What is a Crypto Wallet?

Your wallet is a means for storing and managing your identity, represented by digital keys. You need these keys to do anything on a blockchain—connect to a dapp, send or receive crypto, buy or sell NFTs, etc. Think of your wallet as a web3 permissions manager, where you grant access to the apps that you want to use.

The moment your crypto wallet is created, a unique phrase is generated, known as your ‘Secret Recovery Phrase’ (SRP) or ‘seed phrase’. And yes, this phrase may seem cryptic, but really, it’s just a cryptographic master password that you need to keep secret. This is the seed from which your digital public addresses and private keys sprout—one pair for every account you generate in MetaMask.

The public address is the first way you identify yourself on the blockchain. It’s like your bank account number, whereas your private key (derived from your SRP) is more like the pin code to get into your bank account—you wouldn’t want to share that with anyone, and want to keep it safe, right?