1. Decypher Extension
  2. Decypher - Getting Started

Account management walkthrough for Decypher - Dijets Chrome Extension to manage your Dijets & ‘Dijetal Assets’.

A different model of account security

Public blockchain technology uses a very different set of tools to secure user accounts, compared to traditional online technologies. Most of us are used to creating an account with an app, or service, or what have you, and being able to, for example, write to Customer Support to reset our password, or username; we’re used to the app keeping our data, presumably on some sort of computer that belongs to the company.

Decypher doesn’t work like that. Decypher has three different types of secret that are used in different ways to keep your wallet, and your accounts, private and safe: The Secret Recovery Phrase, the password, and private keys. We’ll walk you through these secrets one at a time.

Intro to Secret Recovery Phrases

One of the key technologies underlying Decypher, and in fact, most user account-related tools in the crypto space is that of a seed phrase, or as it’s referred to in Decypher, your Secret Recovery Phrase.

First, the technical explanation: Seed phrases as we know them today were codified for usage in Bitcoin, according to a standard referred to as Bitcoin Improvement Proposal 39, or BIP-39. In simple terms, a series of words are selected with a high level of randomness from a specific list of words. In Decypher and many other Ethereum-compatible technologies, there are 12 words in a seed phrase. Some older seeds generated by the Brave browser, and some hardware wallets, use 24-word phrases. Each one of these words corresponds to a series of numbers, and when placed in a specific order, represent a much more user-friendly way to remember a very, very long number. That number is the private key to your accounts. (…now you see what I did there?)

There are a number of important features to note here:

  • The Secret Recovery Phrase is the key to the wallet. If someone has the key, they have complete access to the wallet. Decypher does not keep the keys: you are the custodian of your wallet. Decypher will never ask for your Secret Recovery Phrase, even in a customer support scenario. If someone does ask for it, they are likely trying to scam you or steal your funds.

  • Your secret recovery phrase is used locally to derive private keys, one per account/address. Accounts are stored on the blockchain, and these private keys unlock those accounts.

  • If you uninstall the app, or the extension, then the local version of the data is gone (the notable exception being the vault), but any transactions you performed with that local version of Decypher will have been recorded on the blockchain. Therefore, the transactions should be reflected both on a block explorer, and in another instance of Decypher, so long as you restore using the same Secret Recovery Phrase (with the words in the same order). This means that so long as you have your Secret Recovery Phrase, you will always be able to uninstall Decypher and restore your wallet.

  • Within your wallet, you can have a very large number of separate accounts. When Decypher creates or restores your wallet from the Secret Recovery Phrase, it initially produces only the first account. However, any additional accounts you create can be re-created in a future instance of Decypher; as the wallet is deterministic, it will always re-create the same accounts, in the same order. For more on this issue, see the FAQs below.

  • It is possible to import accounts from other Ethereum-compatible technologies into a Decypher wallet. In order to do so, the private key of that specific account is used. However, this account will not be automatically restored by Decypher in another instance; you will have to manually re-add it. Therefore, if you have manually imported accounts, make note of their private keys, in the same way you did your seed phrase, in order to be able to re-import them in the future.

Decypher Secret Recovery Phrase: DOs and DON'Ts

DO'sDONT's
Write down your Secret Recovery Phrase somewhere safe.Keep it in an easily discovered location; e.g. in a cloud-saved document or email titled "Seed Phrase"; on a post-it note stuck to your computer.
Double-check your spelling and that you wrote down every word in the same order they were givenChange the order of the words
Reach out to Decypher for customer assistance when neededProvide your seed phrase to anyone, even if they say they're from customer service.

Secret Recovery Phrases: FAQs

Q: My seed phrase restored a different account!

If you are encountering this problem, the most common reasons are:

  • The Secret Recovery Phrase you currently have is not from the account you are missing.
  • The account you are missing was a secondary account created under the Secret Recovery Phrase you currently have.
  • The missing account was imported using a private key. That could mean that you are using the key for a different sub-chain address. Please make sure that you write down the correct private keys for the respective subchains of Value, Utility & Methods when trying to import a wallet that you created on https://wallet.dijets.co.uk