Why Black Seed Ink?
I started Black Seed Ink because I had purchased multiple steel wallets to protect my seed phrase and was unhappy with all of these investments because each one was either too complicated, too expensive, and or ineffective. After nearly six months of working with a manufacturer we designed the perfect way to “steel the seed”.
In the world of crypto you are the SECURITY and no one else can help you. The first step after purchasing crypto is to own the private key and pull it off the web. This is the main purpose of hardwallets / coldwallets such as Ledger and Trezor. If you lose or damage your hardwallet and your recovery seed phrase, then all your crypto funds attached to the private key inside the hardwallet are LOST FOREVER to abyss of the blockchain. However, if you lose or destroy your hardwallet, you can replace it and reprogram, but you NEED THE RECOVERY SEED PHRASE! To protect your seed, you MUST back up a paper copy and keep it safe.
The best solution is simple but effective steel plates with a minimum of 8mm thickness to engrave the seed phrase words using a tungsten carbide scribe that etches into the steel plate. Steel preserves and protects your recovery seed against, fire and water damage and the otherwise perishable nature of paper.
Avoid making the same recover seed backup mistakes as I
I spent a lot of money purchasing multiple recovery seed storage devices. In fact, I would guess I own 80% of the solutions on the market.
• Plates that attempt to hide the seed phrase by locking two plates together with screws and the seed facing inward offer a false sense of protection. A thief will take the bound plates and simply unscrew the mechanism at another location. Binding the steel plates using screws is a great idea but should only be used to keep track of multiple seed phrases.
*Note: Black Seed Ink will provide inward facing seed phrase plates in the future to accommodate customers who have requested such for aesthetics purposes only, but are aware of the caveats.
• Tamper proof stickers are senseless because (A) they can be removed with a hairdryer or direct heat and (B) anyone looking to steal your seed phrase is not wanting to take a “peak” and will likely steal the entire plate.
• Alphabet chicklets are overkill. These tiny pieces of steel embossed alphabet letters can be taken apart and scrambled. Got a curious kid who likes to “tinker with Dad’s new toy”? In addition, such devices offer limited space to only hold the first four letters of each phrase. Yes, that is all that is needed in BIP32, BIP39 and BIP44 protocol security, but it does complicate something that is simple.
• Thick steel plates that require an alphabet punch set and a hammer are overkill and ineffective. After literally dozens of “punches” the plate will begin to bend or bow, making it difficult to bind multiple plates.
• Titanium grade steel plates are expensive and overkill. Yes, it burns at a higher temperature (3040 F) vs 304 grade stainless steel (2750 F) but a house fire will only reach temperatures up to 1500 F.
• Steel plates with an electric etching tool are a difficult scribing solution because electric etchers vibrate and make it very difficult to control your handwriting.
In Crypto We Trust!
