Glossary · Wallets
Seed phrase.
A short list of words (BIP-39) that encodes every key in your wallet.
Think of it as
The master code that regenerates every key in your wallet. Write it on paper, never type it online.
In depth
A seed phrase, also called a mnemonic, is a human-readable form of a long random number. Wallets feed it through standard derivation rules, BIP-39 for the mnemonic itself, BIP32-Ed25519 for key derivation, and CIP-1852 for Cardano's account path (which replaces BIP-44 from Bitcoin), to compute every payment and staking key in a wallet. Anyone with the phrase has the wallet; lose it and the keys are gone.
Example
A 24-word phrase like "abandon ability able about above…" can be typed into any compatible wallet to restore the same addresses and balances.