The first step is to contact the customer support team of your wallet provider. They might not be able to recover your seed phrase, but they can offer guidance or alternative solutions to help regain access to your wallet. There is no possibility to recover a seed phrase through a 3rd party so make sure to secure it well. Your seed phrase directly What is a Seed Phrase corresponds to your private key, so if someone else gets ahold of your seed phrase, they can control your private key and move your crypto. Within the Blockchain.com app, you’ll have multiple Private Key Wallets; as a simple example, if you hold BTC and ETH, you’ll have two Private Key Wallets, resulting in two seed phrases (one for each wallet).
Your Seed Phrase: A Necessary Wallet Backup Tool
Seed phrases also come in handy if your computer hard drive is corrupted or any devices you use to store crypto are damaged. The size of this phrase can vary from words in length and serves as a means for the Blockchain to identify which cryptocurrency you possess. The seed phrase uses relatively simple words that are a representation of a very complex series of numbers. The use of a simple sequence of words is to account for the human error potential when writing down your seed phrase.
How Should I Store My Seed Phrase?
Among the most widely-spread practices is the old-school method of writing it down on a piece of paper and storing it in a physically secure location. To eliminate the risk of losing access to your seed phrase, you can also make copies and store them in multiple places. Crypto hardware wallet and security infrastructure providers offer steel capsules or cases that allow you to engrave or recreate your seed phrase and store it safely. Unlike paper, these tools are an almost indestructible storage medium since they can resist fire, water, and other hazards. A seed phrase, also known as a recovery phrase or mnemonic phrase, is a sequence of words that represents the master key to your cryptocurrency wallet. You can consider it a human-readable form of your wallet’s private keys, which are complex cryptographic codes used to access and manage your cryptocurrency funds.
Can you use your own word as a seed phrase?
Before a user’s new public and private keys exist, a wallet automatically generates a seed phrase or asks the user to provide one. Do store your seed phrase offline in a secure location, such as a fireproof safe or a hardware wallet. In technical terms, the seed phrase is used to generate a master seed (a binary number), which is then used with algorithms like HMAC-SHA512 to derive private keys in a deterministic manner. Your seed phrase is vital in protecting your funds and should be properly secured.
How is a seed phrase made?
- Anything connected to the internet can be targeted via remote hacks and malware, allowing bad actors to view data stored on your computer, possibly even extracting your private keys or seed phrase.
- Seed phrases work like a master password, so you can recover your crypto assets even if you lose your password, phone or hardware device.
- But with the use of seed phrase, a user can ‘swap’ to a different wallet, without losing any of the stored currency within.
- Crypto is all about self-custody; unlike traditional banking, you can take ownership of your assets.
- This means not sending it to yourself in an email or texting it to a friend.
- Apart from being an absolute must for endorsing transactions, this alphanumeric string provides direct access to your crypto holdings.
This can present a problem because, according to Li, not all claims of decentralization are created equal. Upon investigation of certain wallets, Li and his team at CertiK discovered that these wallets were actually centralized, with key management and transaction signing taking place at a centralized location. Despite these centralized practices, the wallets continue to advertise themselves as decentralized. Noisy debate and increased complexity makes it even more difficult for average users to navigate the different ways to safely store their assets.
How should I store my seed phrase?
One more thing to consider is what happens to your seed phrase in the event of an emergency. If you’re the only one who knows how to access your seed phrase but you’re indisposed for any reason, nobody else will be able to recover your funds without it. For these contingencies it might make sense to have a trusted friend or family member be able to access your recovery phrase in case you’re physically unable to. With the BIP39 standard in play, users can produce a mnemonic sentence made of 12 or 24 words during their wallet’s setup. Derived from a consistent list of 2048 words, this sequence isn’t just some random gibberish but a coherent set of words, far more memorable than an arbitrary array of characters. In short, a 12-word seed phrase provides us with more than enough security to know that our crypto is safely locked away in our wallet.
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- This simple sequence is similar to a master key for your private keys.
- However, these come with security vulnerabilities, as this method requires two devices to function, i.e., a calculator and an air-gapped computer, which is isolated from unsecured networks.
- We’ll cover what a seed phrase is, best practices for managing your seed phrase, and what makes the Blockchain.com Secret Private Key Recovery Phrase unique.
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Further, while seed phrases are lauded for their human readability, we must admit that remembering 24 random words is impractical, especially when you use multiple wallets. This is why the seed phrase is so powerful and needs to be kept extremely secure — if someone gains access to your seed phrase, they can regenerate all your private keys and gain control over all your funds. For the same reasons, you should never upload a text or image copy of any crypto wallet seed phrase to any online storage services.