How to protect your Crypto Wallet

What is safe to share and what you need to keep private for your crypto walletA crypto wallet gives you access to your coins and to all the new applications built for web3

In this article we want to clarify what is safe to share and what you need to keep private regarding your Crypto Wallet. If it is not clear what is a crypto wallet, also known as web3 wallet, you can read our previous article that will provide answers to most of your questions:

What is a Crypto Wallet and Why You Absolutely Need One

For brevity, we will use just the term Wallet in this article to refer to a crypto wallet.

What is safe to share?

Let’s start now with a simple example. Would you lend your car keys to a stranger? Certainly not! These keys are private information, allowing you to gain access to your car. If you did give them to a stranger, they’d be able to steal your car.

Your car keys are precious, you will never lend to anyone!

In contrast, your car’s license plate number is public information, since it is always visible on your car. If someone knows your car’s plate number, this doesn’t mean they can steal your car.

Your car’s license plate number is visible to anyone, and this is totally safe!

Same example for your home. Your keys are private and open the door. You wouldn’t give them out to everyone. But your address is public. Anyone can know it, but this doesn’t mean you give them permission to use your keys and walk inside.

In the crypto world, your car’s license plate number or your home address is your wallet address. This address is made up of a randomly generated set of numbers and letters, usually consisting of 26 to 35 alphanumeric characters. Take this for example, the first Bitcoin address ever:

1A1zP1eP5QGefi2DMPTfTL5SLmv7DivfNa

Or alternatively, this is a typical Ethereum address:

0x586711030959a894CB6789889Cf59b4FEbD47A70Sharing your Wallet address is totally safe!

Remember, your wallet address is public: you can freely share it with others so that they can send cryptocurrencies to you. Sharing your public address is not risky! You can also think of your wallet address like your IBAN or Routing Number that identify uniquely your bank account for a specific currency.

What you need to keep private?

Coming back to our example, your car keys in the crypto world is your wallet seed phrase (also known as a seed recovery phrase or simply mnemonic). A seed phrase is a list of words which stores all the information needed to recover your crypto coins or tokens, within a blockchain network.

When you first setup your wallet (e.g., a software wallet like Coinbase Wallet or MetaMask, or a hardware wallet like Ledger Nano) you will have to find and write down your seed phrase. An example of a 12-word seed phrase is this one:

witch collapse practice feed shame open despair creek road again ice berryHardware wallet from Ledger

Remember, the word order is very important and generally a seed phrase is from 12 to 24 random words. If you’d like, you can use specialized services to engrave seed phrases into durable materials like stainless steel, but at minimum you should keep copies of your seed phrases on paper and store in safe locations.

There are specialized services to engrave seed phrases into durable materials

You can think of your seed phrase as the keys to your car or house. It provides access that only you should have! Therefore, the most important thing to remember is to never share your seed phrase with anyone!

I always store two copies of all my seed phrases in printed copy, for example in my bedside table.

You can keep your mnemonic for your wallet (or seed phrase) in your bedside table, always make two copies.

If you lose or break your computer, you can download the same wallet software, like Coinbase Wallet or MetaMask, and use the backup copy of your seed phrase to gain back access to your crypto (e.g., ETH, LINK, LPT, etc.) that are safely stored within the blockchain networks.

If you have further questions or concerns, feel free to reach out and ask in the comments section.

Takeaways

• Sharing your crypto wallet address with others is perfectly fine!
• Never share your wallet seed phrase with anyone.
• Your crypto coins/tokens (like ETH) are safely stored within the network (e.g., Ethereum in the case of ETH or LPT).
• Never send your coins/tokens to anyone you do not know or trust!

Do you have any questions?

Live Pioneers is the first unofficial community for long term LPT holders and supporters of the Livepeer protocol ▶️

If you have any questions, or concerns, or want to submit feedback, you can reach out to us using our social channels:

• Telegram: t.me/livepioneers
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Live Pioneers is the first unofficial community supporting the Livepeer protocol

How to protect your Crypto Wallet was originally published in Coinmonks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.