Solana Co-Founder Toly Urges Dice-Based Wallet Seed Phrase Generation

Solana co-founder Toly urged crypto users to generate wallet seed phrases with dice, warning that some hardware wallets may rely on weak or malicious random-number sources.

He described two possible weaknesses. A device could produce numbers through a predictable source, including a hash of the time, or secretly send back a mnemonic that had been loaded into it. These warnings address separate parts of wallet handling: the randomness used to produce a phrase and what might happen to it after it is on a device.

For phrase creation, Toly recommended dice. He also advised keeping an older signing device with sensitive data cleared. When possible, he recommended signing on a newly configured Mac disconnected from the network, then wiping the computer afterward.

Toly added that older signing devices were more likely to have vulnerabilities that security researchers had found and publicly disclosed. His suggestions covered phrase generation, sensitive data on a device and the computer used during signing.