A Seed Phrase is a collection of random words generated during wallet creation that lets you get back into your crypto wallet if you lose access or delete it.
It’s super important that you keep your seed phrase safe and away from prying eyes.
You should copy your seed phrase immediately after it’s generated for you.
It can be used to recover your mobile wallet, hardware wallet, and desktop web-browser wallet if ever you have issues getting into them.
Anyone who knows your seed phrase can use it to make a copy of your wallet and add it to their own device. Once that happens, they can empty all of your funds from your wallet.
Knowing your seed phrase ultimately gives you access to your private key, which verifies your ownership of your cryptocurrency.
The most secure method of storing a seed phrase is on some medium that can’t be lost or destroyed easily. Paper is an option but it’s easily lost or destroyed. Saving a seed phrase to an online password manager is convenient, but not 100% secure, as password manager master passwords can get hacked if weak.
Some people have been known to memorize their seed phrase, which we don’t recommend.
Others have looked to engraving or stamping their seed phrase on a piece of wood or metal, as those materials are harder to destroy or lose.
A combination of multiple levels of backup might be the best course of action. For instance, you could copy your seed phrase to a piece of paper and put that in a fire safe, or etch the seed phrase into a piece of wood or metal. Bank deposit boxes are a good alternative, although they aren’t very convenient to use.
Seed phrases are generally made up of very basic words that make it somewhat easy to keep accurate and less prone to human error.
An example of a seed phrase looks like the following:
trash barrel iron auction abuse rich crisp bench liar price access file
The order of the words is important, as the recovery process may ask you for the word in a specific place, such as “the 4th word in your seed phrase”.