Mnemonic phrase, also known as recovery phrase or seed phrase, is A string of 12 or 24 words generated by a cryptocurrency wallet and giving you access to the funds behind the wallet. In fact, the mnemonic phrase is another form of private key. In its raw form, a private key is a string of 256 alphanumeric characters that serve as the deciding factor behind allowing you to access and spend your cryptocurrency.

What is a cryptocurrency wallet? What are its different classifications? What is a private key? What is it used for? Please refer to the entries "What is a Cryptocurrency Wallet" and "What are Public and Private Keys".

How Mnemonic Phrases Work

When you first set up a cryptocurrency wallet, Cryptocurrency wallet providers such as MetaMask, Ledger, etc. will generate a mnemonic phrase consisting of 12 or 24 words and guide you to record all the words in order. The reason why we need a mnemonic (a string of simple words) instead of directly using a private key (a string of 256 alphanumeric characters) is because long strings of numbers are difficult for humans to remember, read and write. .

Those words used in the mnemonic phrase are randomly selected from a list of words. Many wallets use the BIP39 standard, which has a list of 2048 simple words, such as "lucky", "stereo", "trip", "win", etc.

The chance of producing the same mnemonic phrase using the BIP39 standard is almost the same as the chance of flipping a coin 256 times and landing heads each time.

Your wallet will then use the mnemonic phrase to generate private keys that allow access and use of the cryptocurrencies within it. This means that as long as your mnemonic phrase is the same, the calculation of the private key will always be the same. So if you lose or delete a wallet, you can even recover it using just your mnemonic phrase. On the other hand, if someone else gets their hands on your mnemonic phrase, they have free access to your cryptocurrency. So please be sure to keep your mnemonic phrase!

The difference between private key and mnemonic phrase

First of all, you It’s important to understand that the purpose of your cryptocurrency wallet is not actually to store your cryptocurrencies – your tokens/coins are all on the blockchain – but to protect your private keys. Private keys truly give you control over your cryptocurrency assets. Any time you create a blockchain address, you generate a private key (and a corresponding public key).

Your mnemonic phrase gives you access to your wallet and all private keys/addresses in that wallet. Think of the private key as the key to your vault? You may have many vaults and keys. To safely manage and protect these keys, you can put them in a safe. You can think of this safe as your wallet and the mnemonic phrase as the password to the safe - as long as you own it, you can indirectly own all the gold in your vault.

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