Seed Phrase
A seed phrase is 12 or 24 words from which a wallet derives all its keys and addresses. Whoever knows the words controls the coins.
What a seed phrase is
The words come from the standard BIP39 list of 2048 words, and the order matters. All the wallet's private keys are derived from the phrase by one and the same rule, so a single record restores the whole thing: addresses, history, balances. Any compatible wallet will do for that.
The phrase can only be stored offline. Paper fears fire and water, metal plates survive both. A photo on your phone, notes, the cloud, a chat thread: sooner or later each of those places gets read by someone else.
Nobody legitimate asks for the words. Not pool support, not an exchange, not a wallet developer, not a security check. A request to enter or dictate a seed phrase is a scam a hundred times out of a hundred.
A phrase can carry an extra piece, known as the twenty fifth word. It is a password of your own that, together with the same words, opens a different wallet. Strong protection, same rule: lose the extra word, lose the coins.
Quick reference table
| Format | 12 or 24 words from the BIP39 list |
| What it derives | all the wallet's keys and addresses |
| Where to keep it | offline, better on metal |
| Who to show it to | nobody, ever |
| Recovery | in any compatible wallet |
How to handle the phrase
Write it down by hand and verify it right away by restoring on a clean device. A mistake in one word gets caught now or never.
Make two copies and keep them in different places. Fire and flood arrive at one address, not two.
Never type the phrase into websites and never photograph it. A phone's keyboard and camera are the most readable places on earth.
For larger sums look at metal plates and multisig: the first survives a fire, the second survives the theft of one copy.
An example from practice
Pool payouts went to a phone wallet for years, and the phone drowned. A new phone, a clean wallet, 24 words off the plate, and ten minutes later the whole balance was back along with the history. Coins live on the blockchain, not in the device, the device only holds the keys.
Related terms
Where to go next on the site
Coins
Hardware
- ASIC Miner knowledge base
Questions and answers
Can a seed phrase be changed
Not for an existing wallet. You create a new wallet with a new phrase and move the coins there with an ordinary transaction.
What to do if one word is lost
One word out of 12 can still be brute forced against the list, that is hours of work. Two or more is practically unrecoverable, which is why a copy gets verified in advance, not on the day it goes missing.
How a seed phrase differs from a private key
A key opens one address, the phrase gives rise to all of them. Losing a key costs one address, losing the phrase costs the entire wallet.
How the terms connect
Every link in the chain is clickable. Orange marks where you are now.
Looking for an ASIC miner
The catalog holds 212 models. You can compare them by hashrate and by joules per terahash, then plug your own rate into the calculator and see what stays in your pocket.
Page written and checked by Denys Klimchuk. Updated .