What is a recovery phrase, seed phrase or mnemonic?

What is

The recovery phrase or mnemonic is a phrase composed of 12 —sometimes 24— words arranged in a specific order (usually in English). When creating a wallet, these 12 words are given to the user to be backed up. It is essential to store these 12 words in a secure place, preferably on paper or in a location without internet access. This information will allow you to access your cryptocurrencies.

The security behind the recovery phrase

When creating a wallet, these 12 words are randomly generated, choosing one word out of 2048 possibilities each time. The chance of generating the same recovery phrase again is extremely remote: even if powerful computers were used to try to guess one of the already generated recovery phrases, it would take hundreds of thousands of years to have any chance of success. The security of cryptocurrency wallets relies on this logic.

Exercise to safeguard the 12 words

However, there is still a possibility of human error. To eliminate this possibility, it may be useful to practice importing the wallet into the application —without deleting the original wallet— and verify that the imported wallet and the original wallet contain the same addresses for the same coins. Be careful not to make any mistakes in the words, as this would generate a different wallet from the original one!

With great power comes great responsibility

The recovery phrase is like the key to a safe deposit box; if it is lost, the Defiant team cannot help you recover your funds. The good news is that this makes the user the only person in possession of their crypto. You can always access the recovery words of the wallets loaded in Defiant within the menu My Wallets → Words.

Updated on: 15/06/2023