SECURITY

Wallet Mnemonic Security Experiment: Can you decipher the correct order of a scrambled mnemonic phrase to claim the prize?

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Wallet Mnemonic Security Experiment: Can you decipher the correct order of a scrambled mnemonic phrase to claim the prize?

Famous DeFi researcher Ignas launched a "mnemonic phrase sorting" experiment on Twitter this week. He scrambled the mnemonic phrases of wallets with multiple digits and made them public. Anyone who can figure out the correct order will receive the cryptocurrency in the wallet. However, this experiment seems not as simple as it sounds.

Wallet Mnemonic Experiment: Is the Wallet Still Secure After Shuffling the Mnemonic Phrase?

As Ignas is currently writing an article on maintaining asset security in the world of DeFi, he decided to experiment with shuffling the mnemonic phrase to test its security.

Ignas provided two wallets for this experiment:

  1. A mnemonic phrase consisting of 12 words containing 50 USD worth of MATIC (42.5 MATIC)
  2. A mnemonic phrase consisting of 24 words containing 150 USD worth of ETH (0.07 ETH)

Through mathematical calculations, the 12-word mnemonic phrase can generate 479,001,600 (12!) permutations, while the 24-word mnemonic phrase can generate approximately 6.2e+23 (24!) permutations.

Based on the number of possible combinations, the difference in difficulty to crack the two wallets is significant. After Ignas initiated this experiment, the first wallet was cracked within about an hour. However, the wallet with the 24-word mnemonic phrase remains secure since the experiment began about 2 days ago.

Difficulty Decreased but Still Unbroken

The experiment is still ongoing, but with the difficulty of 24! permutations being extremely high, many participants have requested an increase in the reward to boost motivation. Ignas has provided the first three correct words to lower the difficulty level.