Bitcoin is a self-custody asset — You own your private keys, you own your coins. But what if you lose your private keys when they’re backed up by a single recovery seed?

How do you discreetly store and protect your vulnerable recovery seed from all the possible setbacks that life brings?

To safely store your recovery seed, you need to reduce any risk factors to a minimum, which can sometimes be complicated. Making copies of your recovery seed reduces the chances of loss or destruction, but also increases the chances of your recovery seed being stolen.

Loss, damage, and theft are the highest risk factors of using a recovery seed, but there are some other things you have to consider. Who can access your funds if something happens to you? Can you be forced by malicious actors to reveal your recovery seed?

We can’t swish and flick a magic wand to cast a protection spell on you. We can, however, help you store and protect the backup of your private keys like no one else can, no matter what life brings.

With the latest security standard available only on the Trezor Model T hardware wallet, your private keys are safer than ever before.

Introducing Shamir Backup

At SatoshiLabs, we’re proud of our position as the creators of both the first hardware wallet, and the whole market itself. With Shamir backup, we pushed the boundaries even further. The Trezor Model T is the first and only hardware wallet in the world to implement the fully functional SLIP-0039 security standard: Shamir Backup.

Based on a cryptographic algorithm created by Adi Shamir, publicly known as Shamir’s Secret Sharing, Shamir Backup is a revolution in how you use, store, and protect the backup of your private keys.

When creating a new wallet with Shamir Backup, the Model T generates a user-set amount of recovery shares, each a sequence of 20 words, instead of a single recovery seed. Then the user sets a threshold (the number of recovery shares required to recover the wallet). You can generate up to 16 recovery shares, but we recommend using a simple, yet amply safe, 2-of-3 or 3-of-5 scheme as an ideal threshold for wallet recovery.

For example, you can generate 6 recovery shares and set the threshold at 4. This means that you will need to enter any 4 recovery shares, anytime you need to recover your wallet. You don’t even have to enter all 4 at the same time — you can unplug your device and continue recovery later.

Afterward, it’s totally up to you how you store your recovery shares. You can hide them, share them with people you trust, or combine the best of both.

SatoshiLabs continues to push the boundaries of security by creating new industry standards like Shamir Backup, making it possible for you to find the best security solution for your needs. By maintaining our open-source philosophy, we are making it possible for other security companies to join the revolution. We believe that Shamir Backup will eventually be adopted by the rest of the industry and further increase the security standards of hardware wallets.

If you would like to learn more about Shamir Backup, please read our post A Detailed Guide to Shamir Backup