Quote from: btchris on January 30, 2015, 10:28:34 PM

Quote from: dabura667 on January 30, 2015, 05:19:22 PM

You will not be able to import BIP39 mnemonics into Electrum.

That's a shame, but thank you for the correction.

Electrum's legacy seed derivation method used a fixed wordlist.

That was a mistake, because now the old wordlist must be shipped with every new version of Electrum, just to ensure backward compatibility for existing seeds.
BIP39 is reproducing that same mistake. That's why I do not want to use it in Electrum. It is possible to do better.

BIP39 uses a hash of the utf8 encoded seed phrase, which is a good idea, because it would have allowed us to create a standard that is independent from a fixed wordlist.
However, when designing their checksum, the BIP39 guys decided to make it dependent on the wordlist... That's a pity, and that is not consistent.

Electrum's new seed derivation method and checksum are both completely independent from the wordlist.
It will allow us to update wordlists without breaking existing seeds, and to create localized wordlists without worrying about reusing the same words in different languages.