Topic: What is a seed phrase precisely, and why is it significant? (Read 316 times)

The public keys is not the same as the address. Bitcoin address is used for making payment, it is what is given to people to be used for payment, not the public key. The public key can generate the address, just like the private key. But unlike the private key, public key can not provide a digital signature to spend coins.

When bitcoin was first created, coins are sent using the public key (P2PK), but later it was changed to the use of addresses in P2PKH and others that were created after.

From the seed phrase, the seed is generated. From the seed, mater or extended private key is generated. The master or the extended private key can generate all the (child) keys and addresses that the seed phrase can generate.

But always know that if the seed phrase is known, imported on another wallet, there is no password to protect it.

What is a seed phrase?

A seed phrase is a string of random words (12, 18, or 24 words) to master access to crypto wallets. It’s also called recovery phrase, master seed, mnemonic seed, and wallet backup.

You can recover your wallet and access coins again with seed phrases in many situations, such as forgetting the password or private key, your phone or the computer being broken or lost, etc.
Most cryptocurrency wallets nowadays adopt BIP 39 standard. The algorithm chooses words from BIP 39 standard wordlist, which has 2048 words in the list.

For a 12-word seed phrase, the possible combinations are 12*2048, so it’s not easy to guess what your seed phrase is if you keep it a secret. Your crypto coins are stored in the blockchain, and the crypto wallet makes it possible to visualize the balance from the interface and transfer coins to others.

You’ll see the seed phrase when you set up a new wallet. If you have wallets before, you can choose to restore the recovery phrase. As long as both wallets adopt the same standard and support the coins you own, the new wallet will show up as the balance of the other wallet. From this, you can see what ‘seed’ means in the seed phrase.

It’s extremely essential to store your seed phrase safely. Whoever gets the seed phrase can steal funds from your wallet.

Seed phrase VS password VS private key

Seed phrases are not the same as private keys or passwords.

After you set up your wallet and get the seed phrase, the wallet will generate the public key and private key. The public key is the address equivalent to the bank account to receive funds open to the network. The private key is used to send transactions proving your ownership of the assets, like a PIN.

Seed phrases master access to the whole wallet (may have several wallet addresses or accounts) while the private key is to secure one wallet address and one account.

When you log in to the wallet, you need to enter the password to verify it’s you to access assets in the wallet instead of others. The password gives another layer of security when you access the wallet in a browser extension or the app on mobile phones.

You are not wrong, but:

I noticed that nothing like passphrase mentioned. Newbies should also know that passphrase is not the same as passwords. If you forget your password, you can import the seed phrase on a newly downloaded wallet and set new password. But if it is passphrase that is lost, the coins are lost too, just like seed phrase is lost, so is the passphrase too.

You need private key to spend your coins, but you can also import the private key on another wallet to spend the coins. Seed phrase can always generate the private keys which makes that possible with seed phrase importation.

Thanks for the corrections, Bitcoin is wild, and learning every day is a thing on its own suggestions are allowed and now have even learned more and on the radio section was just the basics  to enlighten the locals since they have different perspectives about bitcoin. that's one thing I love about this forum because it is full of information, Have added some information myself thanks. All your words have encouraged me to do better that's what I will actually do, the seatbelt is already put on cause the ride is definitely a good one thanks, everyone. I remembered when I was in High school they will always tell us to turn how good to best which means we should never have enough but to continue on the part of improvement.

Be careful with this. The number of people who have come up with some self created cipher or obfuscation method who have then forgotten what they did and locked themselves out of their coins far outnumbers the number of people who have been saved from theft by such a method. If you want extra security over a single seed phrase, then better to use a standardized method such as a passphrase or multi-sig.

More importantly than that, a master private key cannot be used to generate passphrased wallets. Additionally, a lot of wallet software incorrectly refers to account extended keys as master keys, and so someone could back up what they think is their master private key at m, but actually back up their account extended private key at m/84'/0'/0' without realizing it.

OP, maybe it's translation difficulties, but so many people have corrected you above, which suggests that you cannot fully understand the topic that you decided to explain to beginners. 
I'm curious, if your topic is telling everyone on the radio about the benefits of Bitcoin, can it contain the right conclusions if you clearly show that you are not yet fully versed in some things? 
Maybe you should not hurry with such information?

A recovery phrase is not a password for your wallet, it is your wallet. If you accidentally lose your seed words, it will be equivalent to losing everything that the wallet contained. Of course, funds won't magically disappear once the access to a seed phrase is lost, but no one in this world will be able to "unlock" them on the bitcoin blockchain and move to another address. And, as you have already been told, a master private key cannot fully substitute your seed phrase because it is just a human non-readable derivative of your recovery words, which is very difficult to write down without making tons of errors.


