📄Paper Wallet (all 7 types)

Why paper?

For any amount of MOTA you plan to hold for months or years, a paper wallet is the simplest secure option. Keys never touch the internet; they never touch your daily-use machine; they sit folded in a drawer, a safe, or a steel plate, with no attack surface.

The golden rule: generate keys on an offline machine, print directly from that machine, sweep into a hot wallet only when you want to spend.

The offline generation flow

1. Save the page

   Open paper.motacoin.net in any browser. File → Save page as… → Web Page, Complete. You now have a self-contained HTML + assets folder that works fully offline.

2. Go offline

   Disconnect WiFi, unplug ethernet, put the machine in airplane mode. Ideal: boot a live Linux USB on an air-gapped laptop, never online.

3. Open the saved HTML

   Double-click the saved file. It opens locally with no network requests. Confirm by opening DevTools → Network — it should stay empty while you use the page.

4. Generate entropy

   The top banner shows a progress bar — wiggle your mouse around the page until it fills. That's actual entropy from your movements being mixed into the RNG (in addition to window.crypto).

5. Pick a tab, generate, print

   The seven tabs below each serve a different use case — read through them, pick the one matching what you need.

6. Funds never touch an online machine until you sweep

   Send MOTA to the public address. It sits on-chain safely. Later, when you want to spend, import the private key into MotaCoin Core or a web wallet — that's when the key finally goes online, and at that point you should sweep the entire balance to a fresh address.

Tab 1 · Single Wallet

The default. One public address, one WIF private key, printed side-by-side with QR codes.

• Use for: most cold storage. The 80% use case.
• Output: one printable card. Public key QR on the left (scan into any wallet to check balance), private key QR on the right (scan to sweep).
• Optional BIP38 encryption: check the BIP38 Encrypt? box and enter a passphrase. The private key QR becomes unusable without that passphrase — double-layer protection if someone photographs the paper.

Tab 2 · Paper Wallet

Same as Single, but in a printer-friendly "tri-fold" layout with fold guides and a hidden private key behind a tamper-evident flap.

• Use for: gifting MOTA, handing out at events (the MotaCup used a variant of this for the 200+ paper wallet airdrops)
• Set artwork — ships with several MotaCoin designs; can also upload a custom image for branded drops
• Hide the private side — the fold covers the private QR, so the recipient has to physically open the wallet to expose the key

Tab 3 · Bulk Wallet

Generate hundreds or thousands of wallets at once, then export as CSV.

• Use for: merchant onboarding (generate N addresses, assign one per customer), event airdrops, exchange cold storage rotation
• Set Rows to Generate — up to 10,000 in one pass (browser will slow down above ~2,000 — generate in batches if needed)
• Export CSV — download a spreadsheet with index, address, private_key (WIF). Import into your invoicing tool or cold-storage database.

Tab 4 · Brain Wallet

Deterministic key generation from a passphrase. Type any phrase, get a specific keypair. Same phrase always produces the same address.

• Use for: memorization-only backups ("no physical artifact can be stolen")
• How it works: SHA-256 of your passphrase → private key → address. No randomness involved.

Tab 5 · Vanity Wallet

Grind for an address that starts with a specific prefix. Because MotaCoin addresses start with M, you can pick the next 2–5 characters.

• Use for: memorable addresses (MotAaBcDeF...), branded merchant addresses (Mocatfe... for a cafe), vanity donation addresses
• Note: base58 excludes 0, O, I, l — these characters cannot appear in any address
• Time: 3 extra chars ≈ seconds; 5 chars ≈ minutes; 7 chars ≈ hours on a modern laptop. The grinder runs in a Web Worker so the UI stays responsive.

Tab 6 · Split Wallet (Shamir Secret Sharing)

Split a private key into N shares such that any M-of-N shares can reconstruct the original, but M-1 or fewer shares reveal nothing.

• Use for: family inheritance (3-of-5 shares, give one to each trusted family member), institutional custody, "dead man's switch" setups
• Example split: 3-of-5 means any 3 of the 5 shares can reconstruct the key. Lose up to 2 shares and you're still safe. Attacker needs at least 3.
• Reconstruction: use the Combine Shares sub-tab — paste M shares, get the original key back, sweep

Tab 7 · Wallet Details

Paste any WIF private key — see everything derivable from it: uncompressed + compressed public keys, uncompressed + compressed addresses, hex key, BIP38-encrypted form.

• Use for: debugging a suspect key, verifying a Split reconstruction, inspecting a Brain wallet result
• Also: BIP38 encrypt/decrypt on demand. Paste a plain WIF + passphrase → get the BIP38 form. Paste a BIP38-encrypted key + passphrase → get the plain WIF back.

BIP38 encryption — when and why

BIP38 (BIP0038) is a standardized way to password-protect a WIF private key. The encrypted form starts with 6P instead of K or L. You can print a BIP38-encrypted paper wallet and even if someone photographs the QR, they can't sweep the funds without your passphrase.

Trade-off: if you forget the passphrase, the coins are as unrecoverable as losing the key itself. BIP38 is protection against theft by observation, not against forgetfulness.

Recommend BIP38 for:

• Paper wallets displayed publicly (stickers, posters, event giveaways where the private QR is visible)
• Safe-deposit box storage where the box attendant or other parties might briefly see the printout
• Any paper wallet you can't guarantee physical security on

Sweeping a paper wallet

When you're ready to spend, import the private key into a hot wallet. Two options:

MotaCoin Core (Qt GUI)

Debug → Debug Console:

> importprivkey "KxY7..." "paper-2019" false
# The false flag skips rescanning old blocks — set true on first import to pick up history
> sendtoaddress "MyNewAddress" [balance-minus-fee]

Web wallet or mobile wallet

Most wallets have a Sweep or Import Private Key option. Scan the private QR, confirm the balance, sweep to a fresh address in the hot wallet.