Shamir Backup

One of the biggest fears of every “bitcoiner” is the fear of losing their seed. This is exactly what the technology called Shamir Backup is designed for.

Shamir Backup (or more precisely “Shamir’s Secret Sharing”) is a method that allows you to split your seed (the main key to your bitcoins) into multiple parts, while only a certain number of them are required to restore access.

This technology was first implemented by the Trezor Model T hardware wallet (and the newer Trezor Safe 5).

How does it work?

Imagine that you split your seed into 5 parts. From these five parts, you set that any 3 are sufficient to restore the wallet (the numbers are of course arbitrary and can be changed by you during generation). This technology therefore reduces the risk of completely losing your seed while also increasing protection against theft.

This means:

• If someone loses 1 or 2 parts – you still have access to your bitcoins.
• If someone obtains only 1 or 2 parts – they cannot restore anything.
• Only 3 or more parts will successfully reconstruct the wallet.

This method is ideal for people who do not want to keep the entire seed written down in one place.

This technology was first implemented by the Trezor Model T hardware wallet (and the newer Trezor Safe 5).