What is Seed phrase?
A list of 12–24 words that backs up your wallet's private keys. Anyone with your seed phrase can take everything.
A seed phrase (or recovery phrase) is a list of 12–24 ordinary words that mathematically encodes every private key in your wallet. It's the master backup: restore the phrase into any compatible wallet and all your coins reappear. It is also, symmetrically, the master vulnerability — anyone who reads it owns everything, instantly, from anywhere.
The handling rules are absolute and boring: write it on paper or steel, never type it into a website or app, never photograph it, never store it in email, notes or cloud drives. Every "validate your wallet" or "support agent needs your phrase" message ever sent is a scam — no legitimate service asks. Test the backup by restoring it before real money goes in, and think about who could access it if something happens to you.
See it in practice
Related terms: Private key · Cold wallet · Custodial · full glossary
FAQ
Why words instead of a password?
The words are a human-friendly encoding of a very large random number. Ordinary words are far easier to write down and verify without error than 64 hexadecimal characters — the security lives in the randomness, not the format.
Someone asked for my seed phrase to "verify my wallet" — is that legitimate?
No. Never. There is no verification, support process, airdrop or synchronisation that requires it. That request is the single most common crypto theft technique in existence.
General information only, not financial advice. Definitions are maintained in our fact database and reviewed with the daily rebuild.