W2QR Security Architecture
Security & Recovery
Three layers of protection make your wallet virtually unhackable. Two recovery paths ensure you never lose access.
Part A
Why your wallet is secure
Honey encryption eliminates brute force
With traditional encryption, a wrong password produces gibberish — so an attacker knows immediately when a guess is wrong. W2QR uses honey encryption: every password, right or wrong, produces a valid BIP‑39 seed phrase with real wallet addresses.
An attacker who steals your QR code and tries a million passwords gets a million plausible wallets. There is no “wrong password” error, no hash to check, no way to reject a guess locally. The only way to find the real wallet is to derive addresses from each candidate mnemonic and check them across multiple blockchains and derivation paths.
Combined with Argon2id key derivation (64 MB memory, 3 iterations), each attempt costs ~1 second regardless of hardware. Brute-forcing billions of passwords and verifying each one on-chain is economically infeasible.
Strong password from your memorable phrase
Choose a phrase you can easily remember in any language — for example, “I was born in London, and my whole family is from that same area.” The Strong Password Generator transforms it into a cryptographic password with over 150 bits of entropy.
Estimated brute-force time on a powerful GPU cluster: ~1045 years. Even a hypothetical large-scale quantum computer using Grover’s algorithm would need ~175 billion years — far beyond the age of the universe.
The generated password is long, complex, and impossible to memorize — but you don’t have to. Store it as a password QR code: print it, and use it by scanning. You remember your catchy phrase. The QR carries the password.
Plastic cards: friendly access for both QR codes
Print your wallet QR and your password QR on plastic cards — credit-card-sized, durable, easy to carry and store. Two cards, two locations: wallet access is as simple as scanning both.
Even if someone finds your wallet card, honey encryption means they cannot tell which password unlocks it. And without your password card, they would have to brute-force a 150+ bit password — effectively impossible.
Keep them separate: your wallet card in one safe place, your password card in another. Together they open your wallet. Apart, each is useless to an attacker.
Part B
How you recover access
Google Drive backup for your wallet QR
Back up your encrypted wallet QR to Google Drive. The backup is ciphertext — Google stores the file but cannot read your password, seed phrase, or private keys. If you lose the printed QR or the plastic card, restore it from Drive in seconds.
The backup is identical to the original QR data. Restoring it is like scanning your printed QR — you still need your password to open the wallet.
Password recovery via your catchy phrase
If your strong password was generated from a memorable phrase, you can regenerate it at any time. Open the Strong Password Generator, type the same phrase, and you get the same password — it is a deterministic derivation, not a random process.
This means your password QR is also recoverable: regenerate the password from your phrase, then create a new password QR. No backup file needed — your memory of the phrase is the backup.
Recovery summary
| You lost | How to recover |
|---|---|
| Wallet QR / card | Restore from Google Drive backup |
| Password QR / card | Regenerate password from your catchy phrase in the Strong Password Generator |
| Both cards | Drive backup + phrase regeneration → full recovery |
| New device | Scan your QR or restore from Drive. Re-enroll biometrics from Biometry / Pincode if needed |
| Forgot your phrase | No recovery — the phrase is the only password backup (by design) |
What an attacker faces
| Attacker has | Still blocked by |
|---|---|
| Wallet QR only | Password (150+ bit strong password) + biometric gate (if enrolled) |
| Wallet QR + guessed password | No way to confirm the guess without blockchain verification + biometric gate |
| Wallet QR + correct password | Biometric verification on the enrolled device (if active) |
| Google Drive backup only | Same as QR only — backup is ciphertext |
| Password QR only | Useless without the wallet QR — password alone opens nothing |
Additional security tools
Each tool works independently. Use one, several, or all.
Biometric / PIN Protection
Add Windows Hello, Touch ID, or Face ID as a required verification step when opening your wallet.
Shamir Split
Split your seed phrase into M‑of‑N shares for inheritance planning, team custody, or geographic redundancy.
Check Password
Verify you remember your password by checking the derived address — without exposing your seed phrase.
Google Drive Backup
Save an encrypted copy of your wallet QR to Google Drive for reliable recovery.
What W2QR never has access to
Your password
Your seed phrase
Your private keys
Your wallet address
This is intentional
W2QR has no “reset password” button, no recovery email, and no customer support override. Your wallet cannot be accessed by W2QR, by Google, or by anyone without your QR and password. This means no one can take your funds — including us — but it also means you must protect your own credentials.
One sentence to remember
Your wallet = your QR + a password derived from your catchy phrase. Back up the QR to Google Drive, remember your phrase, and you can always recover.