What is Private Key & Passphrase? The safest and most secure way to store Private Key & Passphrase

In Crypto, Private Key & Passphrase is extremely important information. So what is Private Key? What is a passphrase? How to store safely?

For DeFi players, Private Key/Passphrase is very important information that directly affects users' assets. In case you carelessly lose your Private Key/ Passphrase, you will have no way of accessing the coins and tokens stored in the wallet.

In today's article, I will suggest you some ways to store Passphrase and Private Key safely and securely.

Private Key & Passphrase in Crypto

After creating a successful Crypto wallet, you will receive a wallet address, Passphrase and Private Key, or only Passphrase depending on different blockchain wallet mechanisms.

Anyone who owns either of these credentials has direct access to the Crypto assets stored in your wallet. Private Key and Passphrase are extremely important, you absolutely do not disclose to anyone.

What is Private Key?

Private Key is a string format for connecting to an account, quite similar to a bank account password.

Format of a Private Key: 1a6bb7e9b25bbed5f513bd1dd1866d12c1010a6d2a138f657aaf291064e11b7c.

What is a passphrase?

A passphrase is a regular sequence of 12-24 characters used to encode information.

Format of a Passphrase: lecture estate tube tunnel decade tone flash army pink nice net trap.

Distinguish Passphrase and Private key

Why when creating a wallet that has two passwords, Passphrase is Private Key? What is their difference? I will explain in the easiest way for you to understand.

Imagine the Passphrase is like a house key, and the Private key is the key to each room in the house. A Passphrase will contain many Private keys inside.

Difference between Passphrase and Private Key.

Below I will give an example to illustrate how Metamask works with Passphrase and Private key through some main ideas for you to easily imagine.

After you create a completely new wallet on Metamask, that Account 1 will have both Passphrase and Private key.
If you click on the word "Create Account", Metamask will create for you Account 2, Account 2 will have its own Private Key (different from the Private key of Account 1), but the Passphrase will be the same as Account 1. Similarly with creating a 3rd Account.
Because the Passphrase represents a combination of wallets, the Private key represents a single wallet, so when you first download Metamask on another computer, you must Import the Passphrase first, not the Private Key (open the door first. to the room door).
And after you have imported the passphrase (opening the door of the house), then you can open the door of each room by clicking "Add account" to open the door of the other room (you do not need to save the Private key of each room to still access Account 2, 3, etc., in order).

HOWEVER,

If you want to get any Wallet belonging to House 1 (House = Passphrase) to import into the Metamask in use of House 2, then you need to Import Private Key into House 2, not get Passphrase , that's why a Metamask that already has a Passphrase cannot import a second Passphrase 2).

SO,

When you hold the Passphrase, you can access many wallets inside. But if you want to get any wallet to Import to another place, you have to get the Private key.

So when should you use Passphrase, when should you use Private key?

If you create that wallet as the main wallet, to store assets, without much interaction with the dApp, then you should keep the Passphrase and the Private key carefully.

And if you create that wallet in order to interact with many dApps, do not store large capital, and want to create many Accounts quickly to perform Airdrop and Retroactive, you should create a Main Wallet with many child wallets and just keep the Passphrase carefully.

How to store Private Key/PassPhrase safely and securely?

I will guide you on some methods to store your Private Key/Passphrase safely and securely.

Back-up Private Key and Passphrase is a prerequisite

In creating a wallet, FoxCryptoNews Wallet always recommends that you save the security key as well as the string of the Private Key in a safe place and absolutely do not disclose it to anyone. Otherwise, your account is at risk of being stolen when someone knows these sequence of characters.

Usually, you often have the habit of taking screenshots, storing them in the photo folder or copying and pasting Private Key/PassPhrase on electronic applications (messenger, zalo, ...) but I do not recommend this because some of the following reasons:

Firstly, important information saved by photos or sent to other applications is easily tracked, stolen by hackers, malicious code or accidentally deleted by mistake.
Second, it is difficult for you to manipulate when you need to confirm.

I suggest you some ways to keep it like:

Take notes on paper and keep them in a safe place.
Take notes and save them in the phone's notes (if you use an iphone, you can use a security key to lock it to limit access).
Should be backed up in many different places. There is no limit to where you can keep your private key, you can write and make multiple copies and keep it so that if you lose one, you still have another to back up.

Do not share to anyone: Your keys, your coins

Absolutely do not share Private Key/PassPhrase with anyone EVEN ADMIN OF ANY COMMUNITY . The FoxCryptoNews Admin team will NEVER message you first and will not ask for your Private Key/PassPhrase.
Absolutely do not enter Private Key / PassPhrase into strange websites and applications. Make sure you have verified the information on the official channels of the project and DYOR, be responsible for your assets.

Use your own mnemonic for storage

Here I will introduce the method to change 1-2 words/characters in Private Key/ Passphrase into other words/characters with opposite meanings or you can memorize. You can completely create many other methods of your own.

For example:

Original PassPhrase has the form: visual this guide pear sad primary glory weasel sausage aisle pipe make

Then the PassPhrase I save to my electronic device will have the form: visual that guide pear happy primary glory weasel sausage aisle pipe make.

Here, I changed from this that and sad ⇒ happy , when restoring the wallet, especially the operation of copying & pasting the PassPhrase cluster, you just need to find the position of these 2 words that and happy to reverse. change it back to this and sad, then proceed to import your correct wallet address.

This will prevent a hacker or anyone in any way from being able to obtain the PassPhrase cluster and gain access to your assets.

Similar to the PassPhrase example, you can apply it to the Private Key.

This method will help prevent hackers from hacking into your electronic devices or from being peeped, filmed and stolen information on electronic devices.

When saving on paper or phone notes, you can also apply the tips above to increase the security of Private Key/PassPhrase.

Install the security layers that the application developer provides

Usually, application developers will support some extra layers of security such as passwords to protect users' assets, depending on the wallet application, the security layers are also diverse and different.

For example, with FoxCryptoNews Wallet not only supports many security settings such as Face ID, Finger Print, PIN code, ... but also has a new generation password Matrix password with extreme security. Highly resistant to peeping, screen theft when manipulating.

Summary

Passphrase & Private Key is extremely important information that directly affects your assets. If losing this important information means that you cannot connect to your wallet, no one has the right to recover it except you.

Hopefully through this article, you have understood more methods to better protect your Private Key / PassPhrase. Wishing you all a wonderful and safe experience in the DeFi world.

Oct 04, 2022