger, for example).

All you have to do is click on “import a secret” and then choose the type of secret you want to protect. As you can see from the menu just opened, you can also use your Seedkeeper to store passwords, which can be useful if, for example, you don’t want to forget the master password for your password manager (Keypass, Bitwarden,Dashlane or even Protonpass).

To continue with our example, click on “mnemonic phrase”. Seedkeeper will then ask you to define the parameters of the recovery phrase you’re going to import. Let’s start with the 12-words phrase corresponding to our Metamask portfolio.

Here are the options that correspond to what you want to save:

Import an existing 12-words mnemonic seedphrase

Is your seedphrase 24 words long and not 12? You can easily change this setting in the drop-down menu.

Import an existing 24-words mnemonic seedphrase

Security note: if your seedphrase has been stored on insecure media before, backing it up in your seedkeeper won’t protect you from the flaws of your previous backups.

In this case, it’s certainly wiser to create a new seedphrase by checking the “Create a new mnemonic” option.

Create a new mnemonic seedphrase using Seedkeeper

Once the seedphrase has been generated or entered by you, all you have to do is validate, and Seedkeeper will send you a confirmation message to let you know that the backup went smoothly.

Succes! Your seedphrase is now safely store in the secure element of your card

Recover your seedphrase

Now let’s say that several months have passed and, for one reason or another, you need access to your seedphrase.

All you have to do is remember your PIN to unlock your Seedkeeper.

Then click on “Export a Secret” and choose the one you need.

How to export a secret from your Seedkeeper memory

Finally, click on “export” and: ta-da, your seedphrase appears.

Exported seedphrase — do not use this one!

As you can see, it’s the same sequence of words as the one we generated above.

For added security, you may want to generate your seed in a completely encrypted way (E2EE) and then export it to another device (Seedkeeper for a backup or Satochip to use the wallet associated with this securely generated seed). In this case, make sure you have a Satochip, as exporting an encrypted key is not allowed in text-only mode.

The same applies to longer seedphrases, or even important passwords!

With Seedkeeper, never lose access to your cryptocurrencies again!