What is the difference between Private Key and Seed Phrase? Are they the same?

[Sagor 500]

On 12/6/2019 at 9:57 PM, Akbor said:

Mainly they are same because they used as security for the wallet. i think the seed phrase are very much secured i think. you need to write down the seed phrase to secure your wallet.

Though they are used for security but they are not same as the private key is a key with some letter and numbers but the seed phrase are the phrase with a manner and they are much safe.

[hossein2002426 0]

 

[Maaz sultan 265]

Thanks for sharing this information i think private key is most important but both has been used as a recovery option if you forget your password or recovering your funds .

[whymeidontknow 676]

seed phase is 12 words that will help you restore your wallet if you reset your device settings and the private key is what gives you full access to your wallet, i.e. if you lose it you will no longer be able to log in to your wallet.

[Whited35 15285]

The major difference is related whether they are shareable to the public or not. Private key of certain crypto wallet is the serial numbers which is used to unlock the wallet and secret phrases are the 12 words set of the sentence which is also used to unlock the wallet.

[MCSGlegend 2210]

The private key is what gives you full access to your wallet , if you lose it, you will lose access to your wallet forever , and if you lose the seed phrase of 12 words, you can contact the technical support of your wallet and they will help you restore it.

[Beromnia 733]

A private key and a string of seed words (also called a mnemonic) are functionally the same thing. These are alphanumeric characters generated by entropy (structured randomness).

Private keys are the real thing. They are the locker keys of your locker box on the actual blockchain.

Mnemonics are a long string sequence of words that are generated by an intermediary for protecting your account. These are mostly issued by multi-wallet apps(jaxx, coinomi), and even hardware wallets like Ledger Nano, where, instead of storing multiple private keys for every currencys, you need to store 1 mnemonic string safely. This mnemonic string will be used to recover your account, even if you have lost your device.

The real, REAL problem, is storing the keys/mnemonics safely, and considering all possible disaster scenarios, so that one can efficiently protect and retrieve their money.
 

[johant123 1559]

On 3/4/2020 at 6:28 AM, Whited35 said:

The major difference is related whether they are shareable to the public or not. Private key of certain crypto wallet is the serial numbers which is used to unlock the wallet and secret phrases are the 12 words set of the sentence which is also used to unlock the wallet.

No, both the private key and the seed phrase must be kept highly secret!

 

The seed can be used to regenerate the private key. And who has your key, has your wallet!

 

Best to lock the seed away safely ... and do not lose it!

[bentayebsalah 2280]

The command is similar to Private Key and Seed Phrase, which are different ways to protect your account more and hackers cannot access your wallet.

[Rickso 768]

On 12/3/2019 at 6:07 PM, Brushless4500KV said:

When we discuss about BTC wallets, there are 3 terms that come to mind first.

Public key is quite easy to understand. It is a set of numbers and letters (hash) that can be seen by everyone in a transaction. It is used to receive BTC from others.

The other two terms are Private Key and Seed Phrase (it has some other names such as recovery phrase).

I read about BTC wallet private key and seed phrase but couldn't understand the difference between them!

According to what I know, private key is a secret number that any wallet owner has in order to spend his bitcoin.

Seed phrase is a number of words that we should write down to recover our wallet funds in case something happens for our PC or mobile. This will be given to us by wallet service provider.

I have received a seed phrase from my blockchain wallet and have written it on a piece of paper. Is this the same thing as private key? What do they mean by private key? Is my blockchain password = my private key?

Can someone explain the difference between private key (secret number) and seed phrase (a set of words)?

 

the seed creates the wallet (all your addresses), the wallet creates all the private and public keys of all your different addresses.

so with the seed, you will recover all you wallet, so all the coins that you had on all your addresses.

with the private keys you will recover only the coins that were on the address that was associate with that specific private key

[Fedor00 74]

Private key is similar to an address, basically just a long row of numbers and letters. While as you said seed phrase is a phrase formed of multiple different words 

[BrolySSJ 7899]

Private key is a key that is linked to your wallet and should not be shared under any circumstances, as it makes it very easy to hack your account. A seed phrase on the other hand is when you have a phrase that allows you to recover your bitcoin wallet funds or other crypto funds, and is used when moving your wallet from one device to another.

