Recover Trezor-wallet elsewhere?

English Community Technical Support
1

Hi there,

I recently got myself a Trezor Model T which uses a 12 word seed-phrase. Is it possible to recover the wallet elsewhere? Like in Daedalus and such if I should loose the Trezor? Or do I have to buy another Trezor if that happens?

Cheers!

2

I have the same question, since I’m expecting a Trezor Model T in the mail this week. I’m going to experiment with deriving the keys manually from the seed phrases, just to verify that I could recover the wallet. The section “When would you need to create your own Trezor?” of the Trezor blog post Open Source Security and Hardware Obsolescence leads me to believe this is possible. I’ll post here if I verify this myself.

3

Hello,

you will need to buy another hw wallet, u can’t use trezor seed words in daedalus.

Cheers,

4

I’m not planning to do the test on Daedalus. My understanding is that Trezor Model T uses BIP-39 or BIP-44 and that the address- and key-derivation paths are documented open source. I should be able to use standard BIP cryptographic libraries to derive verification and secret keys, both for payment and staking, and the corresponding addresses. (Those keys should be sufficient to submit transactions with cardano-cli, for instance.) This really just an experiment to satisfy my curiosity and to make sure I understand the specifics of key derivation paths.

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5

ok, let us know the results, perhaps other people will like to know

Cheers,

6

Will do. I’ll write up my notes when the experiments are complete, and post.

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7

So it turns out it is possible to use the Trezor Model T seed phrase to generate private and public keys and payment and stake addresses. (The procedure also works for Daedalus seed phrases and likely for Yoroi ones, though I didn’t test Yoroi.) Once one has generated the payment signing key, then one can use cardano-cli to transfer the ADA that were secured by the lost or damaged wallet.

The procedure should only be used as a last resort and on a well-secured (air-gapped etc.) machine, since it defeats the purpose of having a hardware wallet–it would be best to just purchase another Trezor Model T and use that for recovery. Anyway, here is the recipe: How to Generate Cardano Payment and Stake Keys from a Trezor Model T Seed Phrase.