Your recovery phrase is a list of 12 or 24 words that stores all the information needed to restore your Bitcoin or Liquid wallet.
The recovery phrase is the most important piece of information associated with your wallet. Make sure you always have it backed up and protected or you may lose access to your funds. Blockstream does not have a copy of your recovery phrase, so it is the user's responsibility to maintain their backup.
Note: In other wallets, the recovery phrase is sometimes known as a seed phrase, mnemonic backup, or recovery seed.
A recovery phrase looks something like this:
arrow garment kite truth yellow pelican roast latin discover jewel describe merry polar equip pistol next forest dignity kick word steel seminar actual genuine
Your recovery phrase can be used to restore your wallet on any device running Blockstream Green or using your Blockstream Jade. The recovery phrase can be used to add access to the same wallet on multiple devices (e.g. desktop and mobile) or to restore your wallet on a new device (e.g. you lost or broke the original device).
How Does the Recovery Phrase Work?
When you create a wallet on Blockstream Green or Blockstream Jade, a recovery phrase is automatically generated which you must write down to complete the setup process.
The recovery phrase represents your Blockstream Green or Jade key (or one of your two keys if using a Multisig Shield wallet) in a human-readable format. This key is what allows your bitcoin or Liquid assets to be spent. Representing the key as a series of words, instead of a long string of letters and numbers, minimizes the risk of errors when you write down your recovery phrase.
There are different recovery phrase formats used in the Bitcoin industry. Blockstream Green and Jade use the BIP39 standard—the most widely-adopted format—to generate your recovery phrase.
Being able to access your wallet is dependent on your recovery phrase, as well as the network and security policy you chose during setup.
For example:
- If you create a new wallet and choose Bitcoin as the network and Multisig Shield as the security policy, and then restore the same 12/24 words as a Singlesig Bitcoin wallet, a wallet will be generated but your Multisig Shield funds will not appear.
This means you can use the same recovery phrase for multiple networks, but the wallets will be completely separate and you should not expect to see the same balance in each of them.
Note: Your recovery phrase is the single most important piece of information associated with your wallet.
- Keep it somewhere safe: Don't lose it - if you change your device, your device gets lost or stolen, you forget your PIN, or your PIN gets reset... you will need your recovery phrase to regain access to your wallet.
- Keep it somewhere secret: Anyone with access to your recovery phrase can steal your funds, so also make sure no one else finds it. You may use Multisig Shield to mitigate this risk.
- Never send it over email or text to anyone: Blockstream support will never ask for your recovery phrase and anyone that does request it should be immediately reported to Blockstream Support.
- Never save it on an internet-connected device: For instance, saving the recovery phrase on a mobile notepad leaves the recovery phrase open to attack. Yes, that means no screenshots too!
- The recovery phrase is your ultimate backup.