[ComeBackIsrael 185]

A private key is a key that gives full access to the cryptocurrency on a specific wallet, and a phrase is 12 words that can be used to restore access to the wallet. (they will then become invalid after they are used)

[jacker 1095]

Private keys and seeds have many similarities. private keys are used a lot and seeds are used only in emergencies. But the private key and the seed belong to the individual owner, it is not allowed to disclose to others for safety.

[Ayush Singh 1175]

Private key is the key which is there only woth the owner of the wallets and the users of the particular account once this private key lost it can't be recovered back and the seed phrase is the thing which help the users to recover the account if by chance the device has logged off.

[Thekingcallme 1975]

The difference between private key and Seed phrase
It is that a private key is used to access your wallet or account
While Seed phrase is used in case your wallet or account is lost in order to recover your account by checking Seed phrase

[bitcoinb 1359]

The best answer is the comment of @Rickso. 

 

Private Key = recover a specific address (and funds on it)

Seed Phrase = recover your full wallet with all addresses (and funds on it) + all private keys

[scorpiali 5626]

In the basic there is no different between the private key and the seed phrase all are for recover you wallet and for your security ,the different is the key is numbers and character and the seed is a words that's all 

[George10 9932]

As for me I think private keys to a wallet can mean a password as well as the wallet id that we use to unlock the wallet while as the seed phrase only anables us to recover our funds if we change credentials in case we lose access to our wallets upon contacting support team of our wallet providers for this process it's for this reason I see a different between seed phrase and private keys.

[Yomose 3704]

On 5/29/2020 at 7:39 AM, scorpiali said:

In the basic there is no different between the private key and the seed phrase all are for recover you wallet and for your security ,the different is the key is numbers and character and the seed is a words that's all 

@scorpiali I know you know what you are talking about, but private keys are very different from seed phrases. Private key only recover back just one cryptocurrency while seed phrase can recover back all the coins. What could connect the private key with the seed phrase is the entropy which are in hexadecimal but for now, I am not certain. 

 

[scorpiali 5626]

3 minutes ago, Yomose said:

@scorpiali I know you know what you are talking about, but private keys are very different from seed phrases. Private key only recover back just one cryptocurrency while seed phrase can recover back all the coins. What could connect the private key with the seed phrase is the entropy which are in hexadecimal but for now, I am not certain. 

 

Yes I know that thanks for the precision it's very important ,yes it's different of course the seed is for the whole wallet and all coins and the private key is only for the coin and his token if we have the ethereum wallet 

[Yomose 3704]

18 minutes ago, scorpiali said:

Yes I know that thanks for the precision it's very important ,yes it's different of course the seed is for the whole wallet and all coins and the private key is only for the coin and his token if we have the ethereum wallet 

@scorpiali that means only one private key which is ether private key can be used to access ERC-20 tokens? 

[scorpiali 5626]

Just now, Yomose said:

@scorpiali that means only one private key which is ether private key can be used to access ERC-20 tokens? 

Yes only with one private key for your ethereum address that let you access to all other token in this same ethereum address,you can send and receive token on it 

[Yomose 3704]

1 hour ago, scorpiali said:

Yes only with one private key for your ethereum address that let you access to all other token in this same ethereum address,you can send and receive token on it 

@scorpiali that is great about ethereum, but what about ethereum classic? It has its own private key? I ask this because ethereum is build on ethereum classic blockchain. 

[scorpiali 5626]

1 minute ago, Yomose said:

@scorpiali that is great about ethereum, but what about ethereum classic? It has its own private key? I ask this because ethereum is build on ethereum classic blockchain. 

The ethereum classic have his own blockchain it's independent  form the ethreum blockchain and have his own keys not in the ethereum address