There's a long discussion about using BIP32 (the Bitcoin HD wallet KDF) and BIP44 (the KDF path standard) for Ethereum.
It was raised that perhaps a different scheme could be useful.
-
A mnemonic (i.e. a list of memorable words) is generated (see BIP39)
-
This mnemonic is converted to a seed using PBKDF2 (see BIP39)