What Is A Seed Phrase?
A seed phrase or recovery phrase is a set of 12, 18, or 24 random words at the core of a wallet’s private key generation and is the only backup for your private key.[1]Ledger – How To Protect Your Seed Phrase? Seed phrases are generated by most reputable wallets at the time of their creation and are not cryptocurrency specific.[2]Binance – Seed Phrase
Having access to a seed phrase allows a user to import the funds from a wallet onto a new device in case of emergencies such as losing your wallet, or corruption of a computer. Therefore, they must stay 100% private – never being shared with anyone or organization.
Seed phrases are words taken from the English language such as “fox”, “river”, and “human”. The reason behind them is to eliminate human error, as words are easier to write down than a long private key and leaves less room for error within the words.
Seed phrases act as the master key to your wallet, granting access to everything inside of it including generation and access to your keys, while private keys allow you to transfer funds from inside the wallet.
Using the most common standard to generate seed phrases (BIP39), they’re generated from 2048 random English words.[3]Bitcoin Wiki – Seed Phrase The BIP39 standard carefully draws these words out so that the first four letters of each word are enough to identify it.[4]Bitcoin Wiki – Seed Phrase
How To Protect Your Seed Phrase
The most common way to store a seed phrase is pen and paper, although this isn’t too durable. Although you should have more than one backup, some other ways to store it include engraving it into a metal capsule or storing it in a steel case.
Storing your seed phrase on a computer or online isn’t recommended as there is a lot of room for error. Neither is memorizing your phrase or storing half your words in one location and the other half in another.
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