It may be I am nitpicking, but it is cryptography that protects your funds, not the actual keys. A private key is just one of the variables in the equation that tells where your funds are, and this variable doesn't really care about who owns it: it will work the same way in the hands of a hacker trying to deprive you of funds. It does not protect you: it is you who should protect it.

Maybe a key instead of password. Key is something you can use to unlock something. So its more appropriate term, hence password is sometimes avoid since it could misinterpreted as your password for any dapps or application youve used. Anyway knowing its important to be keep safe at all times matters.

The seed/recovery phrase does not act as a password. It should never be used anywhere except to recover a lost or damaged wallet.

• buy a hardware wallet or use an air-gapped device if you are keeping a lot of coins
• write your seed phrase on a paper, laminate it and make many backups, keep them in more than one location
• You can engrave your recovery phrase on a metal steel sheets if you are scared of humidity, fire, etc destroying your paper storage
• when writing out your seed phrase, you can make it obscure in a way only you will understand, so if found by someone it would be difficult for them to steal your coins
• If you cannot buy a hardware wallet, you can use electrum as a cold storage: https://electrum.readthedocs.io/en/latest/coldstorage.html
• don't tell people you have bitcoins

If your seedphrase gets lost, it cannot be recovered, but if you suspect it has been compromised; for example, you just imputed it into a suspected phishing link, or it was exposed one way or the other, you can try to very quickly sweep the finds linked to the keys into a new address which is not compromised.

There is of course no guarantee that you would be faster, and wouldn't lose funds before you can successfully send out the funds.

---

To avoid situations when it is lost (but not compromised) keep multiple backups.

Then they would be wrong. The terms seed phrase and master key refer to two different things. They are not interchangeable.

The words are not chosen randomly. Rather, they are encoded very precisely from a random source of entropy. Also, the word "jug" is not on the BIP39 wordlist.

It is not challenging, but rather impossible to brute force a seed phrase from scratch. Every time someone's seed phrase is hacked, it is because of user error or malware which leaks their seed phrase to an attacker.

Most of us who are beginners have heard of the term "seed phrase" but are unaware of its significance. A seed phrase is also called a recovery phrase in a simple note a seed phrase is just a random word generated. However, wallets allow users to access and manage the money they store there. As the name suggests, a recovery phrase acts as a password for your wallet, ensuring that you can always recover your assets even if your wallet is deleted or you experience device problems. In some instances, they refer to the recovery phrase as a master key.

Full description of a seed phrase

The appearance and creation methods it is automatically generated, and customization is not possible. A list of 2048 words is used to generate it. The seed phrase includes 12 to 24 words, such as man, jug, and other words chosen randomly from this list. The seed phrase manages all private keys. By enabling significant wallet cross compatibility, the BIP-39 enables users to load the recovery phrase into a new BIP-39 compactable wallet and evaluate all the assets inside of it.

Recovery phrase / private key
 
Despite their connection, the two share the goal of protecting your wallet. The recovery phrase is used to access accounts that have lost their passwords and provide you complete control over your assets, while private keys are intended to secure transactions and prove ownership.

-Most often asked question: Can your seed phrase be hacked?

A number of people have lost their valuables to crypto heists losing their money in digital currency is a nightmare, and losing your seed phrase means loss of ownership (a common adage is "not your keys, not your Bitcoin"). The seed phrase is made up of so many words that it is genuinely challenging to hack. Most often, however, hackers and scammers utilize techniques like the so-called PHISHING, in which they deceive victims into disclosing their seed phrase, which they then use to steal money from the victim.

Ways to discover a PHISHING attack

Most frequently, the fraudsters responsible for these attacks send emails to potential victims that are disguised to seem as though they were received from a credible exchange and contain links to phony exchanges or wallets. There are various methods to recognize a phishing email.

-Copycatting
-spelling or grammar errors
-misleading links

What happens if I lose my seed phrase? One of the major questions newbies ask  

The safety of your seed phrase is extremely important, but people keep getting hurt. If lost, there is nothing else that can be done to recover it. Avoid writing it in an open space, such as by pinning it to a wall in your room. Also, save it in a place where it cannot be destroyed by an element, such as fire.

-keep it offline.
-And safe it in place so that natural elements can not affect it.
-Avoid placing it on any board in your house.
-More contribution.