Twenty-four words, on paper, once.

Setup on Novubase ends with a list. The round screen shows 24 words in an order the chip chose when it created the key. Those words are a backup. With them, a replacement device can derive the same key. Without them, a lost Novubase is the end of that copy.

The list is shown once, on the device, so that the backup is made while you are looking at the object that holds the secret. Write the words by hand. Read them back on the device’s own check before you put the paper away. A photograph is convenient and it is the wrong container: camera rolls are backed up, shared, and searched by machines you did not mean to trust with a private key.

Keep the paper away from the device. A phrase stored in the same drawer as Novubase fails together with the device in a single theft. A phrase stored in the same computer as the reader fails together with that computer. Two places, different risks, is the arrangement the product assumes.

Infinite Business & Event Solutions, Inc. does not store the words. Support cannot recover them, and support will not ask you to provide them “to verify the device.” Any email, call, or webpage that requests the 24 words is outside this product. The contact paths that are real are listed on the contact page: the Cypress address, +1 (281) 564-9011, and [email protected].

If you later restore, you do it on a Novubase screen, word by word, with the buttons. You do not paste the list into the reader on the computer. The computer is the thing the phrase is supposed to outlive.