Seedless: the best protection against attacks that target your keys

Most attacks on crypto users have the same goal: getting your recovery phrase. The Ledger implant captured the 24 words shown on the screen during setup. Other attacks rely on malware that scans phone galleries for photos of recovery phrases, or on scammers who convince users to share them.

The best way to protect yourself against these attacks is a seedless wallet. Your keys are generated inside the chip, and they stay there. They aren’t shown on a screen, written on paper or exposed at any point. Once keys are exposed, they become more vulnerable than keys that live only inside a high-security chip like Hashwallet’s.

We saw this firsthand in Hashwallet’s early days, when seedless was the only option and importing a seed wasn’t possible yet. Attackers sent users a link to a fake website imitating Hashwallet’s, warned them about a problem with their wallet and asked for their 24 words. The whole scheme was built to steal recovery phrases, but Hashwallet users didn’t have one to give. Their keys were protected inside the chip, and the attackers left empty-handed.

Historically, the biggest drawback of seedless wallets has been recovery. Some card wallets rely on a set of backup cards bought in advance. If those cards get lost or damaged, there’s no way back. You avoid one attack vector, but you take on a new risk that feels very real.

Hashwallet solves this with backup cards on demand. You don’t need to store spare cards: if you lose your card, you order a backup card from the app, whenever you need it, and recover the same wallets.

This way you get both: keys protected from attackers, and a recovery method that doesn’t depend on keeping anything safe. Compared to a seed phrase, you give up some flexibility. But with attacks becoming more frequent and more sophisticated, the protection a seedless wallet offers outweighs that trade-off.