Three backups, one key
A Nimiq account is a key. Not a username, not a record on a server, not something Nimiq holds on your behalf: a secret your device generated, which is the only thing in existence that can move your NIM. A backup is a way of writing that secret down so it survives the device.
Nimiq offers three, and people treat them as three flavours of the same thing. They are not. They protect against different failures, they are compromised in different ways, and the sensible arrangement uses more than one. Before anything else, three rules that this page will not qualify later:
- Your recovery words are the account. Anyone who reads them owns your NIM immediately and irreversibly. There is no second factor behind them.
- Nobody legitimate will ever ask for them. Not support, not a validator, not a moderator, not us. A request is an attack, every time, with no exceptions.
- There is no recovery desk. If the key and every backup are gone, the coins are unreachable. That is not a policy someone can make an exception to.
You will notice this page never shows you what a set of recovery words looks like, not even an invented one. That is on purpose. Seeing a seed rendered inside a web page is a thing that should always feel wrong, and printing a harmless looking example is how that reflex gets worn down.
Recovery words
Nimiq accounts are BIP39 accounts, and the developer documentation lists the standard account type as 24-word recovery. Nimiq's own post on backup codes uses the same number when it reasons about an attacker holding 12 of 24 words. Both were read on 14 September 2026. You do not choose the count: it is set when the account is created.
Those words encode the seed that every address under your account is derived from. Restore them into any compatible wallet and the account is back, on any device, with no involvement from Nimiq. That is the strength and the danger in one sentence, because it works identically for whoever else has them.
The export runs entirely inside Keyguard, so the application that asked for the export never receives the words. That design has a practical consequence worth internalising: the only legitimate place you will ever see your recovery words is a screen drawn by Nimiq's own key component, and nothing else has any reason to display or request them.
Partial exposure is not partial safety. Nimiq's backup codes post puts a number on it: an attacker who obtains 12 of the 24 words gains up to 132 bits of the key's entropy. This is the reason we will not print a masked example either. Half a seed is not a decorative half.
The login file
The login file is the one people underestimate, because it looks like a picture. It is an image that carries your account key in encrypted form, and the password you set on the account is what opens it. Nimiq made downloading one mandatory for new accounts in a wallet update published 10 February 2021, precisely so that nobody would leave without any backup at all.
The published file format is a PNG with a recognisable identicon on it, holding the encrypted key as a QR code, protected by a key derivation function running roughly ten thousand rounds of argon2. One honest discrepancy: that repository describes a 6 digit pin, while the shipped wallet and Nimiq's own backup codes post both describe a password. Treat the repository as the format's design note rather than as a description of today's flow, and go by what the wallet asks you for.
Two things follow. First, a login file on its own is not enough: forget the password and the file is a picture of nothing. Nimiq says as much, describing the file as an improvement over writing down the full 24 words while insisting the words are still very important and still prompted for. Second, because it is an image, it lands in the place images land. Photo rolls sync. Downloads folders get backed up. An encrypted file in a synced folder is only as strong as the password on it, and passwords chosen by humans in 2021 are not usually 132 bits of anything.
Backup codes
Backup codes are the newest of the three, and the design goal is visible in the shape: they are built for the way people actually behave, rather than for the way they are told to behave.
Per Nimiq's own post, read on 14 September 2026, there are two codes. Both are required to recover, either one alone is useless, and the order you combine them in does not matter. They are generated locally, they stay valid even if you later change your password, and they restore the entire account. You can set them up when the wallet is created or later, from the account menu in the wallet's sidebar.
The interesting property is the storage advice, which is the opposite of everything else on this page. Nimiq says the codes can be stored online, provided each one goes on a different, independent platform and the two never sit in the same place. The reasoning it gives is that a single code reveals no partial information about the key, where partial recovery words reveal a great deal. That converts an all or nothing secret into a two of two secret, which is a thing an ordinary person can actually store without a fireproof box.
The cost is that you now have two things to not lose, and a failure mode that recovery words do not have: losing either half loses the backup. So this is a complement to offline recovery words, not a replacement for them.
The comparison, in one table
| Method | What it is | Protects against | Does not protect against | If you lose it |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Recovery words | 24 words encoding the account seed | Lost device, wiped browser, forgotten password, Nimiq going away entirely | Anyone who reads them. Fire, flood, a house move, a helpful relative tidying up | Nothing, if another backup exists. Everything, if not |
| Login file | An encrypted image holding the key, opened by your password | Lost device and wiped browser, as long as you remember the password | A forgotten password. A weak password on a file that syncs somewhere | Re-export a new one from inside the wallet while you still have access |
| Backup codes | Two codes, both needed, either alone useless | Lost login file, forgotten password, and the temptation to put a whole seed online | Losing either half. Storing both halves on the same platform, which undoes the design | Re-generate while you still have access |
Where to put each one, and where never to
The practical question is not which backup is best in the abstract. It is where a specific secret is going to physically live for the next ten years.
Reasonable places.
- Recovery words: written by hand on paper or stamped into metal, kept somewhere you control, ideally in two separate physical locations so one fire is not the end of it.
- Login file: on storage you control, such as an offline drive, treated as something that needs its password to be strong and memorable rather than convenient.
- Backup codes: split across two independent platforms, following Nimiq's own guidance, so that neither platform alone is worth attacking.
Places recovery words must never go. This list is not a ranking.
- A note in a cloud notes app, a password manager entry that syncs, or any document store.
- A photo of the words, on any device. Photo libraries sync by default and are searchable.
- An email or message to yourself. That mailbox is one password reset away from someone else.
- A chat, a support ticket, a form, or anywhere a person asked you to put them.
- Typed into any web page at all, including one that looks exactly like the Nimiq Wallet. The real restore flow lives in Keyguard, which you reach by navigating there yourself and never by clicking a link somebody sent you.
What losing each one actually means
The recurring mistake is treating a backup as insurance against theft. It is not. A backup is insurance against loss, and the two threats pull in opposite directions: every extra copy makes loss less likely and theft more likely. Choosing a backup is choosing where on that line to stand.
The one thing that collapses the trade is doing it early. While you can still open the account, every one of these can be re-exported or re-generated from inside the wallet, at no cost and in a couple of minutes. After you cannot, none of them can. That asymmetry is the entire argument, and it is why the instruction in our wallet guide is to make the backup on the day you make the account rather than on the day you fund it.
The same applies on a phone. Nimiq Pay is self custodial, which means the same key is on the same device with the same consequences, covered in Nimiq Pay explained.
What we could not pin down
Two things, stated rather than papered over. The publication date of Nimiq's backup codes post is shown as 11 February without a year on the page we read on 14 September 2026, so we describe the feature as current rather than dating its launch. And the pin versus password discrepancy in the login file format repository is unresolved above; the wallet's own prompt is the authority on what it wants from you.
If any of this has drifted, tell us and we will re-date the page. Everything else we have written for people setting up an account is on the Learn hub.