What is a seed phrase?
A list of ordinary words, usually twelve or twenty-four, that encodes every private key in a wallet.
Also called a recovery or mnemonic phrase. It is a human-writable representation of the master secret from which a wallet derives all its keys, so restoring the phrase in any compatible wallet restores access to the funds.
Why it matters: the phrase is the wallet. Written on paper in a safe place it is resilient; photographed, typed into a cloud note, or entered on a website it is a total loss waiting to happen. Every legitimate wallet asks you to record it once, offline, at setup — and never again. Any prompt to re-enter it is fraud.
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