What is a seed phrase and why is it important?
A seed phrase might be confusing and probably you might be wondering how a seed phrase looks and maybe how it is created. The seed phrase is generated by a cryptocurrency wallet and the user has no way of customizing it.
The words generated are derived from a list of 2048 words. So, how many words is a seed phrase? A seed phrase is made up of a long string consisting of a group of random words.
The words on a seed phrase are simplified so that the user can remember them, unlike if the seed phrase consisted of long numbers or special characters.
The recovery phrase consists of 12 to 24 words like energy, road or open. To avoid errors, these randomly generated words do not include pairs like “man” and “men” in the same seed phrase. Bitcoin improvement proposal-(BIP)-39 in 2013 introduced these types of phrases and established a standard for deterministic wallets. Here is an imaginary 12-word seed phrase: Cry, planet, Loose, Typical, Humankind, Toddler, Anxiety, Difficult, Happy, Never, Alternative, Remorse.
A seed phrase controls all the private keys associated with a deterministic wallet. BIP-39 proposal makes major wallets cross-compatible, allowing the users to load the recovery phrase to a new BIP-39-compatible wallet to access the funds when they are lost or if you want to switch wallets.