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I want to generate an Ethereum wallet to use for cold storage. I'll split the key using SSSS, and print the different parts in papers that I'll store in different places. I don't want to use a password: I want the wallet to be recoverable in case I die or get a brain injury or something.

All wallet generation mechanisms I can see use a series of words that you have to remember. One obvious solution is to simply use an empty passphrase, or write down the passphrase on each paper. But I'm not sure whether it's safe: is the passphrase enough to recover the private key?

Ted
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You can have unencrypted private keys, of course.

Mnemonics is what can be used to derive this private key. So this can be used to generate a mnemonic (select ETH), and further down the site you can find the corresponding unencrypted private keys and addresses. They are all generated from the same mnemonic using a different derivation path, but when importing into clients that shouldn't matter (please give this a try first, to be on the safe side)

n1cK
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  • Just to make sure I have this right, I can use this link offline, enter some entropy (say, from /dev/urandom), and use one of the "derived addresses" at the bottom? I don't need the mnemonics to retrieve the contents of the wallet if I store the private key directly? (I'm 99% certain this is a dumb question and the answer is yes, but better safe than sorry…) – Ted Oct 22 '17 at 18:51
  • If you'd like to do thse things offline and in huge quantities, make yourself familiar with https://github.com/ethereumjs/ethereumjs-wallet . a little hint on the general syntax: https://ethereum.stackexchange.com/questions/11166/how-to-generate-a-keystore-utc-file-from-the-raw-private-key there is a different thing being explained there, but with the API from github you will get it, I think! – n1cK Oct 23 '17 at 00:16