In the past I've found below graph that nicely illustrates the derivation from entropy to address. The original source of the image seems to be https://raw.githubusercontent.com/EAWF/BTC-Toolbox/3938785f186c76598989cc0aa017ad351483d3b1/Images/KeyDerivationTechnicalOverview.png



I hope it helps for your understanding. If https://learnmeabitcoin.com/ isn't enough, you can still have a look into Mastering Bitcoin.

Quote from: TheDigitalMan on May 30, 2025, 04:28:50 PM

So from what I gather: It is the "mnemonic seed phrase" that is passed into the PBKDF2 function and not the actual binary bits.

The "normalized" mnemonic recovery words in UTF-8 are fed into the PBKDF2 mill, as far as I remember all separated with a single space (part of the "normalization").

This is also the reason why from a particular entropy which is encoded to mnemonic recovery words of different language wordlists you won't get the same private keys and addresses even when all other details like derivation path etc. are the same. Or in other words: entropy encoded to english mnemonic recovery words gives you a different wallet than the same entropy encoded to spanish mnemonic recovery words (or any other different language wordlist)!

Quote from: TheDigitalMan on May 30, 2025, 04:28:50 PM

I assume the function converts the mnemonic words into the entropy (binary bits) that the mnemonic words represent?

Not sure if I understand you correctly, but no, in the context of the PBKDF2 rounds words are not converted back to entropy bits.

In the past I've found below graph that nicely illustrates the derivation from entropy to address. The original source of the image seems to be https://raw.githubusercontent.com/EAWF/BTC-Toolbox/3938785f186c76598989cc0aa017ad351483d3b1/Images/KeyDerivationTechnicalOverview.png



I hope it helps for your understanding. If https://learnmeabitcoin.com/ isn't enough, you can still have a look into Mastering Bitcoin.