WHAT IS CHROMASEED?

Chromaseed is designed to convert your 12 or 24-word BIP39 seed phrase into a unique, visually coded series of colours.

IMPORTANT

This process requires the input of your seed phrase, and while Chromaseed itself has no online functionality and minimizes the need for full typing, it’s crucial to exercise extreme caution when inputting sensitive information like a seed phrase on any internet-connected device. Ideally, seed phrases should be handled only on dedicated signing devices. Therefore, Chromaseed should not be used to safeguard significant quantities of bitcoin (you could use the manual method below) . Additionally, Chromaseed should not be used to manually generate seed phrases, as this method relies on user input and lacks sufficient entropy for secure generation. It is intended for encoding/decoding existing seed phrases only.

HOW DOES IT WORK?

The process used by Chromaseed is exactly the same as that first described by @EnteroPositivo (https://github.com/enteropositivo/bip39colors/tree/main/manual), and is easy to replicate manually, as below.

Convert seed to colour:

  1. Create a single numeric string of 48 or 96 digits. The string is made up of sets of 4 digits. Each 4-digit set represents the position of each seed word in the alphabetically sorted BIP39 word list (filled with leading zeros if necessary).
  2. Split the numeric string into groups of 6 digits.
  3. Add a 2-digit sequential number to the start of each of the 6 digits (00, 02, 04, 06, 08, 10, 12, 14 or 00, 01, 02, 03, 04, 05, 06, 07, 08, 09, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16) resulting in either 8 or 16 8-digit numbers.
  4. Convert each of the 8-digit numbers to hexadecimal.

Convert colour to seed:

  1. Convert the hexadecimal colours to decimal, and left fill with zeros if necessary, resulting in 8 or 16 8-digit values.
  2. Sort the 8 or 16 8-digit values from lowest to highest.
  3. Remove the first 2 digits, resulting in 8 or 16 6-digit values.
  4. Concatenate the 8/16 values into one string.
  5. Split the string into groups of 4 digits.
  6. Look up the positions in the alphabetically sorted BIP39 word list to determine the original seed phrase.

Following the above manual process will result in the same set of colours as you would get from using Chromaseed, and therefore is an alternative to using the software at all.

Chromaseed can generate a variety of intricate designs based on the colours derived from your seed phrase. These designs aim to incorporate each colour in the series, creating a unique visual representation of your phrase. When saving these designs, it’s strongly advised to also record the specific colour values in numerical form. Although the colours can be recovered using a colour picker tool, noting the exact hexadecimal and/or RGB values ensures that the integrity of the colours—and thereby your seed—is preserved.

Support my projects

Chromaseed is an open-source project and is free for everyone. If you like it and want to support my projects in a small way, it would be hugely appreciated.