Paper or Metal? What's the Best Backup for Your Seed?
Paper and metal are the two most common ways to make an offline backup of a Seed Phrase. Paper is cheap and immediate, but fragile. Metal withstands fire, water, and time, but it costs more and takes more effort. Neither one, however, solves the biggest backup risk: anyone who finds it can read your Seed.
Why the backup material matters
You may need to use a Seed many years after creating it. During that time, the backup is exposed to:
- Fires and high temperatures
- Floods and humidity
- Natural wear, fading ink, tearing paper
- Loss, accidental disposal, or moving house
- Access by people who shouldn't see it
Paper Seed backup
This is the method almost every wallet suggests when you set it up: a card for writing down the words by hand.
Advantages
- Practically zero cost
- Available right away
- No tools required
Limitations
- Vulnerable to fire, water, and humidity
- Ink can fade and paper can tear or grow mold
- Easy to lose or throw away by mistake
- Handwriting errors can prevent recovery
- Anyone who finds it can read the Seed
Metal Seed backup
Steel or titanium plates and capsules, where the words are engraved or assembled with letter tiles, were created precisely to solve the fragility of paper.
Advantages
- High resistance to fire and water
- Lasts for decades
- Doesn't fade or rot
Limitations
- Costs much more than paper
- Engraving is laborious, sometimes requiring special tools
- Engraving mistakes are still possible
- Anyone who finds it can read the Seed
Paper vs. metal: side-by-side comparison
- Cost: paper is nearly free; metal is much more expensive.
- Fire and water resistance: paper is low; metal is high.
- Durability: paper lasts a few years if well stored; metal lasts decades.
- Protection against whoever finds the backup: none in either case — the words are in plain sight.
The problem neither one solves
The paper vs. metal debate is about physical resistance. But the most common risk isn't a fire: it's someone finding the backup. A cleaner, a visitor, a curious relative, a thief who walks off with the safe. With paper or metal, reading the words is all it takes to empty the wallet.
This creates a dilemma: you want several copies so you don't lose the Seed, but every extra copy is one more chance for someone to read it.
The alternative: an encrypted backup
An encrypted backup changes that logic: instead of the words, the copy stores the encrypted Seed, which only opens with your password. Whoever finds the copy can't read anything, and you can keep several without multiplying the risk. This is the approach of the SafeVault Card, which stores the encrypted Seed on an NFC card or QR Code.
Something you have + something you know
In security, the strongest protection combines two factors: something you have (a physical object) and something you know (a password). A paper or metal backup has only the first: whoever takes the copy takes everything. An encrypted backup requires both — with SafeVault, the physical vault (card or QR Code) and the master password.
What makes an encrypted backup secure
Two elements make the difference:
- The cipher: the AES-256 standard is the same one used by banks and governments. In its GCM mode, it also detects whether the content has been tampered with.
- Key derivation: the password doesn't become a key directly; it goes through a function like PBKDF2, repeated many times. Each repetition makes brute-force password guessing slower.
To give you an idea: with 1.2 million iterations — the number SafeVault uses — every password an attacker tries costs 1.2 million calculations instead of one. Even so, the rule applies to any encrypted backup: a weak password cancels out the best encryption.
Which backup should you choose?
- Small amounts and temporary use: well-stored paper may be enough.
- Long-term physical protection: metal.
- Multiple copies without exposing the Seed: an encrypted backup.
These methods can also be combined: what matters is that no single event — a fire, a loss, or someone snooping — can compromise your wallet.
Frequently asked questions
Is a metal backup fireproof?
Stainless steel or titanium plates withstand the temperatures of house fires, but resistance varies by model and material. Check the manufacturer's specifications.
Can I laminate my Seed paper?
It helps against water, but not against fire, and plastic ages too. And laminated paper is still readable by anyone who finds it.
Is splitting the Seed into two parts safe?
It's not recommended: each half greatly reduces the Seed's security and increases the risk of losing one of the parts.
Conclusion
Paper and metal solve different problems: paper is simple and cheap, metal is durable. Neither protects the Seed from whoever finds the backup.
The best strategy considers all three risks at once — physical damage, loss, and unauthorized access — and chooses the method, or combination, that covers them all.
