Important terms that are frequently confused. - page 2.

pooya87

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Quote from: odolvlobo on July 10, 2019, 12:28:11 PM

Seed/Recovery Phrase: Used by a wallet to generate private keys and their associated addresses. A seed is not a passphrase or a private key. A seed is also known as a recovery phrase because all of a wallet's private keys and associated addresses are derived from its seed.

"Used by a deterministic wallets..."
i don't know any wallets these days that isn't using BIP32 under the hood but they don't have to so there might be still some that don't do it.

it is worth mentioning that there is a difference between "seed" and "mnemonic". what is mentioned here (the recovery phrase which is a set of words) is "mnemonic" which is commonly (and falsely) referred to as "seed". the seed is actually derived from mnemonic using PBKDF2 function using mnemonic as its salt.

mk4

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Paldo.io 🤖

Quote from: bitmover on July 10, 2019, 01:23:53 PM

Quote from: odolvlobo on July 10, 2019, 12:28:11 PM

Wallet: A wallet contains and controls private keys and their associated addresses. A wallet is not an address. A wallet typically uses a

I think a wallet could be better described as an interface to access your private keys and manage your funds.

nice summary.

In a technical perspective it should've been worded as a "key" or "keychain" in the first place as some people also have said, instead of "wallet". Because of that, a lot of people actually think they literally have coins on their wallets. A "wallet" just sounds more natural and easier to understand. Maybe it won't matter in the long-term I guess.

Theb

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I haven't seen any confusion here with the terms wallet,address, and wallet address based from what I see in the forum. I see some newbies here even mixed up the terms from wallet address/bitcoin address/bitcoin wallet address and from what I see they know what they are talking about or at least still make some sense with their post. These maybe brought up by what they read in and outside the forum since even articles use the term "wallet address" when they are referring to the address of your wallet. We in the crypto industry really didn't have a proper education with regards to a lot of things so I think some popular phrases such as wallet address should be acceptable and understandable by everyone.

bitmover

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These terms are really often used in a wrong way.

About seed. Seed is just a mathematical relationship between your different private keys of a deterministic wallet. Few years ago all private keys were randomly generated in your wallet. Only few years ago deterministic wallets showed up with seed and related private keys from that seed.

Quote from: odolvlobo on July 10, 2019, 12:28:11 PM

Wallet: A wallet contains and controls private keys and their associated addresses. A wallet is not an address. A wallet typically uses a

I think a wallet could be better described as an interface to access your private keys and manage your funds.

nice summary.

odolvlobo

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I thought I would list some important terms and clear up some common confusion:

Address: Bitcoins are sent to an address. An address is derived from its public key. It is not a public key or a wallet.
Private Key: Used to control the bitcoins at an address. A private key is not a password or a seed phrase.
Public Key: A public key is used in a transaction, and it is rarely seen elsewhere. A public key is derived from its private key. It is not an address.
Wallet: A wallet contains and controls private keys and their associated addresses. A wallet is not an address. A wallet typically uses a seed phrase to generate its private keys.
Seed/Mnemonic/Recovery Phrase: Used by a wallet to generate private keys and their associated addresses. A seed phrase is not a passphrase or a private key. A seed phrase is also known as a recovery phrase because all of a wallet's private keys and associated addresses are derived from it, and, every wallet will generate the same private keys and associated addresses if given the same recovery phrase.
Passphrase/password: A passphrase is used to encrypt a wallet, private key, or other information. A passphrase is not a private key or a seed phrase. Sometimes a seed phrase can contain an extra word or phrase that may be called a passphrase, but it is not.

Here are sets of terms that are frequently confused with each other:

Public key <==> Address
Address <==> Wallet
Private key <==> Seed/Mnemonic/Recovery Phrase <==> Passphrase

Terms that should be avoided because they are ambiguous or are probably being used incorrectly:

Wallet address: There is no such thing as the address of a wallet. As stated above, a wallet contains private keys and their associated addresses.
Public address: Use of this term typically indicates a confusion between the terms "address" and "public key". All addresses are public.
Public Key: Typically, this term is mistakenly used in place of "address".

I would like to point out that some of the confusion with "wallet address" may be due to how people use Ethereum wallets. A typical Ethereum user's wallet has one address (though it could have more) and that could be considered to be the address of the wallet.

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