Level-Up Your Wallet Backup!

Penlock is for anyone storing enough on-chain value to feel unsafe with the limits of a simple seed phrase, but not currently interested in switching to a more demanding 2-of-3 multisig setup.

Not really. You only need to follow the step-by-step guide. Penlock includes safety measures that lets you detect and correct any mistake that could happen during the process, so you are guaranteed that the resulting backup is correct and sound. Similar features secure seed phrase recovery as well.

Mathematics. Penlock uses a twist on the one-time pad, probably the most secure and fundamental building block in cryptography. There's no new, fancy cryptography or cutting-edge on-chain shenanigans: Penlock is basic, straightforward and robust.

All you need to generate, split or recover a seed phrase are the documents from this website. Feel free to save or print a copy—it's all open-source! You can also fork, clone or download Penlock's GitHub Repository. It is just like Bitcoin: as long as a copy exists, Penlock keeps going.

Multisig is generally more secure—using hardware wallets from different manufacturers protects against firmware vulnerabilities. However, multisig requires more technical expertise, involves managing wallet metadata, and is protocol-specific.

These solutions offer similar 2-of-2 or 2-of-3 backup schemes, and can thus be used to implement the same backup strategy as Penlock to achieve Secure Access, Offsite Recovery, and Trust-Minimized Inheritance. However, Penlock is currently the only wallet-agnostic solution, since it doesn't require explicit support.

Penlock was inspired by Codex32, by Andrew Poelstra and Russell O'Connor, who pioneered the concept of executing secret-splitting directly on paper. Penlock builds upon that foundation by introducing the first paper-optimized secret-splitting algorithm, on-paper error correction, and various UX improvements to make the approach more widely accessible.