A seed phrase is a list of words that can be used to access your cryptocurrency wallet. Seed phrases, which were first used in Bitcoin, make it easier for users to back up their wallets. If you’ve ever used a wallet, you’ve probably been asked to jot down 12-24 strange words like these:
army bicycle telepathy people moon lucky broken magic social club scene time
Consider a wallet to be a crypto version of a password manager, with the seed phrase serving as the master password. You’ll have access to all of the crypto linked with the wallet as you have your seed phrase— even if you delete or lose the wallet.
Seed phrases, rather than private keys, allow for less human error in backups because they’re easier to capture and communicate.