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bip39

A minimal BIP39 mnemonic phrase generator and validator, written in Zig.

Generates cryptographically random 12- or 24-word mnemonic phrases from the English wordlist and validates existing phrases against the BIP39 checksum specification.

Building

Requires Zig 0.14.1 or later.

zig build

The binary is placed at zig-out/bin/bip39. The default build uses ReleaseSmall with symbol stripping for a compact binary.

Usage

Usage: bip39 COMMAND [OPTIONS]

Commands:
  generate [12|24]   Generate a new BIP39 mnemonic with 12 or 24 words (default: 12)
  validate [WORDS]   Validate a BIP39 mnemonic phrase
  help               Show this help message

Generate a 12-word mnemonic (128-bit entropy)

$ bip39 generate
abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon about

Generate a 24-word mnemonic (256-bit entropy)

$ bip39 generate 24
abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon art

Validate a mnemonic phrase

$ bip39 validate abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon abandon about
Valid BIP39 mnemonic phrase.

Exits with code 0 on valid input and code 1 on invalid input, making it suitable for scripting.

How it works

BIP39 defines a procedure for turning random bytes into a human-readable mnemonic:

  1. Generate 128 or 256 bits of cryptographic entropy
  2. Compute a SHA-256 checksum and append the first ENT / 32 bits
  3. Split the combined bitstream into 11-bit groups
  4. Map each 11-bit value to a word in the 2048-word English wordlist

Validation reverses this: it decodes the words back to 11-bit indices, extracts the entropy, recomputes the SHA-256 checksum, and verifies the checksum bits match.

Tests

zig build test        # run all tests (unit + end-to-end)
zig build test-e2e    # run only end-to-end CLI tests

Unit tests

  • Wordlist integrity -- exactly 2048 sorted, unique entries
  • Command parsing -- all commands, null/unknown input
  • Bit extraction -- entropy and checksum bit reading
  • Generation -- BIP39 test vectors (all-zero, all-0xFF, 0x7F, 0x80 entropy for both 128-bit and 256-bit)
  • Validation -- valid and invalid phrases (wrong word count, unknown words, bad checksum, empty input)
  • Checksum verification -- SHA-256 derived checksum bits are correctly embedded in the last word for both 128-bit (4-bit) and 256-bit (8-bit) entropy; corrupted checksums are rejected
  • Round-trip -- generated phrases pass validation for a range of entropy patterns

End-to-end CLI tests

The test-e2e step builds the binary and exercises it through its CLI interface, asserting on stdout content, stderr content, and exit codes:

  • bip39 help and no-argument invocation print usage
  • bip39 generate, generate 12, generate 24 exit successfully
  • bip39 generate 99 warns on stderr but still exits 0
  • bip39 validate <valid-12-word> and <valid-24-word> print "Valid" and exit 0
  • bip39 validate <bad-checksum> and <unknown-word> print "Invalid" and exit 1
  • bip39 validate with no words prints an error to stderr

License

See LICENSE if present, or consult the repository for licensing details.