Welcome to the Seed phrase PDF of CoinPlate, which we also make available to you here, with a little explanations. Lots of people do not even know the difference between a private key and a Seed proof of a crypto wallet. Let's start with that! A private key gives you access to just one address (account), while a seed phrase gives you access to the whole wallet, which can hold multiple addresses and private keys. If you lose your private key, you can recover it by downloading your wallet software and using your seed phrase (recovery phrase) to regain access to your wallet again. If you lose your seed phrase on the other hand, there’s no way to recover your private keys and therefore your wallet - meaning all your crypto in the wallet is lost forever!
How are Seed Phrases created when creating a Wallet? That is a good question, let's go through that process step by step.
The process of creating a seed phrase starts with generating a random number. For most newly created wallets this random number comes from your device's entropy. The entropy is run through a hashing function, in most cases a simple SHA 256, which generates a checksum - the checksum is only used to detect errors. Part of that checksum is then appended to the random data. After this, the output is broken up into chunks of 11 bits, and each 11-bit chunk maps to a single word on the BIP39 word list. BIP39 is a specific list of 2048 words created for this function. It stands for Bitcoin Improvement Proposal and recommends the use of a group of easy to remember words which serve as a means to recover your accounts. You can find all the BIP39 words in this PDF file.
Let's explain this all a little better so you fully understand the Seed Phrases in the right context. Creating an Ethereum based private key involves picking a number between 1 and 2256. In order for a seed phrase to be able to recover your wallet, your private key has to be generated from your seed phrase. Here is the process. Each word in the secret recovery phrase has a number associated with it. So your random set of words (12 or 24) maps to a random number. This number forms a seed integer, which is then used to create a set of public/private keys using a one-way hash function. In the case of hierarchical deterministic wallets each new key pair can be hashed to create a child key pair, meaning you can create multiple wallet addresses linked to a single seed phrase. Not all wallets are using seed phrases. They’re used as a recovery method for wallets because they don’t require the user to expose their identity. But you can achieve the same result by using email for example as a recovery method, provided the email address is anonymous. You can wonder yourself is this is safe enough. For some people this is good enough. How safe are Seed Phrases? The calculations are below here. A 12-word seed phrase has a possible combination of 204812. That’s 5.4445179e+39 possible combinations. In other words, a really really really big number. Let's not even start about 24-word seed phrases. The answer is.. seed phrases are incredibly secure. Given the size of the number of possible combinations we can comfortably say that it’s impossible to guess or brute force a person’s seed phrase. But do not download this PDF and highlight your words! If somebody gets it, it will be real easy to access your wallet. Same for if you lose or give a so called "helpdesk" your seed phrase, you can never recover your wallet. If someone gets hold of your seed phrase, they can steal your crypto!
Questions? Considering some more research on how to safely store your seed words? Or is there a broken link? Just sent us an Dit e-mailadres wordt beveiligd tegen spambots. JavaScript dient ingeschakeld te zijn om het te bekijken..
Other websites are asking you to pay for these kind of documents and they collect all kind of information from you as well. We do not do that and never will!
You could help us with a, fully anonymous, small donation though, in order to keep this site running and for a coffee now and than.
![Cryptocurrency, StableCoin & Fiat donation button for the staff of CloudEuropeNL]()
