What is a seed phrase?

What's up with the 24 secret words on TON wallets? Any why should you actually write them down?

If you have a cryptocurrency wallet, you were most likely instructed to keep a phrase of 12 or 24 randomly-chosen words in a safe place. This very combination of words is a seed phrase. This phrase, as well as your private key, allows you full access to your wallet (although the seed phrase is not the same as the private key). You need the private key to confirm (or, so to say, ‘sign’) your transactions, but often you don’t even know what it is – the crypto wallet signs your transactions for you with your private key. As for the seed phrase, you can see it when you generate your wallet, and this is when you are supposed to note it and keep it in safe place. You can also use it when you need to restore your wallet, for example, on a different device.

Actually, you don’t need to know all this to use cryptocurrencies. You need to remember one thing – never and under no circumstances can your seed phrase (as well as the private key) be disclosed to anyone. There can be only one exception: when you want to give another person access to your wallet. Anyone who knows your seed phrase or your private key has your wallet in their full possession and can control all the cryptoassets in it.

Here’s a question: why not to use a long, complicated password of randomly-chosen symbols instead of the seed phrase? The answer is quite simple. With a complicated password, there are more opportunities to make a mistake, such as mixing up symbols. It could also be used for more than one app, a bad idea. The price for a mistake in the crypto world is high. It is much easier to use regular words in a certain order and allow your wallet source code to generate the keys.

Why should I not screen shot or save a copy on my phone or computer?

We must not take screen shots of the 24 secret pass phrase words, or same them as a text file, on any phone or computer.

Aside from potential security problems in doing so, it is also likely that a device goes missing or you accidentally later delete the screen shot, or cannot find it.

Too few people take a wallet creation seriously and “cheat” by saving time, by taking a screen shot or saving the 24 words in a file on the device.

Later, however, many will regret it as they reinstall a wallet app, log out from it, or lose their phone or computer, and along with it, all their cryptocurrency.

Therefore the best wallets will always put safety measures in place, to annoy users into making them write down the words, and testing that they have done so.

It is better to have this initial annoyance, than to regret it later. Too many think “I’ll do it later” and try to skip this step, life gets in the way and “later” never comes.

All too many forget where they saved the words: “Did I screen shot it? Did I copy it? Where did I save it? Did I write it down? Where did I write it down?”

Of course, after using a wallet for 6 months, for example, and never logging out or back in, only the most organized of people would know where they put it all.

Therefore the re-enforcement of short term memory into medium and then longer term memory of the human brain, should be assisted with a good safe wallet app.

None of the TON wallets currently meet all these criteria, although one is in development and due for release soon which takes these issues seriously.

TON NEWS has had a chance to follow its development and look forward to its release and being able to then review it along with other TON wallets.

TON Wallet Safety Tips

The following are important tips that will ensure that you can keep your TON safe:

• Physically write down your 24 secret words, ideally twice

• Keep them in safe places, known only to you or trusted partner

• You can split up the words into 2x12, or 3x8, or 4x6 and share a part

• Give one part to each person so they can be combined if you expire

• Do not take screen shots of, nor save text files of, your 24 secret words

• Before logging out of a wallet app, make sure you still have them

• To be sure if in doubt, write them down again before logging out

• You can usually find your 24 secret words in the Settings of the wallet

• If you have a lot of cryptocurrency consider a cold wallet, research this

• Avoid the use of web wallets, and less secure operating systems (Windows)

• Use only reputable open source TON Wallets, e.g. MacOS TON Wallet

Losing access to wallets is a common problem, avoid this problem by following the above advice!