Helium Wallet Seed Phrase

When creating a Helium account, users are prompted to write down the 24-word seed phrase. This mnemonic phrase is generated from a list of 2048 specifically selected words and can be used to recover the private key of the account. The seed phrase should never be shared.

Seed Phrase Security

Lose the seed phrase, lose it all.

The seed phrase words can never be recovered if they are lost. They are the sole key to accessing an account, the tokens and NFTs it contains, and all access to associated Hotspots and their rewards.

Remember these important things.

1. Write down and keep seed phrases safe, do it now.
2. Never give seed phrase words to anyone who cannot be trusted with full control of your Hotspots and token balances.
3. Do not enter seed phrase words in any app or website you don't fully trust.

Back up a seed phrase by writing down the words in their exact order and appropriately securing them. As an even more robust solution, some experienced crypto users engrave their seed phrases on titanium plates.

Storing seed phrases on cloud storage providers like Google Drive or Dropbox is not recommended. When these services are compromised, seed phrases are among the first things that hackers look for.

No one can recover a lost, forgotten, or misplaced seed phrase. Offers to do so should be ignored.

When entering the seed phrase make sure you:

1. Enter them in the right order.
2. Get the spelling correct. Check the words from this list for correct spelling: https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0039/english.txt
3. Watch out for similar-sounding word errors, like 'car' vs 'can' or 'blub' vs 'bulk'. See Commonly Misspelled Recovery Seed Words, which lists common mistakes.

12 vs 24-Word Seed Phrases

While seed phrases can come in a few different lengths, 12 and 24-word will be most familiar for Helium users. Most early accounts leverage a 12-word seed phrase. Accounts created with the Helium Wallet App are generated with 24-word seed phrases. The Helium Wallet app supports both formats.

With 128 bits of entropy, a 12-word seed phrase has 3.4 × 10³⁸ possible combinations. A 24-word seed phrase has 256 bits of entropy, resulting in approximately 1.16 × 10⁷⁷ possible combinations. Both are highly secure, but 24-word phrases offer the best protection.

Phrase Length	Possible Combinations
12 Words	340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456
24 Words	115,792,089,237,316,195,423,570,985,008,687,907,853,269,984,665,640,564,039,457,584,007,913,129,639,936