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I recently bought an Ellipal Titan, I was playing around with it to get used to the wallet.

  1. I created a wallet with 12 mnemonic + passphrase.
  2. I erased the wallet.
  3. I tried to recover the wallet with the same 12 word key + different passphrase.
  4. I was able to recover the original wallet with the different passphrase.

I wonder how this happen. Is it supposed to that way, or Titan is messed up? It seems as though using passphrase does not affect the security at all. Any idea?

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  • This is not supposed to happen, different passphrase should lead to a different wallet
    – Mike D
    Commented Sep 10, 2021 at 17:06
  • Did you verify that it was the same wallet or just some wallet?
    – Murch ♦
    Commented Sep 23, 2021 at 16:52
  • If I remember correctly, the Ellipal Titan creates two wallets, one with the passphrase and one without. This allows some deniability if needed -- you can claim you didn't even know about the passphrase feature and show a wallet that even has some funds while hiding the real wallet -- the one protected by the passphrase.
    – David Schwartz
    Commented Oct 24, 2021 at 2:26

2 Answers 2

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The wallet created from mnemonic only is a completely different wallet, no connection at all to one created with an added passphrase.

Maybe that client is creating two wallets for "wrench attack" deniability, and you are looking at the mnemonic-only version both times.

Go to iancoleman and play around, check out the addresses created in the three different wallets.

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Unless they mean password instead of passphrase they are not following bip39 specification. A different passphrase changes the BIP39 seed used to generate the deterministic key chain.

https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0039.mediawiki

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Seed_phrase#Two-factor_seed_phrases

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  • OP seems to be talking about the passphrase as something distinct from the seed phrase/mnemonic. I'm speculating, but is it possible the wallet uses the passphrase to encrypt the mnemonic on the device/system? So only the mnemonic defines the wallet, but it's locally protecting the wallet with the passphrase.
    – Pieter Wuille
    Commented Sep 14, 2021 at 23:12

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