# Is the “recovery phrase” generated by a wallet app platform independent?

I recently started a wallet with Coinbase Wallet, and I was asked to backup a 12 word "recovery phrase" that is supposed to be able to recover my wallet in the event that I delete the app from my phone. I have previously used other wallet apps, which often give "recovery phrases" of varying word count. I read online that the phrase is passed through an algorithm and used to recover a key or a group of keys.

I am now curious if these recovery phrases are platform independent (meaning you can recover your keys just by way of knowing the phrase), or if the app must exist with a specific algorithm in order to recover keys (your keys are lost if the recovery implementation is destroyed, e.g. Coinbase shuts down operation and removes their app).

The mnemonic words that is given to you by the wallets is a representation of entropy. This entropy is then passed through PBKDF2 hashing function to generate seed. The industry standard for this conversion of mnemonic to seed is documented in BIP 39 and most wallets follow that method. The seed is then passed to HMAC-SHA512 to get a master extended private key.