In the world of cryptocurrency, a “seed” refers to a phrase, string, or list of words that are used to generate or recover a private key or multiple private keys for a cryptocurrency wallet.
This seed is often in the form of a mnemonic recovery phrase, usually 12, 18 or 24 words, that is created when you set up a new wallet. This seed phrase is an encoded version of your wallet’s master private key and is crucial for backup and recovery purposes. If you lose access to your wallet (for instance, if you forget your password or your device gets lost or stolen), you can use the seed phrase to restore your wallet and access your funds.
However, if someone else gets hold of your seed phrase, they can also gain access to your wallet and control over your cryptocurrency assets. Therefore, it’s essential to keep your seed phrase stored securely and privately.
The seed generation and the derivation of keys from it usually follow a standard called BIP39 (Bitcoin Improvement Proposal 39) in the Bitcoin and broader crypto ecosystem. This BIP provides the method for creating the mnemonic sentence (the seed) and converting it into a binary seed used to generate hierarchical deterministic wallets (BIP32), which can generate virtually unlimited cryptographic key pairs from a single seed.