Burrow ShowMyWork Quick Start

Disclaimer

I release this software, set of procedures and posts, free of charge, under the MIT License, for use at your own risk, without warranty of any kind. Never use these materials (or any other software, for that matter) with assets of value unless and until you are fully comfortable with them and understand exactly what they are and how they work. My software has not yet undergone a formal, 3rd party audit.

ShowMyWork

Rudefox Burrow supports seed generation using many sources of entropy, including 6-sided dice, decks of cards, etc. However, there are many users who do not possess the skills required to audit code, hashes or conversions from various bases to binary. What sets Burrow apart from other seed generation devices is the ShowMyWork feature that provides such users with iron-clad evidence as to the origin of their seed words, using a process that they can easily understand from end-to-end. The catch is that this requires an entropy source that generates sets of events that are powers of 2 (6-sided dice and decks of cards do not fall into this category). Therefore, ShowMyWork supports the following 2 options:

Procedure

Insecure Dry-Run

If you want to play around with Burrow on an insecure, connected device for testing purposes only then download the latest tar or zip, extract and find executables for each platform in the bin folder. Burrow was created as a turn-key solution to creating an air-gapped device, armed with a set of Bitcoin tools for offline seed generation, transactions signing, etc. As such, a Pi Zero / Wifi-secured Pi or other air-gapped device is highly recommended.

RPi Setup

For those who are anxious to get started generating an audited seed phrase on an air-gapped RPi using the ShowMyWork feature:

  1. Gather the necessary hardware:

    • Raspberry Pi (Tested on 3B+)
    • HDMI Display
    • SD Card
    • A/C Adapter
    • USB Keyboard (wireless is discouraged)
    • Either:

  2. Download the latest, zipped Raspberry Pi image

  3. Unzip the image using a utility like 7-zip

  4. Use a utility like Win32 Disk Imager to flash the SD Card with the unzipped image file

    • For OS-specific recommendations on SD Card flashing utilities, see the "Writing the Image" section on raspberrypi.org's Installing OS Images Guide

  5. Insert the SD Card into the Raspberry Pi and power up the device

  6. WAIT for the device to reboot TWICE

    • Once to expand the filesystem
    • Again to activate the read-only filesystem
      • The device will boot into a prompt, and it will appear as though it is "just sitting"… give it 10 to 15 seconds and it will reboot a second time…

  7. Print the Seed Generation Worksheet and Lookup Tables

  8. Interactively generate a mnemonic based on 256-bit entropy generated from…

    • rolls of 8-sided dice:

      • Type burrow mnemonic -i8b 256 or seedgen and press [Enter]
      • You can find a more detailed walk-through here

    • coin tosses or even/odd numbers generated from rolls of 6-sided dice:

      • Type burrow mnemonic -i2b 256 and press [Enter]
      • You can find a more detailed walk-through here

Additional Walkthroughs

Generate, Audit and Test Account Key and Addresses (~45 min)

  1. Use Burrow to Derive an Account Key and Addresses (~25 min)

  2. Create an Electrum Wallet for the Generated Account Key (~5 min)

  3. Receive Funds using Electrum (~15 min)

Setup and Test COLDCARD (~52 min)

  1. Perform the Initial Setup of the COLDCARD (~30 min)

  2. Create an Electrum Wallet for the Coldcard (~12 min)

  3. Spend funds from the first address to another address (~15 min)