nostr/nips/06.md

NIP-06

Key derivation from mnemonic

draft optional author:fiatjaf

This combines BIP39 and a modified BIP32 into a scheme that allows the generation of a private key from a list of seed words.

BIP32 is modified to use the key Nostr seed instead of Bitcoin seed in the HMAC function.

This document specifies the creation of a single Nostr private key, but it can be expanded in the future if "HD Wallets" ever become a relevant use case.

Steps for generating the private key:

1. Follow the steps on BIP39 for generating the mnemonic and then the seed (512 bytes);
2. Calculate result = hmac-sha512(key = 'Nostr seed', data = seed);
3. Use the first 32 bytes of result as the private key.