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I have a question about Cryptocurrency wallets like Metamask (soft) or Ledger (hard).

How is a 12 or 24 word seed phrase enough to show the same crypto addresses in any crypto wallet that supports the same standard (ie. BIP-39). Can someone unravel this for me / us?

Would it be this:

  • seed phrase with its 2048^(12 or 24) combinations is used to encrypt a private key
  • that private key can decrypt your list of addresses. But if so, where is this list kept - a database, a blockchain (not sure how this would work)

I searched for some more information but I can only find more introductory articles.

Any help in understanding this would be appreciated.

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    $\begingroup$ One of the cryptocurrency-oriented stackexchanges, like the bitcoin or ethereum would probably be a better place to ask about this. But the short answer is that the seed doesn't encrypt your keys, your keys and addresses are computed ("derived") from it. Same seed + same derivation process -> same keys. The keys and addresses are the wallet, so same keys&addresses -> same wallet. See this. $\endgroup$ Commented Dec 4, 2022 at 9:35

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