A message to all BIP39-based wallet providers (to include signing devices): Please make it easy for users to bring their own seed words. I'm referring to assisting a user who has generated their own seed words manually to land on a final checksum valid word. Ideally, a user should be able to generate their own seed phrase offline with indifference to a checksum. Then, when a wallet they try to enter it into for the first time detects an invalid checksum, the wallet could offer to provide the associated checksum-valid final word; so that the user may update their own physical backup and reenter their entire seed phrase for checksum verification. I realize some wallets already offer some version of this "generate final word" assistance. It really seems like this should be expected as a standard now for all wallets. Also, might be best to start encouraging users to be generating their own seed words rather than relying on a wallet to tell them what their seed words will be. PS. Thank you! Your work is greatly appreciated, and probably doesn't get the full recognition that it deserves.

meh... degens gonna degen... but, ultimately, bitcoin dgaf about mstr.

Naturally, the dog just considers the things on 2 legs to be the responsibility of the guard on 2 legs. "I spot a squirrel 100ft away, and I'm right on it! My human just lets other 2-leggers enter the house all the time without so much of a butt sniff."

I'm not actually "banking" on anything. I was merely offering the plausible 5% hash rate scenario as a likely quick failure of bip110. FWIW, I would prefer the 55% hash rate threshold to activate bip110 is reached to avoid a prolonged chain split altogether (pending the potential for a URSF, of course)... I'm just not banking on that happening, either (far from it).

I am intending to produce a more useful guide very soon; but I didn't want to leave you hanging in the meantime: Here is the list of 2048 available seed words (english version) - numbered 1 - 2048. My recommendation would be to get 11 coins. Shake them up; then stack them without paying any attention to their heads/tails orientation. Next, one by one, record on a piece of paper - in order from top of the stack to the bottom - whether each is a heads or a tails. Then convert that record to 1s and 0s. (eg. heads = 1; tails = 0) Your result should be an 11-bit binary number (e.g.: 01110001010). Convert this binary number to a decimal number (e.g.: 01110001010 in binary = 906 in decimal). Add 1 to account for the list provided beginning with 1 instead of 0. (e.g. final result is 907). Look up the word from the list by its number (e.g. 907 = image). This is your first seed word. Repeat as necessary to form either a 12-word seed phrase or a 24-word seed phrase. *I highly recommend doing all of this offline. Don't cheat by using an online binary to decimal converter. It's easy. If you're not sure how, you should be able to easily find a simple guide online. Having said all that, this is where it gets a bit tricky: the last word needs to contain a checksum. And you can't really figure that out manually. The easiest thing to do is use bluewallet (link below)... because it has a tool "Tools > Seed final word" that will provide you with a valid last word to replace your 12th or 24th word as applicable... make sure you replace the last word you had generated on your own (or maybe only generate 11 or 23 words to begin with since you're going to let bluewallet choose your last word for you). Unfortunately, bluewallet might be the only mobile wallet I've heard of that offers a final word tool like this... but after you update your seed phrase with the final word bluewallet provides, any other bip39-based wallet (pretty much all of them) should accept your new seed phrase. *NOTE: I'm assuming here that you already understand that mobile wallets already come with other additional inherent risks beyond an offline cold storage wallet. Normally, a 12-word seed phrase is 128 bits of entropy. By only using 11 words you generated on your own, and if you assume the worst case that bluewallet's 12th word didn't actually add any useful entropy, that still gives you 121 bits of entropy which is still considered very, very good... though 253 bits of entropy that 23 seed words you generated by yourself gives you (plus 1 word added by bluewallet) would be even better. https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0039/english.txt https://bluewallet.io/

Removing federal senators' accountability to their respective state legislatures couldn't have been a more clear consolidation of power.

This. Don't wait. I've seen no suggestion that using 100+ dice rolls on a cold card is compromised (though, many are understandably reluctant to trust a cold card for anything at the moment). Probably best to at least verify your cold card is doing the dice math properly using several test cases first: https://coldcard.com/docs/verifying-dice-roll-math/

IMO, 'fail' is a bit loaded in this context. The ability for even a small minority to fork off out of a perceived existential necessity is absolutely vital to the health of bitcoin overall. (though, I'm not convinced such a necessity is actually being perceived by most bip110 supporters) That being said, if bip110 were to split off with say 5% of the hash rate, I find it hard to imagine them being satisfied with the corresponding 200-minute block times until they finally reached their first difficulty adjustment ~40 weeks later. I think it's much more likely in such a scenario that they would just pivot to a hard fork instead in order to adjust the difficulty right off the bat (which would then fairly be viewed as a failed soft fork attempt).

... or do the same thing with 11 coins 24 times.

https://xcancel.com/adam3us/status/2075884851794735602

flipping coins is easy but can be tedious... but you don't have to flip an individual coin 256 times. Instead, get 264 coins (to account for a mock checksum that will eventually be discarded), shake them up, then stack them into groups of 11 for their naturally randomly oriented heads or tails. Each stack represents its own seed word. Look up each word in an easily available list of 2048. Easy-peasy. Signing devices (and hot wallets when desired) just need to be assisting with landing on a checksum-valid final word.

Yes. It ought to be easy enough to explain to a normie how to flip a coin 11 times (or roll dice or whatever) to randomly select each seed word from an easily available list. It's mostly useless, however, for a normie to do so until they have a wallet that can assist them with this last step - so, it's mostly useless to encourage a normie to do it.

Agreed - unless those supporters *actually* believe bip-110 is existentially vital to bitcoin... in which case, they would view corecoins as imminently worthless to them anyway. I'm not really buying their conviction in that belief, though.

Suddenly, my craving for a grilled cheese has morphed into a craving for a monte cristo.

this attack was allowed by a coding error that mistakenly generated much weaker than intended entropy for seed generation. bottom line: any wallet developer is capable of making a similar mistake. This can be mitigated by not relying on any wallet to generate your seed words for you. Instead, you can generate your own near-perfect entropy offline simply by letting 11 coin flips choose each of your seed words from the list of 2048 BIP-39 words. Then tell your mobile wallet what your seed words are rather than the other way around.

PS... I think I would personally alter this method to flip 11 coins per word instead of using dice.... but the lookup chart would still basically be applicable.

You could just create your own seed words from soup to nuts - which pretty much all signing devices accept. BitBox has a nifty lookup table for manually generating each word offline from 11 bits of dice roll entropy. *this is not an endorsement of BitBox itself (I've never used it), but this method is device agnostic - save for the final word (with embedded checksum) which can get a bit tricky... but some devices are designed to help you more easily land on a valid final word. https://bitbox.swiss/bitbox02/BitBox_Diceware_LookupTable.pdf

It definitely hurts; but, self-custody has always required normal people to stop being normal at some level. IMO, we (the bitcoin community) have been a little too eager to spread adoption... e.g. just do what you can to get normies to start using now; properly explain trade-offs later (if ever). This is backwards from being a responsible advocate. RNG vs dice rolls has always been a trade-off that seemingly very few bother to explain. If that explanation scares normal people off, so be it. At least they will have made an informed decision.