What's a seed phrase?

A "seed phrase" is a sequence of words that can be used as an encryption key while being easier to keep safe than an equally strong number code.

There are 2 reasons this works: first, since words use 26 letters instead of only 10 numeric digits, the same number of possibilities is achieved with a shorter sequence than using numbers. Second, letters which are grouped in words are simply more memorable and recognizable for the human brain than groups of numbers; this makes typos less likely, while also making it easier to recover the information from typos, smudges, and other damage.

Of course, encryption relies on math, and uses numbers; seed phrases are ultimately just a different way of writing numbers, because each word has an associated number from the list of possible words, and by matching words to numbers in this list, each sequence of words converts to and from its own sequence of numbers.

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